At this point
Proverbs 14.34 is usually invoked to contradict what I’ve said….
Righteousness
exalts a nation,
But sin is a reproach to any people.
But sin is a reproach to any people.
Is righteousness something that can be attained
through civil legislation and the establishment of a political order?
What is government for? From Genesis 9 and Romans 13 I
would argue government is about punitive violence, forced outward conformity.
It has nothing to do with righteousness.
Proverbs 14.34 applied to a nation today has nothing
to do with voting Republican. It’s about the ‘hearts’ of the citizenry. Look at
the categories…righteousness and sin.
How is it that Christians have somehow turned this
into something political? The righteousness of a nation’s people comes from the
heart not the legislature or the judicial bench.[ii]
Sacralism tends to do that to everything. Everything
becomes a political question.
Sometimes the Bible does use terms like Righteous and
Blameless in what we might call a horizontal or an outward sense. These terms
are used not in relation to man’s standing with God, but in terms of an outward
conformity….action, not the heart.
In that sense, a nation full of redeemed hearts
seeking Righteousness will be exalted vis-à-vis the world. But isn’t it
interesting that exalted is almost always read in terms of power and success?… Sacralism’s
latent prosperity gospel.
According to Sacralist wisdom, an obedient/righteous
culture means civilizational progress. If you’re culture is in a downgrade,
then the Church is failing in its mission. This is highly problematic both in
terms of theology and history. There have been numerous occasions when the
Church I would argue was quite strong, but the civilization it inhabited was in
the midst of dissolution and chaos.[iii]
What if exalted means…praised for kindness and
altruism? What if it implies respect, not because it imposes the death penalty,
but because it exhibits wisdom and kindness, cares for its weak and needy?
Considering the fact that the Bible speaks of ‘riches’
and ‘treasures’ in spiritual terms, being laid up in heaven, how do we know the
Proverb isn’t refer to eschatological exaltation? Perhaps that’s not its scope.
I’m not sure, but it seems to me that much is read into such passages, that if
pondered for a moment isn’t quite there.
No one ever talks this way. And the Righteousness the
Sacralist looks for seems to always be in terms of culture war. But if that
whole way of thinking is wrong, then perhaps we should approach Proverbs 14 in
a different way. Perhaps I have not properly grasped its profundity, but I
guarantee the Sacralists have not either and are reading in their own presuppositions.
Even taking the verse in a standalone sense does not imply what they think it
implies.[iv]
What about Romans 13? In closing I wish to look
briefly at the pertinent passage.
Let every
soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except
from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the
ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to
evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you
will have praise from the same. 4 For
he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he
does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute
wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore
you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’
sake. 6 For because of this you also
pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very
thing. 7 Render therefore to all their
due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom
fear, honor to whom honor.
I’m not going to launch into a
full commentary at this point. But I wish to point out that American Sacralists
have a big problem with verses 1 and 2 and could certainly be charged with
ignoring the Apostle’s exhortation and rejecting the dictates of Providence.
Why is Obama the president? They seem to have forgotten, that whether he’s
right or wrong, good or evil….God has placed him there.
Verse 3 is a simple statement,
a general principle regarding the political structure of the government. What I
mean is Paul is not saying that government is to be structured by Christians to
delineate what is ‘good’, legislate it, and enforce it with violence.
No, he wrote this while Nero
was the Emperor of Rome. He’s talking in general terms, not specifics.[v]
How is the government a ‘servant’
a ‘minister’ to us for good?
By promoting faith-based
programs? No. Read the verse. He’s a minister in the context of one thing….
The threat of violence which
keeps fallen man from turning into animals and destroying each other.
That’s about it. How the
magistrate does this…how it keeps the peace, whether it be through Feudalism,
Dictatorship, Democracy, or a Republic is not the issue. Whether the state
exercises economic power though socialism, free market capitalism,
collectivism, or central planning has nothing to do with what Paul is talking
about.
We have things to say about all
these systems, but that’s not the essence of what Romans 13 is all about. In
fact as Christians I would argue we would recognize all of them as flawed
attempts by sinful man to re-create the peace of the Garden. They’re all doomed
to fail. Some are better than others. Some will work in certain contexts and in
a different setting fail.
If we’re looking for the state
to somehow provide for us a proto-garden or proto-heaven….then we’ve embarked
on a very dangerous path.[vi]
We’re told to on one level
appreciate government, and to pay our taxes. There’s nothing here about lesser
magistrates, taxation without representation, democratic rights, constitutional
law, and social contract… again all worthwhile things to discuss but beyond the
scope of the passage.
When people try to force and
read these ideas into this text (eisegesis) they are committing an exegetical
error.
Or when they try to draw out or
interpret (exegesis) the text in terms of a social foundation or blueprint they
likewise have embraced a fallacy.
The Bible teaches us how we as
Christians are to view the state. It does not teach us how to craft a state,
nor does it mandate us to attempt this.
Sacralists get mad if you
suggest Government is a necessary evil. That can be meant wrongly, in an anti-authoritarian
sense. But in another sense, government is essentially the threat of violence.
That’s something I can be
thankful for and yet still in some sense refer to as evil.
