During Wednesday's CNN/YouTube GOP debate, the candidates were asked the following question by a YouTube user: ''The death penalty, what would Jesus do?'' The funniest answer came from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who after being pressed to say definitively whether or not Jesus would endorse the death penalty responded, ''Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office.'' (You can see the full answer here.) Despite the humor, however, what I liked about Huckabee's answer was his refusal to drag Jesus into a debate on public policy. This may have been political self-protection coming from a desire to not alienate voters, but I still think it is an approach more Christians should take in the political sphere.

The desire to use Jesus to defend our social and political positions seems to be a natural inclination. People on both sides of the political aisle claim America's founding fathers would defend their position on various issues. In the Western Thought class I am teaching, we are reading about how the various communist governments have all claimed that theirs is the version of communism that Karl Marx envisioned. I do not necessarily see anything wrong with trying to infer someone's opinion on an issue he did not directly address.

Although I find this tactic unoffensive when used with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx or any other historical figure, I do think it can be dangerous when dealing with Jesus. For one thing, I do not think that the purpose of Jesus' incarnation was to confirm or deny the validity of capital punishment or a particular stance on any other social/political issue that he never addressed in Scripture. By dragging Jesus into the debate on these issues, we associate him with our own position on these issues rather than with the redemptive sacrifice he paid and the salvation that it gives. As Christians, we should be seeking to give the world a true pictures of Jesus, not one where we dress him up as a Conservative, Liberal or anything in between. If the Gospels, as God's inspired and preserved word, do not tell us what Jesus believed on an issue, perhaps we were not meant to know.

Secondly, I cannot help but feel that when we associate Jesus with a position he never took, we are putting words into his mouth and adding to Scripture. This may not be our intent, and we may even say that Jesus never directly said these words, but it is not an illogical leap to make that association. We claim that Jesus is God Incarnate, perfect, infallible, and inerrant. If we say that Jesus would agree with the death penalty or any other issue, we are saying that our position is the divine one. Even if we are correct, if Jesus himself never made the claim, should we be making it for him?

I do not think, however, that Jesus' message was completely apolitical. Jesus and the apostles did not shy away from making controversial statements on social issues in the New Testament, whether it be about the poor, slavery, or the status of women. The message of the gospel and the reconciliation it brings has radical consequences that did not always conform to social mores of the time. I just question whether we should be making political statements and claims for them that were never recorded.