A Millennial, his Bible, and the Capitol Building

At the moment I'm writing this, my family and I are slowly making our way back down the eastern seaboard. Over a week ago we left our home in Yulee, Florida to make our way to Acadia National Park in Maine. One the way we stopped in a few places, but the highlight to me was stopping in Washington D.C.. We are stopping there again today, hopefully to see the White House. It was great to see our founding documents, to see the Capitol Building, Washington Monument, and numerous other monuments and memorials to our country.

The problem was that being surrounded by the monuments to all that our country stands for and the buildings that housed our government brought to the forefront of my mind a real struggle I'm having:



What is the right relationship between us as Christians and our Government? How does the Bible relate to politics and governance? Are the moral right and law of the Bible incompatible with a society that seeks to give everyone the freedom of "the pursuit of happiness"?

Let me get this straight. I don't know the answer. This is perhaps the most serious crisis I've had in my faith since I came across Reformed Theology three years ago. I'll go one way and then the next. I'm going through that painful process of working through every detail and holding it to the light of scripture to see what is there to find.

Then why write about it? Why bother going on what seems to be simply a soliloquy about my own personal struggle? I decided to make it a series and write about it because I don't think I'm alone in this struggle. I remember the discussions I had (and still have) with former roommates, college classmates, and current pastor. I see the relative disassociation with politics from what seems to be a majority of people my age (early twenties) and in particular Christians my age. I wonder if it's because they have the same problems I have.

So I want to write about my journey through these waters. I want to share my experience of wrestling with the hard questions. What was our Constitution really founded upon? Were our Founding Fathers as Christian as we say they were? What is the Biblical response to the current Gay Rights Movement? At one point does "the pursuit of happiness" become secondary to a safe society? What is the proper relationship, Biblically, between personal liberty and morality in law?

I don't expect I'll have all the answers. Maybe these are questions I'll never satisfactorily answer in my lifetime. Even if I do, there's no guarantee that the government looks (or ever will look) like the Bible says it should. But I have to find an answer to the questions that fill my mind and maybe along the way I can help some others find some answers as well.