Why I Talk About Politics (And Why You Should Too)

I've been getting a version of this question a lot lately.

Why are you writing about the war in Iran? Why comment on the left and the right? Isn't TSCP supposed to be about the gospel? Shouldn't you just stay in your lane?

Fair question. Let me answer it directly.

What This Ministry Is Actually For

TSCP exists for one reason: to equip Adventists to share Jesus with secular, post-church generations.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

And if you understand that mission — really understand it — then you understand exactly why I write about politics.

The World My Kids Are Growing Up In

When I was growing up, I knew nothing about politics.

The one political moment I can remember from my childhood is the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I heard the adults talking about it, registered that something dramatic was happening, and then went back to building Legos.

That was basically my entire political consciousness as a kid.

My children do not have that luxury.

My kids know the names of politicians. They know policies. They have opinions — real, informed opinions — on ecology, LGBTQ rights, housing, economics. Not because they went looking for it. Because it found them. It's in their feeds, their conversations, their classrooms, their futures.

They already know the housing market is out of reach. They know rent is astronomical. They know that a degree and a good job no longer guarantee anything. They see the war in Iran driving petrol prices through the roof and they understand — instinctively — that these things are connected. That politics shapes their lives whether they want it to or not.

They are interested. They are engaged. They want change.

So Let Me Be Plain

If you don't like talking about politics. If all you ever want to do is talk about religion in the abstract. If the mention of empire, or justice, or the left and the right makes you uncomfortable.

Then this is not the ministry for you.

Not because politics is more important than the gospel — but because the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself never pretended the gospel had nothing to say about the world people actually lived in.

The truth is, if we are going to reach emerging generations with the gospel, we need a prophetic imagination that enables us to show how the gospel reauthors the anxieties and complexities they actually care about. And that prophetic imagination is already in scripture, we just have to engage with it.

The Thing About Social Justice

I know some conservative Adventists bristle at this. They hate all this political talk and social justice mumbo-jumbo.

It's Marxist. It's communist. It's “woke.”

OK. Let's say all of that is true for a moment.

What's your alternative?

To ignore it? To side with the status-quo and corporate interests that have no stake in the flourishing of the marginalized? To simply refuse to engage while young people drown in a flood of political noise with no gospel anchor?

Or — here's a wild idea — what if we refused to play the game of left and right altogether. And we did the hard, necessary work of asking: what does justice look like when we see it through the sanctuary? Through the Sabbath? Through the character of Jesus and the values of his kingdom?

Because here's what happens when the church chooses silence. We literally tell young people: if you want answers about the real world, you're going to have to look somewhere else. We don't do that here.

And then we turn around and condemn them when they embrace “neo-Marxism” or “woke ideology” or whatever new version is floating around.

This is like seeing a young person drowning in a rip current. But instead of throwing a rope, we tell the young person “we don’t believe in ropes!”

And then along comes some dude we don’t like, throws them his rope, and then we yell at them for grabbing it because the dude who threw the rope is “bad”.

Not cool. Not cool at all.

The Way of Jesus.

This doesn't mean theology offers us a neat blueprint where we'll always agree on every issue. It also doesn't mean the church takes a political position on every policy debate.

But the way of Jesus gives us a posture. A set of values. A way of seeing.

It shows us how to love even when we disagree. How to live with compassion and kindness toward people whose politics look nothing like ours. And it names the real enemy — not those liberal globalists over there, not those conservative nationalists over there — but an oppressive power called sin that keeps humanity locked in an endless cycle of winners and losers, repackaging itself for every generation, designed to keep us playing its game and falling for its false promises over and over again.

That's a heavy thing to navigate. A complicated thing. Refusing to play the left/right game doesn't mean refusing to name evil. Jesus named Herod. The prophets named empire. The question isn't whether we speak — it's whether we speak as partisans or as prophets. And to speak as prophets requires centeredness, not outrage. Understanding, not vitriol. And yes — at times it requires speaking truth to real systems and real ideas that cause real harm. But to do so filled with the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of a system built, from the ground up, to perpetuate the cycles of domination. Because in the end, the kingdom of Jesus is just as uncomfortable for the progressive who thinks political revolution will save us as it is for the nationalist who thinks Christian dominance will. Because both are players in the very game the gospel invites us to walk away from.

What the Church Is Actually For

The church is not meant to be right-wing.

It's not meant to be left-wing.

It's meant to be an alternative community. A glimpse of the kingdom. A place of mutual servanthood, relational integrity, and other-centered love.

And in order to be that community — in order to walk differently in the world — we have to engage with the very real topics our young people are navigating. Not from a place of tribal loyalty to any political team. But through the lens of Jesus. His heart. His kingdom. His way.

This is why I do workshops on the sanctuary, on prophecy, on the gospel. There's one on the Sabbath coming soon too. Not because I have the answers to all of these complexities. But because we need to wrestle with our world and do it through the lens of God's heart as revealed in Jesus.

If we do that — if we take our young people seriously enough to actually go there with them — we can offer them something genuinely different. A different road. A good road. One of harmony, balance, and healing.

And in our current political climate defined by outrage, vilification, and even violence… I think a Christ-centred alternative is exactly what this generation needs.

Want to be part of this conversation? Download my free ebook "How to Study the Bible with Postmoderns” HERE and discover how to be the kind of Adventist community this generation needs.