As most of you know I used to be a liberal pagan. I was a cultural sheep, enslaved to the lies and the ways of the world, who thought Christianity and capitalism were two of the great enemies of human flourishing. And I still have some friends from those days of foolishness who still think like that. So this week when I posted something about the evils of Democratic Socialism, and the goodness of free markets, it sparked a debate with one of those old friends.
The debate turned into a long and thoughtful conversation about the nature of government, the failures of our nation, and what—if anything—can genuinely fix what’s broken in our society. We talked about healthcare, wages, government overreach, economic systems, and the moral state of our culture.
But the most important part of our discussion wasn’t about capitalism or socialism. It was about the gospel, and how no political system can heal a broken world, only Jesus can.
That’s a truth Christians must be clear on. Even the best government cannot cure the deepest wounds of our society. And even the worst government cannot stop a faithful church from advancing the Kingdom of Christ.
Below is the heart of that conversation—what Scripture teaches about power, society, and how God actually brings about change. It’s a little scattered because of some of the stuff my friend brought up, but I’ve tried to edit it to make it edifying for all.
The State Is Not the Savior—God Never Assigned It That Job
Scripture gives the civil government a narrow, specific calling:
“For he is God’s servant for your good… an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4).
Though the State should promote what is good and punish evil, ultimately the civil government exists to uphold justice—not to raise or educate children, not to run healthcare, not to replace charity, and not to manage every square inch of life.
Government is good in its lane. But when it wanders outside that lane, it harms the very people it claims to help.
Forced Charity Isn’t Compassion
Socialistic or centralized systems promise to care for the poor through forced redistribution. But forced generosity isn’t generosity—it’s theft and compulsion with nicer branding.
“God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).
Coerced “compassion” by way of theft (wealth redistribution) creates resentment, not love.
As Winston Churchill famously said, “The vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” And, “You can vote yourself into socialism, but you usually have to shoot your way out.”
The more power the State has, the less it ever wants to give back. That pattern is ancient, predictable, and universal. And given that the state and its poor leadership and unjust taxes, among other issues and injustices, are behind so many of the problems in this country, the last thing we should want to do is give them more power and more money. That’s like trying to extinguish a fire by throwing gasoline on it.
My friend did what the government often does these days, he sought to use empathy as a weapon by sharing the stories of people who have had a rough life because of poor decisions (a point they minimized) that led to poverty, illness, and the like. They use these stories to try to manipulate you into giving them whatever they want.
My friend shared multiple stories with me of how he thought our current government failed people, and yet he believed the solution was bigger government. But by God’s grace I think I was able to get him to see the flaw in his logic. He too had fallen victim to untethered empathy. Empathy can be good or bad, but when it isn’t tethered to the Truth it’s always bad. And the Truth in this situation clearly tells us that the government is to be small and limited, and to stay in its lane.
God Gave the Family—and the Church—the Responsibility of Care
According to Scripture, the primary safety net of any healthy society is the family.
“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8).
And when the family is exhausted or unable, the church steps in—not as a faceless institution, but as a community bound by love (1 Timothy 3:14-15, 5:3-16; Galatians 6:2; Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35; Luke 10:25-37; Romans 12:10-13; James 1:27; 2 Corinthians 8).
Throughout history, families, churches, neighbors, and local communities have always been the most effective, personal, and compassionate means of care. These are the places where real needs are actually known and meaningfully met. There’s a reason so many hospitals began with Christian roots, and why most early schools were founded by churches before the State absorbed them (stepping out of their lane). Christians have long understood that the ministries of education, health, and welfare belong first to the family; and that alongside Word and sacrament, the ministry of mercy belongs to the church—often requiring the church to come alongside and strengthen the family in its work. The ministry of justice, however, belongs to the State. When we hand our God-given responsibilities and jurisdictions over to the civil government, things inevitably go wrong. The institution that bears the power of the sword is not meant to nurture, educate, or heal. It is meant to uphold justice.
Personal, local, relational care succeeds where centralized power fails. But to be sure, one of the reasons we are in the mess we are in—where the state has gotten out of its lane and sought to take over the ministry of health, education, and welfare—is because the family and the church have often neglected their responsibilities. And this is something we must repent of.
We are required by God to give ourselves and our children a Christian education. I used to think I could let the public school—overseen by the government—do the bulk of generally educating my children, and then I could add in the Christian part. But that misses what a true Christian education is. And it forgets that education is not a part of the government’s calling.
To give ourselves and our children a Christian education means embracing the calling to be formed—heart, mind, imagination, and habits—under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Christian education is not a matter of adding a few religious elements to a secular model, but of immersing our households in the paideia of Christ—the very culture of heaven: a joyful, disciplined enculturation into a thoroughly Christian way of seeing and living in the world. It means training ourselves and out children to love what God loves, to think with wisdom, to labor with excellence, and to take faithful dominion in whatever God calls us and them to. Because all education is discipleship, Christian education intentionally shapes every subject, every practice, and every cultural expectation according to Scripture, using the classical tools of learning to cultivate sturdy, worshiping, culture-building Christians. In short, giving a Christian education means raising—and becoming—faithful subjects of King Jesus who can stand against the idols of the age and build Christ’s Kingdom in obedience, joy, and hope.