That said, not every task
government engages is specifically evil. It’s not evil to build roads. Road can
promote social stability and facilitate stability by aiding commerce and thus
increasing the standard of living. Content people are less likely to agitate.
It’s not evil to build roads,
but the reason government builds roads hearkens back to these fundamental
principles concerning order…and order that is enforced by the threat of
violence.
So while I do not wish to be an
agent of violence in any capacity, whether or not a Christian can work for the
government is a matter of conscience and Christian liberty.
I would not want to be a police
officer. To be honest I have a hard time ‘liking’ police officers. I admit we
need them and yet I want their powers restricted. I would rather have ‘bad guys’
get away sometimes than to have police wielding too much power and thus too
much violence. Remember locking up an innocent person for twenty years is also
an act of violence. It’s forced restraint.
Could I build roads? Could I
work for the FAA? These seem to be a bit different. What about being a social
worker? A District Attorney? A Park Ranger? A soldier?
These questions aren’t easy and
the answers are not always clear cut. What disturbs me most is that most
Christians I meet who are in these professions….have not thought about the
issues.
While it may seem I’ve strayed
from the issue of Gay Marriage, I hope you will see that to wrestle with an
issue like that….beyond just simply saying…it’s wrong, so there!....we have to
work back to some more fundamental questions concerning marriage, the state,
our relation to fallen humanity, and the Kingdom of God. Unless we do this, we’re
wasting our time.
More to come….
[i]
For the record I am completely opposed to Church
Billboards/Signs and even more opposed to the often sacrilegious, sometimes
blasphemous messages the American Church puts on them.
[ii]
We might also ask what is meant by nation? Did
Solomon (presumably) mean ‘nation’ in the sense of a Republic bound together by
social contract? I doubt it very much. Nation throughout much of history
referred to what we might call a tribe or race. Certainly the Jewish Kingdom
was cast in these terms. They were the Holy People…a title today applied to the
Church…not to any body politic. Today there’s only one Righteous Nation, and it’s
not the United States.
[iii]
The Persecuted Church was strong during the 3rd
century when the Roman Empire was in a state of crisis and near collapse. The
Church was flourishing in North Africa when the Muslims arrived in the 7th
century. The Underground Church was flourishing during the periods of chaos in
the Middle Ages. And depending on what you think of the ancient Church of the
East, it expanded and grew in an Asiatic context though it never brought about
any measurable cultural or civilizational success.
Of course it depends on
how you would wish to define ‘strong’ and ‘healthy’. Sacralists would differ
with someone like me in defining those terms. I do not equate a strong church
with numerical strength, though I must say even in the examples given above,
the numbers were significant.
By even the lowest
estimates, there were tens of thousands of underground Christians during the
Middle Ages, ironically probably more Bible believing Christians then…operating
to some extent outside of Rome…then there are in Europe today.
[iv]
In terms of hermeneutical precedent, the New
Testament interprets the Old. If we want to rightly understand the prophets or
wisdom literature we have to read them in light of the New Testament. In this
case the Analogy of Scripture is apropos. Where it is not is when it comes to
doctrinal and didactic passages within the New Testament itself, especially the
Epistles which in terms of teaching (doctrine) are the capstones of the Bible.
At that point I am
unwilling to cancel out a verse in Hebrews because it seems to contradict a
verse in Ephesians. Neither has precedent so rather than synthesize and (often
eliminate) I will submit and accept both to be true.
At some point I hope to
elaborate on what I believe to be key hermeneutical guidelines defined not by
external system commitments, but by the text itself.
[v]
I don’t agree with Riddlebarger who suggests
that the New Testament has a fairly positive view of the state in Romans 13 and
that this is transformed into a negative view by the time John wrote the
Revelation about 30 or 40 years later. This basically implies that to some
extent Romans 13 is cancelled out by the later imagery. I don’t wish to put
words into his mouth, but I think he’s suggesting that the state today can go
either way. If that’s what he’s saying I don’t think we can divide our view of
the state into Romans 13 versus Beast categories.
I think in terms of a
general principle, Romans 13 applies even under a Bestial power. It’s not going
to prove the case in every instance, that the state will reward the good,
meaning be kind to Christians. I think that’s beyond the scope of what Paul is
saying. He’s just trying to say that in general if we’re not engaged in
destructive behaviour the state is most likely going to leave us alone.
I would argue the
American Sacralist Church is involved in destructive and agitating behaviour. I
think the use of ‘busybody’ or troublesome ‘meddler’ applies to them as used in
1 Peter 4.15. They pry into realms that don’t belong to them and seek to
govern, direct, control others….and they’re hated for it. It’s interesting that
this equated with evildoing, theft, and murder.
And those who would try
to use Romans 13 as a blueprint for limited government (in the modern
post-Enlightenment sense) are completely misunderstanding not only this passage
but the New Testament.
[vi]
This is exactly what most Christians have done,
however they’re not honest with themselves and if presented to them in this
manner, they will quickly deny possessing any such hopes, aspirations, or
feelings.
Nevertheless, the
desperation they express and in other cases the adulation the exhibit, not to
mention the Messianic language often applied to the agenda and the state
demonstrate otherwise.