Dealing with the Political and the Religious Spirit

Two Forces That Quietly Wreck Everything

There is a moment in Mark's Gospel where Jesus gets into a boat with his disciples after a frustrating encounter with the Pharisees. The religious leaders had just demanded a miraculous sign from heaven, basically asking Jesus to prove who he was, despite having just witnessed him feed four thousand people with a handful of loaves. Jesus refused. He got into the boat and left.

On the water, with only one loaf of bread between them, the disciples started worrying about food. They had completely missed the point. And so Jesus gave them a warning that was about far more than bread: "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."

Leaven. Yeast. The thing that gets into dough and works its way through everything. Jesus was not talking about baking. He was talking about two invisible forces that have a way of corrupting everything they touch: the religious spirit and the political spirit.

What a Religious Spirit Looks Like

The Pharisees were the religious elite of their day. Teachers of the law. Guardians of orthodoxy. And they had turned something meant to bring life into a system of control.

A religious spirit, as described in this talk, is more concerned with appearances than with the heart. It wants to be seen doing the right thing, even when the motivation behind it is hollow. It creates an us-and-them culture where "we" are doing it properly and "they" are getting it wrong.

"A religious spirit allows us to assign motives to other people's actions. It allows us to judge the intents of their heart."

Perhaps the sharpest observation was this: "It allows us to judge ourselves by our intentions, but other people by their actions."

Read that again. We give ourselves credit for meaning well, even when our behaviour falls short. But when someone else falls short, we judge them solely on what they did, not on what they meant. The result is that we end up "spiritualising our own dysfunction rather than owning our own brokenness."

It is a subtle thing. Nobody sets out to develop a religious spirit. It creeps in. Like leaven.

What a Political Spirit Looks Like

The Sadducees and the Herodians were the political operators of Jesus's day. They were religious in name but political in practice, more interested in power than in truth. And the spirit they carried has not gone away.

A political spirit always needs an enemy. It is more concerned with winning than with solving problems. It does not just disagree with opponents; it demonises them. "It is not just that someone might be wrong. A political spirit will cause somebody to say they are evil."

It reduces complex issues to partisan opinions. It is not interested in practical wisdom. Winning is what matters, and winning is measured by popularity, by being liked, by having the numbers on your side.

"A political spirit creates a culture where we do not have permission to make our own decisions. It is decision by affiliation. If you are one of us, then you must think this way."

And here is one of the clearest diagnostic tests: a political spirit cannot acknowledge the positive accomplishments of anyone on the other side. Ever. There is no generosity, no nuance, no willingness to say "they got that right." Because to concede anything to the opposition feels like losing.

Why Jesus Warned About Both

It is worth noting that Jesus did not warn against one of these and embrace the other. He did not say the religious spirit is the dangerous one, but a bit of political savvy is fine. He put them side by side. Beware of both.

Both create division. Both prioritise being right over being loving. Both operate through a kind of tribal thinking that sorts people into categories and then treats those categories as more real than the actual people in them.

And both work like yeast. They do not announce themselves. They get into the culture of a church, a family, a friendship group, a workplace, and they quietly corrupt everything from the inside out.

"That political spirit is insidious, and we need to, as the church, be really careful not to allow that to influence us."

The Disciples Who Missed the Point

The darkly comic backdrop to this whole teaching is the disciples sitting in a boat, having just witnessed Jesus feed thousands of people from almost nothing, panicking because they only have one loaf of bread.

Jesus's response is exasperated: "Do you not see or understand? Do you not remember? When I broke five loaves for five thousand, how many baskets did you pick up? Twelve. When I broke seven for four thousand, how many baskets? Seven. Do you not understand yet?"

They had seen the provision. They had participated in it. They had literally collected the leftovers. And still they could not connect what had happened before with what was happening now.

"One loaf with Jesus is enough."

That line from the talk cuts through the anxiety that so many people carry. The fear that there will not be enough, that God will not come through this time, that past provision was a one-off and cannot be relied upon. Jesus is essentially saying: have you already forgotten?

The Blind Man Who Saw in Stages

Immediately after this exchange, Jesus heals a blind man in a way that is unique in the Gospels. He does it in two stages. After the first touch, the man says, "I see men, but they look like trees walking around." His sight was partially restored. Then Jesus touched his eyes again, and he saw everything clearly.

There is something deliberate about this being placed right after the disciples' failure to understand. They, too, were seeing but not clearly. They had partial vision. They could see the miracles but could not grasp what they meant. The healing of the blind man is almost a parable of what the disciples needed: a second touch, a deeper understanding, clarity that comes in stages rather than all at once.

The Exercise That Changes Perspective

The talk closed with a practical challenge. Take a piece of paper. At the top, write down what you need God to do right now. The specific thing. The financial pressure, the health concern, the relationship that is falling apart, the situation that feels impossible.

Then at the bottom of the same page, write down every time God has turned up and done something you could not have done yourself. Every provision. Every answered prayer. Every moment where things should have gone wrong but did not.

"It will encourage you and it encourages us into remembering that God can do it and he will do it. It is not about the size of your faith. It is about putting your faith in the fire and leaving it there."

The word Jesus used for "littleness" of faith is better translated as "briefness." The problem was not that the disciples' faith was too small. It was that they did not sustain it long enough. They lit the fire and then pulled it straight back out.

Something to Consider

The religious spirit and the political spirit are not just ancient problems. They are alive and well in churches, in workplaces, in families, and on social media. They show up whenever we start caring more about being right than about being kind, whenever we judge others by their actions while excusing ourselves by our intentions, whenever we need an enemy to feel like we belong to a group.

Jesus said to beware of both. Which one has been quietly working its way into your thinking?