The government cannot rightly do this, nor should they be attempting to do so… Again, it’s out of their lane. And so it is with health and welfare as well. The household and the household of God should be faithfully leading and serving in these areas.
Christian Nationalism, Christ’s Kingship, and Where Our Hope Truly Lies
There’s a lot of talk these days about Christian Nationalism. And of course Christians should want all nations to be Christian. The Great Commission explicitly commands it:
“Make disciples of all nations… teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20).
We should want, vote for, and work towards Christian laws. We should want, vote for, and work towards righteous rulers. We should want and seek to recover/establish a nation that honors Christ.
But here’s the key: a Christian government doesn’t save us—it only gives us the freedom to pursue our true mission.
Our hope is not in a president, a party, a platform, or a political movement. Our hope is in a King.
Scripture says: “The government shall be upon His shoulders” (Isaiah 9:6).
And as the body of Christ, we are His shoulders.
Christ is the true ruler of the world right now. He is the only Leader who can truly save. And He is already making things new—through the faithfulness of His people. His righteous reign is present, active, and advancing in and through His people now.
His Kingdom grows slowly, quietly, steadily—until: “…the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). But as its does, as His people take every thought captive to obey Christ and seek to bring every area of life joyfully under the Lordship of Christ, through corporate worship as the church, and through life out in the world as the Kingdom of God, we advance God’s Law and God’s gospel, influencing and advancing out into the world—even the government—teaching all to obey all that Christ has commanded. As the church preaches and lives out true righteousness the government comes upon its shoulders so that it can rightly carry out its ministry of justice. After all, the people of God have the Word of God, and the Word of God is where the justice of God—true justice—is most clearly laid out.
This is not political triumphalism. This is the promise of God, and the results of faithfulness to God.
Everyday Faithfulness Is God’s Strategy for Transforming the World
Voting matters. Running for office matters. Good laws matter. But the greatest engine of cultural transformation has always been ordinary Christian faithfulness.
This is where the conversation with my friend became fruitful. He was overwhelmed by the size of the world’s problems—corruption, poverty, injustice, political chaos. Many people feel the same way today.
We’re drowning in information, outrage, and 24/7 reporting on every evil across the globe. And the result is paralysis, anxiety, and despair.
But what if God never intended us to carry the weight of every tragedy on earth? What if He intended us to carry only what is right in front of us?
We see all these major issues throughout the world and we think the problems of this world are too great for people like us to make any difference at all. But when I feel this way I remind myself of the words of Gandalf in The Hobbit, who said something profoundly biblical: “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
And I would add: In God’s hands, these small acts don’t just keep darkness at bay—by His grace, they overcome the darkness.
This is exactly how Jesus described the kingdom: a mustard seed growing into a great tree (Matthew 13:31–32); leaven working its way through dough (Matthew 13:33); a lamp shining in a dark room (Matthew 5:14–16)…
This is slow. This is ordinary. This is how God wins. Through local ordinary everyday faithfulness… Because there is no neutrality in this world—there is darkness and there is Light—every act of faithfulness, every thought, feeling, word, and deed, is either pushing back the darkness and taking ground for the Kingdom of Light, or else it is giving away ground. But in God’s world nothing is meaningless. Anything not done in faith is sin (Romans 14:23), but that means everything done in faith is righteousness, and thus a weapon in the hand of our Redeemer that displays and advances His cause and Kingdom.
The Crisis of Feelings-Based Christianity—and the Better Way of Following Jesus
As I told my friend the things above it became clear feelings were an issue. Not only was he feeling anxious and hopeless because of the issues throughout our land and the world, but he even associated Christianity with feelings. He assumed that Christianity is fundamentally about a feeling. Many believe the church is “not for everyone” because they never felt what they assumed Christians feel. They were told that Christianity is mainly about emotional uplift, spiritual sentiment, or that awful bumper-sticker theology: “Not perfect, just forgiven.”
My friend brought that last part up because he said he had family members who were awful people, yet claimed to be Christians, and when he would confront them about their behavior they would say, “I’m not perfect, I’m just forgiven…” Which made him want to reject Christianity all the more.
As you all know, I too I despise that phrase, not because forgiveness is small, but because the gospel is far bigger than mere forgiveness. In Christ we are not simply excused; we are united to Him, declared righteous in Him, and progressively made righteous through sanctification. The gospel restores us, remakes us, reorders our loves, reshapes our desires, and conforms us to Christ Himself. And so the gospel is indeed far bigger than mere forgiveness, and likewise far bigger than mere feelings. Reducing Christianity to mere forgiveness, or to a passing emotional experience is one of the great lies of modern evangelicalism, and it leaves people empty.
My friend told me he’s never had “that feeling” people talk about in church, but that he finds something like it when he plays guitar. Again, this is understandable in our current age. When churches trade truth for sentiment, doctrine for atmosphere, worship for entertainment, and covenant faithfulness for vague inspirationalism, people will eventually assume that Christianity is just one emotional option among many.
