The Word of God Doesn't Change Every Four Years ft. Michael Wear
Politics is doing great spiritual harm in many Americans' lives — and a big reason for that is that many of us are going to politics to get our spiritual needs met.
What does it look like to follow Jesus when the culture insists that everything depends on the next election? Michael Wear joins John for a conversation about politics, allegiance, and the slow work of keeping ultimate things ultimate. A former White House staffer who came to faith as a teenager in a Wegmans grocery store, Michael has spent his career arguing that Christian knowledge is not just privately meaningful but publicly useful, and that the church has handed political parties a power that was never theirs to hold. This is a conversation about anger, constituency, and why the word of God does not change every four years.
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About Michael Wear:
Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life, an organization he built around a 30-year vision to contend for the credibility of Christian resources for the public good. He previously served in the Obama White House, where as a young staffer he helped move the issue of human trafficking onto the president's agenda after connecting a senior advisor to the 60,000 students who had gathered at the Passion Conference in Atlanta to worship and give. He is also the author of Reclaiming Hope (2017). Michael came to faith as a teenager, shaped significantly by his sister's conversion and a conversation on the Romans road in the middle of a grocery store. He has said that coming to faith immediately raised a question for him: if this is true, what does it mean for the whole of life?
What this Conversation Explores:
- What Michael means by "Christian knowledge" and why he insists it is publicly available, not merely privately held
- Why Dallas Willard believed politics has a unique capacity to create a pseudo-reality, and what Christians lose when they forget it
- The danger of going to politics to get spiritual needs met, and what it feels like when the results of an election shift the color of the sky
- What MLK's famous quote about the law gets right and how both the left and the right misuse it
- Why Christians should not be so quick to desire a constituency, and what it means to remember who sent them
- Anger in political life: when it is signal, when it becomes sin, and the question every Christian should ask before indulging it
- How politics is actually a healthy arena for spiritual formation, and why the person who cannot be kind in a political disagreement should ask where else they are rationalizing their way out
Resources Mentioned:
- Reclaiming Hope — Michael Wear
- Exuberance: The Passion for Life — Kay Redfield Jamison
- Center for Christianity and Public Life — ccpubliclife.org
About Formation:
Formation is a podcast that explores the science and soul of spiritual formation. Each episode brings together the ancient wisdom of the contemplative tradition and the best of modern research. John Ortberg sits down with some of the most rigorous and honest thinkers working at the intersection of faith and human flourishing for extended, unhurried conversations about how we are being shaped. New episodes every other week, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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