Steady As She Goes: Faithful Politics Across a Lifetime

MarsCast | Episode 4 of 4 | Political Exhaustion and the Church

Jared Luttjeboer: Welcome to the final episode in our four-part series on political exhaustion and the church. I'm Jared Luttjeboer, and this is MarsCast, the official podcast of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. Over the past three episodes, we've examined the pastoral challenges of leading divided churches, diagnosed the theological roots of political exhaustion, and explored what proactive political discipleship looks like. Well, today we're looking at the long game — how to sustain faithful presence across decades rather than just news cycles.

Joining me once again is Dr. Alan Strange, president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary.

Historical Perspective: This Moment Is Not Unprecedented

Jared: Dr. Strange, in this final episode, I want to start by talking about historical perspective. Not going to disclose your age or anything, but you've lived through multiple eras of American political crisis — the rebellion of the 60s, the counterculture of the 70s, the culture wars of the 80s and 90s, post-9/11 anxiety, and now our current moment. And I think every generation seems to believe that its political moment is uniquely catastrophic and unprecedented. How often do we hear that this upcoming election is the most significant election of our lifetime?

What historical perspective can you offer Christians who feel like this moment is uniquely catastrophic? How do we maintain appropriate urgency about genuine issues of justice without succumbing to apocalyptic despair about every election cycle? And maybe tell our listeners what your lived experience teaches you about God's faithfulness across political seasons.

Dr. Alan Strange: Well, you're quite right, Jared, that we need but often lack historical perspective — both in this country and the broader world. And yes, I've lived through, I guess if you were to go back — you were trying to be nice — but really the churning rebellion of the 60s. I was young, but the counterculture of the 70s I remember quite well. I had an uncle who was in business and had a remarkable collection of the most extraordinarily wide ties I've ever seen. You could land airplanes on them.

But in terms of historical perspective, I've mentioned what Truman is doing and looking back to the early church. But let's just say this about the early church. We often don't think sufficiently about the sort of world that the early church came into. And this isn't something just historians talk about — very much New Testament scholars talk about this. I know Dr. Mininger talks a lot about this. What was the world into which the gospel came, into which our Lord Jesus Christ came?

And if we look back at that early church, we'll see — particularly in terms of violence and no respect for life — you can think about the Roman games. You can think about babies left exposed. Christians would often adopt. Think about the sexual immorality. There were same-sex relations. There was pederasty, pedophilia. Women were widely abused. Slavery was about the general mark in the Roman Empire — say, for a second-century Roman Empire, slavery was about 40% of the whole population. And one of the most significant things about it was the abuse of women who were slaves — the sexual abuse and other sorts of abuse.

It wasn't racial slavery. That's why we've talked about this elsewhere. When racial slavery came and was reintroduced, it was such a terrible thing that the church didn't always — as much as it should have — oppose it, because in the ancient world, the view of the church, particularly about sexual ethics, was one of the things that ultimately — Kyle Harper talks about this in two books — really drove slavery out of the ancient world, was the Christian view and position on this.

In terms of American history — we don't know a lot about this. We don't know our world history. We don't know our American history. Political discourse — I've heard people say, "Wow, can you believe our political discourse now?" It was really quite crude and rough in the 19th century. I mean, Andrew Jackson — the First Presbyterian, he became an evangelical, I believe — but he shot a man or two over insulting his wife. So I mean, these were rough times, particularly leading up to the U.S. Civil War. If you look at what went on in the 1840s and especially in the 1850s, very, very politically bloody and rough.

Yes, some unique things have happened in our times, even more recently — say, regarding Obergefell, the notion that those of the same sex can marry. That is revolutionary. And the whole broader gender confusion crisis is also something that — I'm not saying that nobody was going around saying when I was a kid, "I'm a man in a woman's body," but I certainly didn't know anything about it. And it wasn't a very popular kind of thing. Those things have come upon us. No question. The sort of thing Truman is talking about in his book.

But as I say, is there some pull away from this? We can be thankful. I mean, a good part of my life, we labored under Roe v. Wade, which said the Constitution of the United States provides protection for a woman's right to have an abortion. And the decision refuting that and bringing that down basically said the Constitution contains no such statement, no such guarantee. That's a good thing. We need to work to end the scourge of abortion, to be sure.

But what's going on right now is pretty complicated. And the notion that things are just terrible and they're going to stay terrible and get more and more terrible somewhat elides or misses the fact that throughout history you've had these ups and downs and you've had some pretty bad stuff — though I admit we have some unprecedented stuff right now.

