Tag: Christian Ethics

Wedding Cakes, the New Testament and Ethics in the Public Square

Not long after the Supreme Court decision on the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, I wrote an article examining the issues involved from the perspective of New Testament interpretation.  I quickly sent it off to a popular Christian publication hoping to enter into the public debate.

Well, I am now 0 for 3 at article submissions being accepted by this brand of magazine.  Or maybe I should say that I am 3 and 0 at being rejected.  Alas, such are the trials of a would-be popular author.

So, rather than submit myself to another 4 – 6 week waiting period, I have decided to make the article available here on my blog.  I hope you will find it informative and stimulating as we all continue to think about the best ways to display our kingdom citizenship to the watching world.

Wedding Cakes, the New Testament and Ethics in the Public Square

by David Crump © July 2018

 

The recent Supreme Court ruling on the Masterpiece Cake Shop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case has pumped equal amounts of fervor into both sides of the latest battle in America’s culture wars. The court admitted that it was making a narrow, not a landmark, ruling which offers little in the way of precedent for future civil rights vs. religious liberty cases.  Consequently, cheerleaders on both sides – evangelical Christians applauding for Masterpiece Cake Shop and civil liberties activists lamenting the ruling’s implications for gay rights – are getting ahead of themselves as to what this decision means for similar battles in the future.

As Eugene Volokh, law professor at UCLA, wrote on the day of the decision, it “leaves almost all the big questions unresolved” (Reason. 6/4/18).

Mr. Phillips claimed that decorating a cake intended for a gay wedding would violate his Christian conscience.  His opponents recall the systematic, racial discrimination of Jim Crow laws that only started to be overturned during the civil rights movement in the 1960s.  That post-Civil War era of legalized racism was commonly justified on religious grounds.  White southerners opened their Bibles, too, and cited proof-texts demonstrating that desegregation would violate their Christian faith.

Only two days after the Supreme Court decision was announced, South Dakota state representative Michael Clark (R.) was already waving the banner of a segregationist revival – though he later recanted.  “He [Mr. Phillips] should have the opportunity to run his business the way he wants. If he wants to turn away people of color, then that’s his choice,” said Rep. Clark (Dakota Free Press).

Jeff Amyx of Grainger County, Tennessee has posted a “NO GAYS ALLOWED” sign in the window of his hardware store for the past 3 years.  He argues that discriminating against homosexuals is integral to his Christian faith and witness.  In response to the Supreme Court decision, Mr. Amyx told local reporters, “Christianity is under attack. This is a great win…”

Even though the Supreme Court’s ruling explicitly disavows any attempt to make it a justifying precedent for future discrimination cases, the logical possibilities are clear.  At least, they seem clear to people like Michael Clark and Jeff Amyx.  We will have to wait and see how the courts eventually sort out these questions.

In the meantime, the evangelical church should stop and take some time to examine whether or not there is a solid scriptural foundation beneath Mr. Phillips’ appeal to religious conviction.  Is there, in fact, a sound Biblical argument under-girding the claim that decorating the cake for a gay wedding violates Christian morality?  To put it more broadly, do Christian business people compromise or deny some part of their faith in Jesus Christ when they provide personal services to others outside the church who are entrenched in lifestyles that the church considers sinful?

I believe the answer to that question is a resounding no.  Mr. Phillip’s scruples in this case are not a model for others to follow.  Just the opposite.

Let’s examine the issues one step at a time.

The apostle Paul put a premium on maintaining a clear conscience.  Mr. Phillips appears to understand that.  Paul’s discussion of whether or not Christians can eat meat originally sacrificed to idols (pagan temples were the most common butcher shops at the time) reveals that believers are sometimes free to disagree.  At times, personal consciences may vary (1 Cor. 8:7-15).  What is right for one person may not be right for another.  But everyone is expected to maintain an unsullied conscience free of guilt. So, Paul says in Romans 14, “Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind…If anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean…and everything that does not come from faith is sin” (verses 5, 14, 23).  In other words, don’t do things that you believe are wrong, things that will leave you nursing a guilty conscience.

