This guide asks one uncomfortable question and gives you a way to answer it honestly: has your own faith quietly started to depend on political power to get what it wants? Dr. Marvin McMickle offers a test sharp enough to answer it. A faith that reaches for law, party or pressure to win what it could not win by witness has drifted from the gospel it claims to carry. The easy use of that test is to aim it at other people. This guide aims it at you.
You can work through it alone in about an hour, or with a group over one or two meetings. Bring paper. The opening exercise only works if you write before you read, so resist the urge to skim ahead.
Before you read anything: a two-column inventory
Draw a line down the middle of a page. On the left, write the four or five things you most want to see change in the world because you are a Christian. Be concrete. Write something like fewer kids in my city going hungry or people in my family coming to faith, not a better society.
On the right, beside each item, write how you are actually trying to bring it about. Do not write how you ought to be trying. Write what you have done in the last few months. Some entries might read praying for my cousin by name, volunteering at the pantry twice, or arguing about it online. Others might read voting for the candidate who promised it or nothing yet, just hoping.
Now mark each right-hand entry with one of three letters:
- W for witness: preaching, teaching, persuading, inviting, or living an example someone can see.
- S for service: something you did with your own hands, time or money for another person.
- P for power: something you are counting on a law, a party, an official or public pressure to accomplish.
Set the page aside. You will come back to it twice. A page full of P marks does not prove anything by itself, and a page with none does not make you safe. The point is to see where your hope is actually resting before anyone tells you where it should rest.
The test you are about to apply
In a Jude 3 Project conversation with Lisa Fields, McMickle defines an evangelical by five historic convictions: humanity is fallen, redemption comes through faith in Christ, Scripture is the authority for both claims, the gospel is meant for the whole world, and the government must not impose religion. The paired article walks through those five in detail. For this guide, the last two carry the weight.
The fourth conviction sends the message everywhere. Yet McMickle adds a limit in the same breath: “So whether folks say yes or no is up to them.” The church preaches. It does not secure agreement. The fifth conviction follows from that limit. If people must be free to say no, then the state cannot be enlisted to make them say yes. As McMickle puts it, “you cannot impose faith by political activity.”
From there he draws the line this whole guide turns on: “If you are trying to use the government to impose on society what you cannot win by witnessing,” you have left the historic meaning of the word behind. He describes the drift as a search for a stronger partner to accomplish what believers could not win “by preaching, by teaching, or by example.” He also notes the plain contrast with Jesus: “Jesus never tells us to imprison those who don’t believe.”
Look back at your three letters. McMickle’s three methods, preaching, teaching and example, correspond closely to your W and S marks. His warning is about the P column taking over the work the other two were supposed to do.
Read Luke 4:16-30 slowly
McMickle points to this passage when he describes what salvation is for. Read the whole scene, not only the famous verses. Jesus returns to Nazareth, where he grew up, stands in the synagogue and reads from Isaiah. Luke 4:18 records the reading: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Then, in Luke 4:21, Jesus says: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” After quoting the passage, McMickle says simply, “That’s the gospel.”
Before you interpret, observe. Answer these on paper:
- List every verb in verse 18. Who is the subject of each one?
- Who receives what Jesus brings? Write each group down separately.
- Read verses 25-27. Which outsiders does Jesus name, and who were they?
- Read verses 28-29. How does his hometown respond?
Two things stand out once you look closely. First, every verb belongs to Jesus or to the Spirit who anointed him. The mission is announced and carried out by the one sent, not secured by a ruling authority. Second, the people who knew him best grew furious when he said God’s favor had reached a widow outside Israel and a Syrian commander. The crowd wanted the good news to belong to them. That reaction is worth noticing in yourself, because the pull toward power often begins as the pull toward ownership.
A note on reading carefully: Luke 4 is narrative. It describes what Jesus announced about his own mission. Christians apply it to the church in different ways, and some emphasize its spiritual sense while others stress its material sense. You do not have to settle that debate to see what the passage puts at the center.
Read Matthew 25:31-46 for the surprise
McMickle’s second passage is the judgment of the sheep and the goats. “You are saved so that you can put Matthew 25, 31 to 44 into practice,” he says. The scene runs through verse 46. In Matthew 25:35-36 the King says: “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
Most readers stop at that list. Read on to the reactions. In Matthew 25:37 the righteous respond with a question: “Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” In verse 44 the others ask nearly the same thing, only to defend themselves.
This is the detail that matters most for an inventory. Neither group knew where it stood. The faithful did not recognize their own faithfulness, and the unfaithful were sure they would have helped if only they had seen him. Self-assessment, the passage suggests, is unreliable in both directions. That is why your inventory asks what you have done, not what you believe about yourself.