The Media Problem: Chicken Little and the Perpetual Emergency

Jared: And I think as we talk about this, political exhaustion often comes from treating every cultural moment as a sort of five-alarm fire — every news cycle as a battle for civilization. As I'd said before, "every election is the most important in history." And I think this creates a kind of perpetual emergency that's just simply unsustainable. People burn out, check out, or become so cynical they can't recognize actual crises when they arrive. So how do we help Christians — especially younger believers who've grown up in constant crisis mode, who've never known a "normal" political season — how do we help them develop the patience and perspective that's needed for seasonal cultural engagement that spans decades and not just chaotic news cycles?

Dr. Strange: Well, you yourself are very much in the question. Implicit in the question, I think, is no small part of the answer. Because what you were just describing — you said "chaotic news cycles" — indicates that this kind of continual ongoing catastrophe, this catastrophic approach to life and view of life, is very much driven by the media. It's driven by the media, including all of our own social media. So, do I mean the mainstream media? Yes, I do. Do I mean all of our media — Facebook, X, all of that? Yes. It all has this breathless quality to it, as if we're always on the precipice, in danger of crashing down to the rocks below.

I also call this sometimes a Chicken Little mentality. The sky is falling. Remember, Chicken Little is going around saying the sky is falling. Well, that's very much what we see in all the media today. There's always a news alert — we're getting it — and it's not really that big of a thing. You know, some famous celebrity missed their hair appointment or something. News alert.

This Chicken Little mentality is pervasive in the mainstream media. Why? It's all in heavy competition for your attention and advertising dollars. That's what's going on here. They want your attention. And the reason they want your attention is they want your advertising dollars.

"So you're saying a lot of the apparent despair and all of this — this is all about money?"

Yes. Just like what I was talking about — my inbox says we're going to have a bear market with the stock market, and here's the remedy, and I can find it out if I will pay this person some money. So that's a lot of what it's about. And it's in their interest — it's in the interest of media broadly — to sensationalize everything.

Can you say clickbait? Because so much vies for the attention of viewers and listeners. I mean, we used to have CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS. We used to have the three majors and public. We have so many channels now. As my wife and I like to say, we go into a hotel room and you go up and down so many channels and still nothing to watch. You have that, and then just what's all on the internet — it's just endless.

Even the weather, in a way that it wasn't when I was a child, is sensationalized. "Snowpocalypse is about to occur." We've had, in this area — we do get snow here, we're in the Chicago area — but there have been times when they're calling for like a foot or a foot and a half, and in the last several years sometimes you get virtually nothing. Or you get it, and sometimes you get 8 or 10 inches, but you can handle it. It's not like our lovely friends in the Carolinas and those sorts of places who can't quite handle it.

What's the solution? We need to unplug from this. We need to certainly take a Sabbath — we have a weekly Sabbath, right? So we need to have that. We need to have a fast, I would say in some measure, from these things of the world, from this kind of media. Take a longer Sabbath. I mean, we talk about sabbaticals as academics — six months.

I'm not saying unplug entirely. But here's what I'm saying: do unplug if you're unduly worried about this. I've talked about parishioners, Jared, who are just very worked up — worked up about the state of the world. And I say, how much time have you been listening? Tell me what you've been listening to. Tell me what you've been watching. Have you been in the Word? Have you been listening to things on Sermon Audio, for example? Here's a better way to do this.

Advertising itself is inimical to — I've learned whatsoever state I'm in, therein to be content — because advertisers don't want us to be content. They want us to be discontent until we buy their product. That's the whole point of it. And this discontent bleeds over into everything, particularly politics.

We have to stop living in perpetual anger. It has not, nor ever will, accomplish the righteousness of God. James 1 says the wrath of man — the anger of man — does not work the righteousness of God. And then stay with James — I've been having a study in it at Table Talk. It's having a great study in it. Maybe you're following that. Chris Larson will maybe give me some kind of kudos for this. But go over to James 3. I've been reading about that and very, very convicted. The online use of the tongue — which is speech. So the tongue means speech. That was an oral culture; we're in an oral culture, a video culture, a written culture. So don't think when it's saying "the tongue" it's not talking about how you talk on the internet. The tongue means how you talk — whether it's oral, whether it's written. And we need to live as Christians and stop living like somewhat religious pagans.

A Sustainable Rhythm for the Ordinary Believer

Jared: I think we should end with a very practical question — where the ordinary Christian is at. Let's not focus on the pastor who has to engage these issues vocationally. Let's not look at the political activist who thrives on constant engagement, nor the person with the theological training who can parse every controversy. Let's land here on the average believer in the pew, who wants to be faithful but is genuinely exhausted. They have jobs. They have families. They've got church commitments. They've got neighbors to love. What does a sustainable rhythm of political engagement actually look like for them?