Mr. Phillips says that he was resolving this very debate within himself when he declined to decorate a wedding cake for David Mullins and Charlie Craig.  Doing otherwise, he said, would have violated his Christian values.   So, he chose to safeguard his conscience, and the Supreme Court affirmed Mr. Phillips’ freedom to make that decision – particularly in light of the open hostility expressed towards his faith by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

However, the apostle’s acknowledgement that church members in Corinth and Rome were able to eat meat sacrificed to idols without violating their consciences, if they chose to do so, suggests that Mr. Phillips’ decision need not apply to anyone besides himself.  The pressing question is:  does offering services to a gay wedding fall into the same category of moral ambivalence as eating meat sacrificed to idols?  Was Mr. Phillips’ conscientious objection a paradigmatic stance required of all Christians or was it an idiosyncratic opinion binding only on Mr. Phillips?

 

We should recall that, when it comes to matters of ethical debate, Paul describes the narrower conscience, the more easily offended conscience, as “the weaker” one revealing a more feeble faith (Rom. 14:1-2; 15:1; 1 Cor. 8:7, 9-12).  Paul gives no indication that he valued the maintenance of a weak conscience.  In fact, his description indicates that a weaker faith ought to mature.  I suspect that this is why Paul previews his pastoral advice with an explanation as to why those exhibiting a stronger conscience are theologically correct (1 Cor. 8:4-6).

The implication is clear.

Those exhibiting a weaker conscience by refusing to eat meat sacrificed to idols would do well to absorb Paul’s theological explanation, for it reveals how their position derives from a misunderstanding. Disciples showing signs of a weaker conscience would therefore benefit from the advice of a mature mentor, someone who could offer patient instruction and sound Biblical instruction to clarify where, how and why outgrowing a weak conscience is preferable to remaining offended over debatable matters.

If decorating a cake for a gay wedding is comparable to eating meat sacrificed to idols, then Mr. Phillips has earned a few lines in the annals of religious liberty litigation, but he is not a model of how mature disciples should navigate the cross-currents of Christianity’s relationship with society.

Which leads us back to our original question.  Do Christian business people – or any Christian, for that matter – compromise or deny some part of their faith in Jesus Christ by providing personal services to people outside the church who are entrenched in lifestyles that the church calls sinful?

Remember, this is not a question about the morality of homosexual activity or gay marriage.  On this, I believe that we all ought to agree with Mr. Phillips.  I am convinced that the New Testament defines a gay lifestyle as immoral, including monogamous gay marriage.  Followers of Jesus Christ are forbidden to live that way, along with many other prohibited lifestyles (1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 Tim. 1:9-10).  Homosexual activity is condemned alongside greed, drunkenness, slander, theft, murder, adultery and lying, among other evils.  But having said this, there is no indication that homosexuality is considered the supreme sin, worse than all others.  It is simply listed as one among many unacceptable ways for Christians to live.

Which makes me wonder if Mr. Phillips has ever decorated wedding cakes for people whose lives were shackled by greed, dishonesty, selfishness, theft or fornication, to mention only a few of the other lifestyles condemned by Paul.  Of course, those issues are much harder to detect during a brief conversation in a cake shop, but that does not make them any less problematic for someone fearful that providing his professional services would tacitly endorse sin in another person’s life.

Romans 1:26-27 does describe homosexuality as paradigmatic of the way sin has disordered God’s orderly creation.  But this section of Paul’s argument comes after his description of idolatry as the quintessential example of human sinfulness (verses 18-25).  In light of Romans 1, then, it hardly seems likely that sharing a meal with your neighbors where the main dish came straight out the back door of Zeus’ temple after it was butchered by pagan priests as the offering in an idolatrous ceremony, would be any less problematic for Paul than decorating the cake for a gay wedding.  In the words of Jesus, reaching that conclusion would be a bit like straining at gnats while swallowing camels (Matt. 23:24).  I suspect that Paul would agree.

