Yesterday, I was talking with some friends about “politics in the church.”

Here’s the deal… members of the church are monarchists. We are the living stones of the invisible castle/heavenly theocratic temple of Jesus of Nazareth. We are obsessed subjects of the Joyful/Laughing King described in Psalm 2. We are married to the Slain Lamb described in Revelation 5,12, and 17. Our ultimate citizenship is NOT embedded in any flimsy, fleeting, misty, vapor nation on earth.

We are like kids at a swimming pool in the middle of summer. Our pool is the “politics of Heaven” and the agenda of our Psalm 2 King, and we spend all day splashing, frolicing, getting rowdy, and soaking in in this paradoxical, prodigal, pool of the pauper King/paschal lamb. Meanwhile, the stiff, uptight, litigious politicians of earth stand on the edge calling us inside to do mundane household chores—sweep, fold laundry, do the dishes. But we linger in the Gospel pool as long as we possibly can until our fingers and toes are completely pruned.

When we finally do drag ourselves inside to join the political conversation, we bring the pool with us. Because we’re like kids who don’t dry off properly, we track Gospel water all over the clean floors. The self-important “grown-ups” in the room slip and fall in our puddles, and we leave soaking wet towels all over their pristine ideological furniture.

When Christians step into earthly political discourse, our contribution shouldn’t sound like everyone else’s partisan scripts. It ought to be annoyingly, unpredictably, and thoroughly saturated in the enigmatic ways of the King of Heaven.