Dr. Strange: Well, I love this question — all of your questions, actually; they've been great. But this puts me in mind a bit of my address from Psalm 27 when I came into the interim presidency back in September of '24. This was before I since came into the presidency without any qualifiers.

Well, in that address from Psalm 27 — and I know many of you probably have that as a favorite, and it should be — I spoke of the "steady as she goes" sort of mentality. That's the way I was taking Psalm 27: steady as she goes, which is the way the steersman of a ship — you know, that's an order to the steersman. Steady as she goes. The captain, or whoever the officer of the deck is, gives that order. That's the sort of mentality that I think should guide us in the Christian life — not a "look how bad things are" mindset. We often — many, many of us Christians — go around with a "look how bad things are" mindset that causes us to set our hair on fire.

But the "Keep Calm and Carry On" ethos expressed on the rediscovered, never-issued British World War Two posters — you may be familiar with those, Keep Calm and Carry On — I think well expresses the "steady as she goes" mentality. We need to remember that this passing world is just that: it's passing, including our politics. All of our politics, which are at best penultimate. Even if we've got good policies being enacted, they're not ultimate. They have to do with this world, not the world to come. And there's a fire that's going to come and consume this place, and we're going to have a new world, a renewed world.

Any sort of political, mental, or emotional exhaustion — and I think that's what we've been talking about here: physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, emotional exhaustion, including political exhaustion — all that goes together. All of that can lead to what we call burnout. That should be met with the resources of the gospel.

Psalm 73 is a great one to look to as well. What do we see there when we're distressed? We see the psalmist distressed at how much wickedness appears to be prospering. Why are the wicked prospering? The psalmist cries out, and he admits he comes close to losing his faith. He doesn't know how to deal with this. Where does he get renewed? When he comes into the presence of God. For the psalmist, he comes into the temple and he comes into the presence of God. And for us — how do we come into the presence of God?

Well, we come into the presence of God through a rich use of the ordinary means of grace. The Word, particularly its preaching. The sacraments. And as a Presbyterian, I'd happily say prayer — in all of the expressions of these things. The public expression, certainly what we enjoy in public worship — we need to be getting the most out of public worship. We need to be regularly in it and getting the most out of it.

Westminster talks about private worship, which is family worship — what goes on in our families where we get together and read the Bible and pray and sing. And then secret worship, and that's when we ourselves are studying the Word, reading materials, coming in prayer, making our desires known to God. That's prayer — the outbreathing of the soul to God.

These things are vital. We're renewed when we come into the presence of God through the ordinary means of grace in all of their expressions — public, private, and secret. "Seek first his kingdom," Jesus said, "and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." That's what we need to be doing. Again, that's back to the Sermon on the Mount. But that's so instructive for us in how we're to live now in this age.

It's only a rich spiritual life of communion with God and each other as members of his mystical body — that means those in the church — it's only by walking with him day in and day out that we can keep calm and carry on, steady as she goes, into all the storms of life.

Again, that ends the Sermon on the Mount, right? Jesus talks about a house built on a rock and a house built on sand. Well, the house built on the rock may be quite a modest house. Many of our houses are very modest, and they stand. They withstand the storms of life because they're built and solidly founded on that rock. They're not built on sand.

All false systems — all false belief systems. I mean, Marxism, Freudianism, Nietzscheanism — you think of those great systems of unbelief that were particularly developed in the 19th century into the 20th century. These are grand, often grand edifices. They're remarkable. They're quite more impressive than our little houses on the rock, but they're built on sand and they will not last. The storms that come will bring them down, but we will withstand all the storms of life, including the political vagaries of this world, until we enter the next — which has already been inaugurated, right? We are already — the kingdom has already been inaugurated. The kingdom has come, but it's not yet been consummated. And it will be consummated only at the coming of our Lord.

Thus, throughout this age we cry, Come quickly, Lord Jesus! What do we look for? We look for Christ to return. We don't look for us to build a utopia here. We labor as we can, we gather into the kingdom. But we don't seek that this world is ultimate. We're building for the next world, and we ought to be faithful, and we ought to be following after him. But we do pray and cry: Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

The challenges ahead are real, but so is the sovereignty of God, who rules over all earthly kingdoms. May our prayer be that those who belong to Christ find their identity first in his kingdom, that they would seek the welfare of their cities with patience and hope, and that the church would be a place where people are formed for faithful witness that outlasts any election cycle.

This concludes our four-part series on political exhaustion and the church. Thank you for listening to MarsCast, the official podcast of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. If you've enjoyed this series, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others.