If a healthy, mature Christian conscience has no trouble eating meat butchered in idolatrous sacrifices with the neighbors next-door, then decorating a gay wedding cake for people outside the church should be an easy afternoon stroll through the green grass of Christian morality, by comparison.

We know that Paul supported himself by making tents (Acts 18:3), a skilled craft every bit as personalized as cake decorating.  The apostle would set out his tent-maker’s stall in the public marketplace and take orders for the assorted types of tents his customers wanted.  Paul’s business relations with the milling crowds of unredeemed humanity looking to buy and sell in the 1st century, Greco-Roman agora would have seen him pressing the flesh with the full spectrum of unwashed, pagan masses.  Idolaters, magicians, pederasts, adulterers, and every stripe of common criminal were all potential customers.  Homosexuality was extremely common in this Greco-Roman world, including long-term relationships comparable to gay marriage.

We cannot say for certain how Paul handled these interactions while conducting his business. But I very much doubt that he interviewed each potential customer before taking their order so as to ensure that he only made tents for people who agreed with his Christian, moral sensibilities and promised beforehand that they would never use his tents for activities he did not approve of.  That would make a great recipe for watching the competition take away all of your business.  Paul could not have supported himself for very long.  Although I admit to making an argument from silence here, I am confident that it is a sound argument, especially in light of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.  He says:

 

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.  What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”

 

Apparently, some members of the Corinthian church had misunderstood Paul’s previous advice on maintaining church discipline.  His warning about not associating with “sinners,” which would include refusing to do business with them, was strictly an internal affair concerning personal relationships within the Christian community.  Paul could not have stated his ethical position more clearly: “Judging those outside of Christ’s church is none of my business.  It’s God’s business, not mine.  So, I won’t do it.”

Applying the community standards of Christian church discipline to the believer’s social or business relationships outside of the church is an obvious example of something called a category mistake.  For instance, I am guilty of a category mistake when I offer a detailed description of elephants to the blind person who asked me to describe a goldfish.  It doesn’t make sense.

To the misfortune of both the church and American society, moralistic category confusions have become a distinguishing feature of the Religious Right.  TV and radio preachers popularize these confusions day in and day out as they rally their followers over the airwaves to defend Christian America from the deadly advances of secular humanism.

I suspect that it was within this hothouse of popular confusion that Mr. Phillips’ solidified his views about Christian ethics.  No one’s moral compass is calibrated in a vacuum.  I very much doubt that Mr. Phillips settled on preserving his weakened conscience all by himself.  He represents – as the Christian media frenzy applauding his victory shows – the largest part of American evangelicalism today, churchgoers with nothing more than a superficial grasp of scripture who view themselves as culture-warriors holding the line against a godless society.

Here we reach the animating force behind Mr. Phillips’ stance insofar as he represents evangelicalism’s current captivity to the unending melodrama of its so-called “culture wars.”  Worries over Christianity’s fight-to-the-death with secularism undoubtedly motivate hardware-store owner Jeff Amyx’s fretful lament that “Christianity is under attack.”  To his mind, and others like him, fighting against godlessness transforms a hideously ungodly “NO GAYS ALLOWED” sign into a battle standard for religious liberty.

Yet, how exactly does recognizing that unredeemed sinners will continue to sin ever threaten the church?  (After all, don’t even redeemed sinners within the church continue to sin?)

How does doing business in the public square with other sinners for whom Jesus died ever threaten my freedom to follow Jesus?  How does doing business with folks who do not (yet) want to conform their lives to Jesus’ example threaten my decision to be like Jesus, the same Jesus who partied with tax-collectors, prostitutes and other sinners?

It doesn’t.

