More personal and more human

The following is a quote from How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age by Jonathan Leeman (pg. 133-135).

"Here's the larger point: Christians should listen to what Republicans and Democrats have to say on welfare policy, tax policy, racial reconciliation, the refugee crisis, and growing suicide rates. But our thinking shouldn't start or stop there. Our thinking should be more expansive, more complicated, more personal, more human. Our political instincts should develop by living inside the loving and difficult relationships that comprise a church. You might even say our political thinking should be pastoral..."

"Inside the local church is where a Christian politics becomes complicated, authentic, credible, not ideologically enslaved, real. It's in these real-life situations where you're forced to think about what righteousness truly is, what justice truly requires, what obligations you possess toward your fellow God-imagers, and what you yourself are made of..."

"Real politics begins not with your political opinions but with your every day decisions, not with public advocacy but with personal affections, not all by your lonesome but with a people.
Christians learn politics, in particular, as we work for unity amid all the reason we give one another not to be united. It's in this battle for unity that we should find the first inflections and glimmers of the just and righteous order, one that should make the nations envy."

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Sometimes I get the impression that people look for an escape from the complexities of life, which may boil down to just trying to escape the fall. So we grasp at straws and simplistic solutions. Just get this political party in power, stack the Supreme Court this way, pass/remove these laws, reverse the clock, etc. But it's never this easy. There is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure-all for all our problems especially when you stop and consider the ramifications of all those "answers" and all the people who will be affected.

Christians are just as prone, I think, to want to avoid those complexities. But we cannot escape the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. We cannot escape the call to be salt and light and practice pure and undefiled religion that looks after widows and orphans. Christianity is not escapism. But as Leeman says above, perhaps the church is the place to face the complications of life in love. Rather than avoiding difficult issues, perhaps this is the place where we can be challenged to  consider "what righteousness truly is, what justice truly requires, what obligations you possess toward your fellow God-imagers, and what you yourself are made of."