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Series: Five Mere Christians
Devotional: 4 of 5
Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. (Matthew 13:34)
Jesus revealed God’s kingdom primarily through culture rather than politics. He never sought a seat on the Sanhedrin or in the Roman Senate. Instead, he changed the world with parables—tiny tales that stirred hearts to long for God’s kingdom.
Yet despite Jesus’s example, many Christians put far more faith in political solutions than cultural ones to fix the world’s problems today. We believe electing the “right people” and appointing the “right judges” will finally bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
This mindset explains why William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament in the 18th century, gets the lion’s share of the credit for abolishing the slave trade—even though historians and Wilberforce himself gave equal credit to Hannah More, a poet, playwright, and novelist who outsold her contemporary Jane Austen ten-to-one.
Eric Metaxas, a biographer of both Wilberforce and More, says, “How Wilberforce came to be the chief champion of abolition...has everything to do with Hannah More.” While Wilberforce worked to change politicians’ minds, More worked to change the people’s hearts through art that exposed slavery’s horrors.
Jesus’s parables and Hannah More’s poetry point to an important truth: We mere Christians glorify God by advancing his kingdom culturally and not just politically.
What might this mean for you today? Consider abortion as a case study. Murder has no place in the kingdom of God. And so it is right to ask the question, “What is the political response to this problem?” But the far more powerful question is, “What is my creative response to this problem?”
If you’re an artist like Hannah More, your response might be to write stories and songs that break people’s hearts toward orphans and birth parents. If you’re a business leader, it could be creating generous maternity and paternity policies or funding adoptions for employees. If you work in a café, it might mean setting up a board with resources for pregnancy centers.
Here’s my point: Please don’t wait for politicians to reveal God's kingdom—be the creator who makes it visible today. Whatever the issue is—abortion, racial injustice, gender transitioning, pollution, etc.— glorify God not just by working to change things politically but first and foremost culturally. Because as Andy Crouch said, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”