The problem today – as I discuss at length in my book I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018) – is that large portions of the American church have turned their backs on Jesus’ model of suffering servanthood in order to fight for control over the secular levers of social, political power and control. Evangelicalism has exchanged the gospel of grace for an idolatrous nostalgia over something that never was – an American Christendom.

Christendom seeks to erase the border between church and state. Christendom confuses the body of Christ with society at large, with damaging results for all parties. Its propagandists demand that Christianity “reclaim” its place as America’s de facto state religion.  Among Christendom’s many mistakes, perhaps the most egregious is this wish to impose the norms of church discipline upon everyone else in society, regardless of their own religious affiliation.

In this way, the rhetoric of Christendom sounds much like the preacher who insisted on telling a herd of elephants that they must all live like goldfish.

Mr. Phillips’ case is only the beginning in this latest round of religious freedom/civil rights litigation.  Sadly, having forgotten that God’s kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36), American evangelicals have decided to exchange their suffering Savior and his New Testament teaching for front row seats on the White House lawn and amicus briefs utterly irrelevant to the Kingdom of God.

What is Civility, Anyway? #maxinewaters #civility

The Christian Century has a good online article today by Greg Carey entitled “In Revelation, faithful testimony is peaceable — not necessarily civil“.  Though I do not agree with every one of his points, by focusing on Revelation 5 the author provides a good discussion of the peaceable, yet

Bamberger Apokalypse, Germany, c. 1000

thoroughly counter-cultural, witness offered by the faithful Church-militant living in this violent world.

I have made similar, though differently nuanced, points in my recent book, I Pledge Allegiance.  Look especially at chapters 4 “Living with Dual Citizenship,”  7 “When Disobedience in a Virtue” and 11 “Blessed are Those who Suffer Because of Me.”

Sorry, but I just gotta say this: I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America could be the most important Christian book you read this season in securing a solid Biblical foundation for faithful Christian witness in the era of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Here is an an excerpt from Carey’s article:

“…having promised a lion, Revelation delivers no lion. A lamb appears instead—a lamb who has suffered a mortal wound, no less. Nowhere in Revelation does a lion appear. Instead, Revelation’s primary symbol is the Lamb. The Lamb does carry a sword. But that sword protrudes from the Lamb’s mouth. The Lamb, Revelation’s faithful witness (1:5), fights through the power of its testimony. When Rome is displaced with the New Jerusalem, we behold the Tree of Life. Its leaves provide not domination but the healing of the nations (22:2).

“I find the demand for civility troubling in our present moment. In a time of great unrest and violence, we ask marginalized people to show good manners while others are kicking them in the teeth. Too easily we dismiss the disruptive examples of the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the civil rights demonstrators, and those who overcame Apartheid. I suggest instead that Christians turn to the image of the Lamb: so disruptive as to provoke violence, yet persisting in faithful testimony. Faithful witness can be peaceable without necessarily qualifying as civil.”

I couldn’t agree more.

In light of Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ recent call for folks to offer public challenges to Trump’s Cabinet members, the question of public civility is a hot topic — at least for this news cycle.  If you didn’t hear Rep. Water’s remarks, please find them and listen to her before voicing an opinion.

Many, perhaps most, pundits have seriously misrepresented what she said.  And the numerous threats she has received subsequently are unconscionable by any standard…oh yeah, except for the racist, white supremacist standard.  I forgot…

Personally, I am not a big fan of civility debates.  I’ve not seen one that was very productive.  In my experience, many folks use their particular notion of “civility” as a club to beat down and silence anyone on the opposite side of an issue; or worse yet, to silence debate altogether.

That seems to be the main achievement of these so-called debates — to stifle debate.

Fretting about “civility” then becomes a socially acceptable way of saying, “Sit down and shut up!  You are not being civil!”  Alas.  The sinful cycle of human arrogance continues on and on.

