What If We Cannot Agree with Our Political Leaders?
Since we are not living in a world where countries are run by theocracy, we have to live with being ruled by people whom we may or may not agree with, in parts or in full. It is important that we do not act like the secular people because God expects so much more from us.
I am going to take US Politics as an example, but it truly can be transposed into any political system. So, the Americans have gone through four years of the “Trump is not my President” trend and now they are with a President who claims there have been more people fully vaccinated in the US than there are people in the US. Trump was a President who started with a lower approval rating than he was elected, and Biden who started as the President who received the highest number of votes in the history of the country to the steepest drop in approval, which is steeper than Nixon’s. How should our behaviour be? This is, of course, from an outsider's perspective.
Since I do side with Trump in most things, I did not have a problem with him for the four years he was the President. Then, there was Biden. He keeps saying and doing things that just make no sense. The way I look at it, he is just an older version of Justin Trudeau, so, it is easy for me to put myself into thinking about “what would I do”.
Biden and Trudeau both push policies and narratives that I do not agree with politically and religiously. Yet, I will not actively oppose their policy just because I disagree. Neither will I curse them for pushing an agenda that is against God. No. If Apostle Paul, in the middle of being jailed and possibly executed did not curse Ceasar, nor pray against Ceasar, who are we to do differently?
As a matter of fact, from today’s passage, Paul was not the first who push for the “agenda” of praying for those who are the political leaders. Today’s passage is from Psalm 72. King David wrote to remind people to pray for the king to do the right thing and be blessed. We should do the same, even if we think our political leaders are doing evil things (or we think they are doing “evil things” just because we don’t agree with what they are doing).
