Presidential campaigns carry with them a collection of temptations for Christians (and non-believers) we seldom acknowledge. Both candidates and their running mates profess to be Christian, and yet who among them or their staff could claim to have never distorted their opponents record, never taken a quote out of context for political gain, never embellished their own record, never ducked an opportunity to speak prophetically about a sensitive issue, never taken money from a questionable source - and the list of pecadillos goes on and on and on. Who among their supporters could claim never to have believed or passed along rumor and innuendo without checking out its veracity, unfairly questioned the intelligence, morality or patriotism of a candidate or his/her supporters, or allowed their faith to be co-opted by a political party or candidate?

Over the past generation, Christians on the right and the left have invited political parties into the sanctuary with unfortunate results. The love of Christ cannot be codified into a set of laws and social policies. And every political platform necessarily puts the believer in the awkward position of embracing and promoting policies that are antithetical to their Christian beliefs, and making determinations of which candidate and platform is more or less Christian. Once those determinations are made, we then set about convincing fellow believers that our determinations and compromises are the correct ones.

The folly of Jesus disciples was that they thought he would set up an earthly kingdom and rule. Instead, he chose the way of the cross and rules in our hearts, transforming the world through his followers. As engaging, exciting and important as this political season has been, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that it’s a sideshow compared to our true vocation of building the Kingdom and living out the love of Christ.

My prayer for Blue and Red Christians would be that on November 5th we set aside our differences and set about the transforming work of following Christ together.