The plea for civility becomes coded language for enforcing conformity: “You are not discussing the issue in the way I wish to discuss the issue; or you are not using the terms, or the tone, or the volume, or the methods, or the deportment, or the tactics, or the whatever that I think you should use.  Therefore, your contribution is uncivil, not to be taken seriously, simply because it’s not the same as my contribution.”

Of course, scripture has a lot to say about Christian behavior, private and public speech, personal relationships (both within and outside of the church), as well as our attitudes toward public officials. (Again…you really must read my book!)

Every person is the image of God, someone who ought never be demeaned or mistreated.  Followers of Jesus can never endorse or engage in violence.  Everyone is worthy of being loved.

All who follow Jesus must be in the process of conforming their attitudes and actions to the Father’s expectations. (So, be a faithful student of scripture, if you aren’t already).

But we can’t forget that the wild variations of individual personalities we encounter are all a part of God’s design.  Neither should we overlook the multiplicity of diverse cultural backgrounds and upbringings individuals enjoy, all of which have a role to play in where, how and why different people draw different lines in the sand as to what is and what is not acceptable behavior.

One person’s civility is another’s mumbly-bubkiss.  One person’s prophetic witness is another’s spiritual migraine.

Perhaps the Christian’s most important act of civility appears when we  accept others for who they are, as they are, while listening to and seriously considering what they have to say, no matter how they say it or act upon it.

The value of an idea stands independently of its verbal vehicle.

Don’t forget. Most of God’s Old Testament prophets were run out of town on a rail because the masses considered them to be the most horrendously, some would say the most fabulously, uncivil of all uncivil people.

 

“Grieving American on the Fourth of July”

Apparently, the flu bug was waiting for my friends to leave before attacking me.  Alas, I have been massively assaulted by an ugly flu for the past week, hence my piddling blog production of late. My apologies.  I hope to pick up the pace soon.  In the mean time…

Jean Neely has a good article on the Sojourners website entitled “Grieving America on the Fourth of July.”  I have posted an excerpt below.  The entire article is worth reading.

“We in the church have clung too tightly to our country’s myths of exceptionalism. We’ve been too slow to name the real “terror within” and unwilling to listen to those telling us of terror all around. We’ve been reluctant to own up to our history and speak out against unjust policies. We don’t like to think or talk about it, but most of us know that our quality of life here comes directly at the expense of everyone else on the planet (not to mention the planet itself), millions of ordinary folks whose countries have been ravaged by centuries of colonialism and persistent neocolonial structures, who make our clothes and gadgets, grow our food and coffee, and pay in countless other ways for all our out-of-control consumption and addictions. Their problems are our problems. So we can’t set them aside.

“In particular, those of us who claim to follow the poor, Middle Eastern God-man who taught us to give away our possessions, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and love one another can’t ignore Jesus in the stranger, Jesus on the street, or in the “detention center.” We can’t ignore that Christ embraces and abides with “the least of these,” or the fact that we habitually mistreat, lock up, and deport Christ and those dear to him. We’re called to a different way.

Who is the American Jesus? What is he saying? He reaches out to everyone, but does he carry a gun?

“We might begin with the work of facing the truth of who we are, of being present to the full reality of ourselves and our country. We need to look squarely at reality, at our own churches and our own souls, and deal with the discomfort or pain of what we find there. We need to awaken to both the beauty and the ugliness within, the shadow as well as the light. Sadly, as Thomas Merton put it, ‘We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.’

“It can be terrifying to examine what we cherish about ourselves. But this is the work we’re called to first. We make others pay every day that we refuse to do this work.”

The author well captures my own feelings on this July 4th.  In fact, I find myself enthralled by this personal turmoil on a regular basis, especially on Sundays.  I attend corporate worship, first and foremost, to contribute my own adoration to the collective praise of our Lord and Savior, God Almighty, and to the Son, Jesus Christ.

Yemeni children killed by US-made weapons.

