How do we balance politics and faith?  As the American election season heats up, many of us are trying to come to grips with this question.  Though I do not pretend to have all the answers, I share a thought from my recent reading of some of the parables in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew's gospel.  In this parable, one of the parables of the kingdom of God (note, however, that in an effort to avoid angering what he hoped would be Jewish readers, Matthew calls these parables of the kingdom of heaven; even today, many Jews assiduously avoid mentioning God's name outright, often preferring to call him as "Shem" (the name)), Jesus tells the story of the wheat and the tares.  A farmer, he says, plants wheat seeds in his field.  They soon grow into strong and firm stalks of wheat. Along the way, however, when the farmer is not around, an "enemy" comes and sows weed (tare) seeds.  The wheat is compromised.  But when asked whether they should dig up the weeds, the farmer's servants are told not to.  Let's wait until harvest, the farmer says, and we will dig up the weeds when we glean the wheat.

     Jesus' point is that although in him God's kingdom has been established on earth, until the end of the age, when he returns to make all things right, weeds will grow right alongside the wheat of the kingdom.  Expect challenges to one's faith in God, anticipate skepticism to matters of belief, plan for human nastiness (and not just in regards to faith):  after all, it's a fallen world inhabited by fallen (and glorious) people.  And wait.

     We can apply this parable to faith and politics in several ways.  The angle I offer is to invite people of faith to consider that although you feel led, even compelled to speak out on issues which you believe affect your ability to worship God openly or which you believe are compromising America's moral integrity, historically, it seems that the more loudly you have shouted, the more the weeds have grown.  The people of faith who have made inroads into the secular imagination are those who have waited, those who have let go of the immediate and lived their lives intelligently and uprightly, speaking out, yet not alienating those whom they are trying to persuade to accept their point of view.  In a pluralistic society like America is today, this is perhaps all we can do.  We should live and speak for our faith, yes, but we should do so in a way that honors the person in whom we believe, recognizing that it's more important to ensure that we do not compromise our "wheat" while we are trying to pull up the weeds we see, than to hector and badger people to accept what they are not likely, outside of faith, to do so.