But Scripture never calls us to follow our heart. In fact, it explicitly warns us not to: “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). Instead, Scripture calls us to follow Christ—to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and obey Him (Matthew 16:24). Our emotions fluctuate like the weather. God’s Word does not. Our feelings are unstable. Christ is steady. When the Christian life is built on our emotional temperature, we will inevitably collapse into anxiety, instability, and confusion. But when it is built on Christ and His unchanging Word, we gain a foundation that cannot be shaken.
This is part of why the world is exhausted. People are tossed to and fro by their own emotions and by the emotional chaos of the age. Everything is subjective. Everything is expressive. Everything is about chasing an inner sensation that never lasts. But the Christian who anchors himself in God’s promises, trusts God’s sovereignty, and submits to God’s Truth will find a kind of peace and stability the world cannot manufacture.
And ironically, this is far more attractive to unbelievers than the feelings-based substitute we often present. People don’t need another emotional high. They need a King who reigns, a Word that stands, a covenant that holds, and a God who actually transforms lives. The answer is not to chase an emotional experience, but to root ourselves in obedience to Christ, participation in His church, and the ordinary means of grace He appointed. When we stop following our hearts and start following Jesus, our anxieties are quieted, our steps are steadied, and our lives become the kind of testimony that actually draws people out of the darkness and into the Kingdom.
Ultimately, Christianity is not a fleeting feeling—it is a new creation life lived under the Lordship of Christ. And when the church recovers that, the world will once again see a people who are stable, joyful, grounded, courageous, and transformed—not by emotions, but by the powerful Word and Spirit of the living God.
Focus on What’s in Front of You: That’s Where Change Happens
What if we trusted God’s Word over our feelings? What if we obeyed God’s Word regardless of how we feel? What if we simply sought to be faithful where we are? Instead of being crushed by the weight of national and global chaos, what if we focused on:
- the family God gave us
- the spouse beside us
- the children under our roof
- the neighbors next door
- our church community
- our city and county
- the people God placed directly in our lives
- the work He entrusted to our hands
Political action is good. Voting is good. Seeking justice is good. And even our feelings and emotions can be good. But those things don’t typically lead to lasting change. Change happens through Truth and discipline. And most often culture is changed from the bottom up, not the top down.
Most of us already have enough to deal with right in front of us.
We don’t need to carry the anxieties of the entire world on our shoulders.
If we will be faithful here, God will use that faithfulness there.
Little by little—inch by inch—God uses His people to do great things.
This is how the world is ultimately won for Christ.
Worship Is Warfare—the Engine of Cultural Transformation
Faithfulness begins with right worship of the triune God of the Bible. And this worship is transformational. This is one of the most important truths the modern church has forgotten: The world is changed through worship. Not entertainment. Not emotional atmospheres. Not vague spirituality. Not hype. But covenant renewal worship, week after week:
- Confession (humility)
- Consecration (holiness)
- Communion (unity and joy)
- Commission (mission and courage)
When the church gathers around Word and Table, Christ forms a new humanity—and sends us out to reshape the world.
Worship is not a retreat from cultural engagement. Worship is warfare. Worship is the starting point of cultural dominion.
Household Economies and Localism: Dominion Begins at Home
It’s been said that who our local Mayor and Sheriff is matters a lot more than who our President is. And there’s a lot of truth to that. Local faithfulness, faithfulness at home is what impacts us the most… And it’s where true impact begins. Transformation flows from the church to the household and works out from there.
A strong household:
- produces more than it consumes
- practices hospitality
- trains children in virtue
- serves the community
- worships together
- builds wealth and stability
- influences future generations
Godly families build godly neighborhoods. Godly neighborhoods build godly cities. Godly cities build godly nations. As I said earlier, most often culture is changed from the bottom up, not the top down; and so likewise dominion is not top-down, it is bottom-up.
Live the Change You Want to See in the World
Every Christian wants a better world. Every Christian wants justice, peace, stability, and righteousness in the land. But we cannot merely wish for it. We must live it.
Change begins with worship—where Christ forms us. It grows through families and friendships—where love is practiced. It spreads through service and hospitality—where neighbors are blessed. It advances through integrity at work, mercy in conflict, generosity to those in need, and joy in all circumstances.
This is the culture of Christ. This is how darkness is pushed back. This is how nations are discipled. This is how the Kingdom grows.
Ordinary faithfulness is God’s extraordinary strategy for transforming the world. And the future of God’s world is bright because Christ reigns. The world is not spiraling into inevitable ruin. The gospel is not losing. The nations are not slipping beyond Christ’s reach.
Again, Scripture promises, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). How much of the sea is covered by water?
All of it. That is the future of the world.
Christ’s Kingdom grows slowly, steadily, generationally—
through worship, obedience, households, churches, and ordinary saints.
So regardless of who is in the White House, our mission remains the same:
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Build and mend what is broken.
Strengthen what is weak.
Do justice.
Walk humbly.
Raise your children well.
Serve your community.
Worship faithfully.
Live joyfully.
These small things—done consistently—change everything. And Christ, the true King, will use them to fill the world with His glory. So may we embrace a life of ordinary faithfulness. And may God grant extraordinary results.
In Christ’s service and yours,
Nick Esch