But I must confess that this has become increasingly difficult for me.  Not that I am wavering in my devotion or am any less committed to glorifying my God.  Rather, I find that I must invest more and more of my energy into concentrating on the purpose at hand while fighting off the distractions presented by those around me.

I know. I know.  I am fully aware of how self-righteous I will sound.  The Spirit and I wrestle every day with this issue in my heart.  Yet, the selfish centrality of “me-ism” in our services, combined with the absence of any collective confession of sin or guilt, mixed with the standard American ignorance and indifference to the horrendous levels of pain, suffering and bloodshed casually accomplished by American military ingenuity all around the world every single day often brings me to tears as I stand before my God.

Onlookers probably think that I am having a “deep” moment with Jesus.  And I think I am.  But not the kind they imagine.

I have yet to sort out how to handle these moments, spiritually, psychologically or emotionally.  I only pray that the Lord Jesus will help my nation, my leaders, my community and my church as well as I expect Him to help me.

That’s my hope for this 4th of July.

Following the Messiah-No-One-Expected and Very Few Want Today

Carlo Corretto

I have been busy enjoying a visit from some dear, long-time friends this past week, hence my brief vacation from blogging.  But I am back today with this excerpt from the book Why, O Lord? by Carlo Carretto.

The tremendous life-altering challenge of following the real, historical, Biblical Jesus rather than the convenient, sanitized, nationalized Jesus of American evangelicalism is a contemporary version of the New Testament call to discipleship that has confronted every generation (in its own, unique way) throughout church history.

It is no easier today than it was 2,000 years ago.

I have described what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah-no-one-expected (or much wanted) in my book, Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture.

My new book, I Pledge Allegiance, describes the life-or-death struggle facing the American church right now in this age of Trump .

Carlo Carretto eloquently makes the same point in his book, and I believe it is well worth sharing.  I do not know Mr. Carretto, but he writes like a man who knows the real Jesus:

“Goodness! How difficult it is to believe in the sort of Messiah that Jesus of Nazareth represents!

 To believe that we win by losing our very selves!

To believe that love is everything.

To believe that power is a great danger, wealth slavery, comfortable life a misfortune.

 It is not easy.

 This is why you hear [people] in the street say, ‘If there was a God there would not be all this suffering.’

 Two thousand years have gone, and there are still Christians whose doctrinal notions belong to those ancient days when the power and existence of God was revealed by displays of strength and the victory of armies. And especially by wealth and having more possessions.

 The real secret had not then been received.

Nor is it received very easily even today.

Hence the blasphemy in general circulation denying the kingdom’s visibility, given the ordeal of suffering and death.

 The old teaching that we, the Church, must be strong still feeds our determination to possess the land and dominate the world.

 We must make ourselves felt. We must keep our enemies down. We must scowl. We must win, and to win we need money, money, money. And to have money we need banks, we need the means and we need clever bankers. How can we do good without means, without money? Let’s have a big meeting, and then any opposition will be shamed into silence. Well, we must defend our rights, the rights of the Church. We must defeat our enemies.

 Enemies, always enemies on the Church’s horizon!

 Yet Jesus has told us in no uncertain terms that we no longer have any enemies, since they are the same people we are supposed to love, and love specially.

 Can it be that we have not understood?

 Don’t we read the Gospel in our churches?

 How long shall we wait before following the teaching of Jesus?”

Indeed…how long?

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 2 #christianityandpolitics

I am absolutely convinced that both Scripture and church history demonstrate the necessity of Christian civil disobedience whenever the ethics of God’s kingdom conflicts with the expectations of the state.

Romans 13:1-7 is the standard text cited by those who confuse faithful Christianity with obedience to state power. My book, I Pledge Allegiance,  focuses considerable attention on disentangling the many confusions behind this popular misunderstanding.  For, as the commentator J. C. O’Neill once wrote,

“These seven… verses have caused more unhappiness and misery… than any other seven verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants, and the support for tyrants the church has felt called on to offer.”