Two cautions keep the reading honest. Interpreters disagree about who “the least of these my brethren” in Matthew 25:40 refers to. Some read it as anyone in need. Others read it as Jesus’ followers, especially those suffering for their witness. Both readings still place mercy at the center of judgment. Also, the passage does not teach that serving the poor earns salvation. Jude 3 teaches that we are saved by grace through faith, and that works flow from salvation rather than earning it: grace is the root, obedience the fruit. McMickle frames it the same way when he asks, of salvation, “saved to do what?”
Test the test before you trust it
A careful reader will push back here, and should. Every law expresses someone’s moral judgment. If Christians may never support a law shaped by their convictions, they could not oppose injustice through public means either. Does McMickle’s test mean believers must leave public life?
No. McMickle’s target is narrower. His fifth conviction forbids the state from establishing a religion, compelling belief, or punishing people for not believing. A Christian citizen who argues for a law that protects a neighbor is doing something different from a Christian who wants the government to do the work of conversion. McMickle himself expects Christians to care about public questions. He criticizes values that shrink to two issues and asks, if those were resolved tomorrow, “Does the kingdom of God come the next day?” Poverty, homelessness, prison overcrowding and failing schools would still be there.
There is real disagreement about where the line falls. McMickle applies his principle to abortion and concludes the government should stay out. Jude 3 teaches that God forms both the woman and the child in the womb and that every human life, including the unborn, bears his image and worth, while refusing to demonize women who face that decision and calling the church to support them. Many faithful Christians see protecting the unborn as protecting a neighbor, not imposing a religion. You can hold McMickle’s test firmly and still disagree with some of his applications.
Also notice that McMickle aimed his criticism at one political coalition in one season. The temptation he describes belongs to no single party. Jude 3 teaches that our ultimate allegiance belongs to Christ and his kingdom, not to any party or politician. A believer on any side can start trusting a party to deliver what only witness and service can.
Return to your inventory now. For each P mark, ask two questions in writing:
- Is this a matter of protecting someone, or of making people live by beliefs they have not accepted?
- If this law passed tomorrow, what would still be left for me to do with my own hands?
Some P marks will survive both questions. Others will not. Leave both kinds on the page.
A listening exercise: what words are missing?
McMickle offers a second test that does not depend on any policy. Describing a political speech made to a large Christian gathering, he says “the word grace never crossed his lips,” and neither did forgiveness or the confession that all have sinned. A message can address Christians by name and contain none of their message.
Turn that test on your own speech. Over the next three days, pay attention to how you talk about faith and public life, in conversation, in messages and in anything you post or forward. Keep a simple tally of two things: how often you mention a political figure, party or issue, and how often you mention grace, forgiveness, sin, or Jesus himself. You are not grading your opinions. You are noticing which words your faith reaches for first when the subject is public life.
Lisa Fields describes the heart of the gospel as more than speech: “we’re not settling for just outward proclamation.” McMickle’s reply was that “you’ve gotta do both.” The tally checks the proclamation. The inventory checks the doing.
Questions for discussion or reflection
If you are leading a group, read the questions aloud and give people a minute of silence before anyone answers. No one should be asked to reveal their inventory, their voting habits or their party. Invite people to speak about patterns they noticed, and let anyone pass. If the conversation drifts toward criticizing people who are not in the room, bring it back by asking what the speaker noticed in their own columns.
- Which column on your inventory surprised you most, and what do you think explains it?
- In Luke 4, Jesus’ hometown turned on him when God’s favor reached outsiders. Where might you want the good news to stay with people like you?
- Matthew 25 shows both groups misjudging themselves. What would make your own self-assessment more trustworthy?
- McMickle says faith cannot be imposed by political activity. Where do you draw the line between protecting a neighbor and imposing a belief? Can you name a case where you are genuinely unsure?
- McMickle warns against trying to “take an ungodly approach to a godly solution.” Can a good goal be pursued by a method that undercuts it? Give an example from any side.
- What did your three-day word tally show you? Did it match what you expected?
- If every political outcome you hope for came true this year, what would still be left on your list for witness and service?
The practice for this week
Go back to your inventory one last time. Choose one item on the left whose right-hand entry carries only a P, or nothing at all. Write next to it one W or S action you can take within seven days. Keep it small enough to finish. Bring a meal to someone who is sick. Visit someone who is incarcerated or write to them. Have one honest conversation about Jesus with someone you have only ever argued politics with. Spend a Saturday morning where the hungry in your city are actually fed.
Write the action, the day and the person or place. Afterward, add one sentence about what changed, if anything, in how you think about that item. If you are in a group, people may tell the others what they did next time, but only if they want to.
The inventory will not tell you whether your politics are right. It can tell you something harder to see: whether your hope has moved from the gospel’s power to change people toward a different kind of power. The question to carry through the week is a short one. When you picture the thing you most want God to do in the world, whose hands do you picture doing it?