Politics as Mission: Why and How?

 A Shalom Greeting to you!

I am a native Nepali. I was born and brought up into a devout Hindu high caste family with heavy rituals and religiosity. But in my 13^th, I started searching for more about God. Deserted the family and joined an atheist movement accepting Marxist-Leninist communism. Yet, my search for God still continued, kept exploring and found a Bible. I started reading the book with full of doubts. After four years of struggle with this book, I came into conviction that the God of the Bible is the only true God. I surrendered myself into Christ's Lordship in 1991. Since then, I am into His mission, being committed to serving people in needs through church, pastoral care, disaster-response, mass media, education and now am fully oriented to Politics as Mission (#PaM: my hashtag as appears in social media platforms).

Few years back, I had an opportunity to visit two of the United Sates' colleges; Wheaton College in Illinois and North Park University in Chicago, was given chance to share about Politics as Mission (#PaM) as to be the most considered mission field. I believe, the Church must not go into political ground and stretch herself into party-politics, rather the pulpit must stay away from the 'dirty political plots', but church should not also stay insensitive of the worst development that politics is leading. I invite you, let us stand together to contribute the best for the most unreached sector, which obviously has become the politics and government, which has become the most difficult sector to reach. the Evangelical Christians must rethink, where we have lost our passion for sharing the good news to the needy ones, offering an act of benevolence to the poor and needy, and discipling them who surrender their lives to the Lord.

I encountered the fact that the most growing number of people in the Western world are getting away from the religion! Many Christian homes are now full of nonreligious people. Many church buildings are now no more the worship centers as they were before. The Christendom is losing Christ from every spare of society. Our country today experiencing the great famine of ethically upright and God-loving leaders. God's most beautiful Creation, the earth has become the challenging place to live for a genuine Christ's follower, there is no ethical standard maintained in marketplaces, in workplaces, and in some extent even in the Church. We may all agree that no good is being done in the world, everything is getting worst indeed. Yet, we must accept as true that once we correct the nature, culture or character of politics, and realign the ethical leadership efforts, God-fearing, self-giving and committed to serve people into the political leadership, rest will be corrected quickly as possible. Thus, I am passionate to bring into dialogue and build the morale up of those who are stepping in the field. Therefore, shall not we take initiative, a leap of faith and start the value-based political leadership in our place?

For me, we are working in good pace in the political endeavor, which we call 'Politics as Mission.' This will invite you to interact with the people around and search the ways on how being involved in the politics would really contribute towards the transformation of a country. Honestly, we are not supposed to engage in this field for any other gain but to contribute towards God's mission as we say, and to initiate for the establishment of democratic norms and transformation through welfare efforts and integral development.

The reason I am sharing this concern is to ask for your favor on this movement, so we together could make it a global spectrum. Let our small efforts inspire the 'Christian' political actors that they may be encouraged, trained, coached or mentored. Hoping that this idea can be explored further, I am looking for genuine Christ-loving political leaders to stand with. Are you the one? Or do you know someone in your reach who can be a co-laborer to us? Let us be united, contribute what we together could take the lead, so we would have the success stories to tell the world that we are getting into fulfillments of the Creation Mandate of God that Man and woman should subdue, domain and rule over the creation (Gen 1:28).

I sensed strong calling to move into politics so could contribute ethics and values into this arena. For my conviction, it starts from the very first desire of the Creator God for people. He expressed that desire through our first parents, Adam and Eve. After creating them as couple, He blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). God mandated them (the humanity, the crown of His creation) to 'rule over everything!' My observation is that us, the church should be subduing and ruling over everything as the legacy bearers of the first human couple.

Yet need to be clear that 'ruling over something' is not what we see in the worldly human affairs. We should admit that Jesus' model to subdue and rule is not correctly understood and exercised by His followers. Do not take me wrong, but I am more than convinced that I am not trying to endorse the nowadays politics as it should go. But Jesus' model to rule and subdue must be demonstrated by every committed follower of Him through their lifestyle; their prayer, love, humility, forgiveness, benevolence and or the Christ-like characters. I firmly believe that once this lifestyle, commitment to the mandate of God into family, business and politics, His dream will come true. I also believe that we, as committed Christians only have that 'blessing' (ordination) to subdue and rule, God has not given that to anyone else. 

I have recently accomplished a post-graduate study in 'Christian Integral Mission' looking into this mandate and tried to compare 'Mission' with 'Development.' I have learned something that even the developed countries in some ways or others, were all founded on the ethics, values and leadership integrity. They flourished not because of human efforts, knowledge and invention of technology alone, but because of God's 'blessing'. Now, what happened to the so-called Christendom today? In my firm opinion, we need a power or authority to rule over, and the source of that power comes from three different domains: Ethics, Economics and Politics. We must acknowledge that the Western Christendom is failing away because the ethics or morality (having a sense of omnipresence God now over us) is totally deserted. Yes, the ethics we are talking is now restricted even from the public affairs, and having absence of ethics, the economics and political powers married together. What we see now that they are producing their unholy upsprings – crime and corruption, tyranny and terrorism, filthiness and fallenness we encounter everywhere!

Let me put it this way, I am burdened to try bringing back the ethics – the morality back into politics and business. If God-fearing leaders take hold into economics and politics, I believe that God-given journey of humanity on this earthly life will go perfectly, and the journey from jungle (Garden of Eden) to an overwhelmingly prospered city (Jerusalem) will go so well. 

I am also serving into education. Have same passion to work on. I wish one day all committed Christians will take the mandate back, so I am trying to do something small in this small country. I am raising young like-mined committed Christians to rally with me, start with the demonstration of lifestyle as mentioned above, and take an ethical leadership wherever they are given a space. I am praying for an avenue where I would have time to sit with some learned fellows who would help designing this thesis into a curriculum for Christian Universities where political studies is taught. Besides this, if we could come up with a plan to establish network among the Christians into politics from all over the earth and have a new paradigm shift in the mission that our attempt would contribute to the vision of God that then 'every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord!