What were the politics of Jesus? Was he a liberal or a conservative? Would he be a Republican or a Democrat?

When certain religious leaders, who were trying to trap Jesus, asked whether they should pay taxes to Caesar, Jesus answered, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

People thought that when the Messiah came, he would overpower the Romans (the Kingdom of this world) and establish the Kingdom of God. However, Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world are fundamentally different.

When the church, the visible presence of the Kingdom of God on earth, took over the Kingdom of this world, we made a mess of both the world and the Kingdom of God. Christianity has a bad history because it started to wield the power of the sword.

However, the church is called to bring the Kingdom of God down to this world not by the power of the sword, but by the power of the cross, the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.