Pop star Haddaway asked “What is love?” in a 1993 hit song. While not a theologian, Haddaway poses a question that has long occupied Bible scholars. What is love, and how God relates to it, are foundational issues for Christian living.
Christian life includes carefully considering our responsibility as citizens. Political involvement requires a clear, proper, and biblical understanding of both God and love. Deviation from scripture is dangerous and must be refuted, especially when engaging with influential “Christian” politicians.
One such politician is Texas’ U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico. His campaign website includes a section titled “Why I’m Running,” which states, “My grandad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas. He taught me that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor.” Talarico claims this perspective motivates his economic and political policies. But he misunderstands both God and love.
Talarico’s charming, soft-spoken nature attracts Christians in an age of political vitriol. His winsome communication style conveys his public policy goals and religious views. Sadly, these beliefs contradict God’s word.
Talarico, a current seminarian studying at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, part of the progressive Presbyterian Church (USA) denomination, fails to properly recognize the gospel’s exclusivity. His worldview rejects Christ as the only way to God.
In an interview with Ezra Klein, Talarico answered the question “Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions?” He declared, “I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth … and so I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe.”
This hardly comports with Christ’s words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6), or the Apostle John’s inspired declaration, “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).
Who is Christianity’s God? He is the world’s creator (Gen. 1:1) and the lawgiver (Ex. 20:1-17). He exists as one God in three persons (2 Cor. 13:14) and shows his love for fallen humanity by providing one clear path of salvation (Eph. 4:4-6). When people misunderstand or reject the one true God, they depart from the biblical practice of love. Unfortunately, Talarico’s misunderstanding of God leads him to advance anti-biblical policies based on an errant conception of love.
Unfortunately, Talarico’s misunderstanding of God leads him to advance anti-biblical policies based on an errant conception of love.
The Bible connects God with love in the closest way: “God is love” (1 John 4:8b). If we misunderstand God, we misconstrue love. Therein lies Talarico’s greatest weakness as a public figure.
Talarico sees government as a force of love, while scripture sees it as God’s instrument of justice. Talarico looks to the law to coerce “love.” The Bible, however, presents the church as the noncoercive vehicle that reveals God’s love in the world.
Conflating love and justice divides Talarico’s faith from biblical Christianity. In an MS NOW interview, and echoed in his primary victory speech, Talarico proclaimed, “We have a moral imperative to win this race in November because if we don’t win, we can’t help people,” and “I am trying to love my neighbor through public policy.”
First, people do not serve others primarily through government. It is simply not true that helping others requires political power. The church shows God’s love for others through voluntary, sacrificial giving (Acts 2, 4).
Did Jesus command the Roman authorities to “love” citizens? Did the “barefoot rabbi” demand that Roman leaders redistribute wealth to help people? No. Rather, the New Testament clearly reveals a limited, justice-centered role for the state (Rom. 13:1-7). God tasks the church with loving others (Rom. 13:8-10).
Second, loving one’s neighbor entails calling the state to focus on justice. Pain and suffering results when the government forsakes its justice mandate to pursue supposedly benevolent ends. In his Aspects of Christian Social Ethics, Baptist theologian Carl F. H. Henry wrote, “The use of political compulsion to regenerate society is alien both to American political traditions and to the Protestant religious heritage.”
Talarico’s policy goals like Medicare for all or instituting universal early childhood education, go beyond the government’s biblically defined role. Such welfare programs constitute government-coerced wealth transfers. This damages people, including trampling their property rights rooted in scripture (Ex. 20:15, Lev. 25:10, Deut. 19:14).
Henry recognized the danger of viewing coerced wealth transfers as a form of love, writing,
The weakness in such theories, that urge a political order enabling citizens ‘to seek the fulfillment of their natures and purposes’ under government welfare programs, lies in their failure to discern that to transcend justice in society is actually to substitute injustice—in the name of love or benevolence—for justice itself. Such is the accomplishment of legislation that maintains the interest of one section of the populace against those of another section.
Talarico and his supporters should take note that Biblical love does not pursue legal plunder. Proper worship of the Triune God empowers the heart for true love of neighbor. God’s sacrificial love for us forms the template (John 3:16). It means freely giving one’s own resources to help others, not forcibly taking and redistributing your neighbors’ property via taxation.
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