In and of itself, O’Neill’s observation does not necessarily prove or disprove anyone’s preferred way of reading Romans 13.  But I believe that the investigation offered here and in Part 1 of this study, will make the point clear.

This excerpt is from pages 59-62:

“Civil Disobedience”

“We are now at a point where we can recognize three components of Paul’s instructions that offer a solid foundation for the legitimacy of Christian civil disobedience.

“First, by explaining God’s role in ordering the place of government in human relations, Paul subordinates all civil authorities under God, and not just any god,

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

but Paul’s God, the Father of Jesus Christ. In effect, Paul has desacralized the Roman state and its emperor, both of which regularly received sacrifices from its citizens. Caesar is being told (were he ever to read the book of Romans) that he serves at the pleasure of the Christian God, a revolutionary claim. Rather than propping up the arrogant authoritarianism of Roman rule— or anyone else’s rule, for that matter—Paul is actually taking his theological ax to its woody trunk and chopping it down to proper size. It is difficult for us today to fully grasp the provocative and subversive nature of Paul’s words. He twice describes civil authorities, including the emperor, as “God’s servant” (Rom. 13:4), not because they predictably execute God’s desires as a good servant should, nor because God promises to back up their every decision, whatever it may be, but because they function in a capacity that was “ordered” for them by the God who brings world redemption through the Son, Jesus Christ. Paul is dramatically leveling the playing field between rulers and the ruled. More than that, he has switched the parameters of the Roman playing field for another one entirely. Roman officials thought they stood on political grounds that were established by the gods Mars and Jupiter. To that fantasy Paul’s says, “Not on your life!” Actually, though they do not know it, Roman officials stood on a playing field created and marked out by the Christian God. On that playing field everyone is equal, and all people, no matter their station in this life, will eventually be judged in the same way, by the same standard, by this same God.

“Second, there is a subtle turn to Paul’s teaching strategy that is quite pro- found. Overtly, he is instructing believers to remain cooperative, submissive members of society. Yet, even as he offers this highly conventional message, he is implicitly underscoring the church’s supreme allegiance to the King of Kings above and beyond all other authority figures. The force of this reminder is to enable every Christian citizen to ask a crucial question: Are government authorities behaving like God’s obedient servants in asking me to perform this action? And if I do what the government asks, will I be doing something that I believe is right and acceptable before God? Paul is implicitly reminding the church that obedience to Christ supersedes all other responsibilities. We obey the government when such obedience coincides with obedience to God; otherwise, we submit to governing authority by virtue of our disobedience, accepting the negative consequences, including suffering, of our higher obedience to the King of Kings. Standing alongside the apostle Peter as he defied a direct order from the Sanhedrin, Christians testify with their lives that they “must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; also 4:19).

Christian pacifists held in an internment camp during World War 2

“Third, the thoughtful disciple is now left to deal with questions of personal conscience, a matter that Paul raises himself in verse 5: “It is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.” Paul’s argument is that government officials (ideally) ask citizens to do what is right and then (only) punish those who do what is wrong—not wrong as defined by an arbitrary authority, but wrong as defined by God and our God-given conscience. Paul obviously does not believe that paying taxes, even to unscrupulous tax collectors, is either disobedient to God or a violation of Christian conscience, so he emphatically concludes, “This is why you pay taxes” (v. 6). But that conclusion hardly constitutes a blank check for necessarily prioritizing every government policy over Christian conscience per se. “Because of conscience” is a crucial declaration in its own right, especially when we remember that the real world does not operate in the way Paul describes governing authorities throughout this passage. “Because of conscience” becomes the church’s inevitable explanation for its civil disobedience whenever the governing authorities come to believe their own mythology about extraordinary powers, providential selection, and divine right. The long and bloody history of Christian martyrs who died for their faith while defying local government should remind every disciple of the nonnegotiable priority of Paul’s warning—“because of conscience.”

“Several issues of conscience arise when we take chapters 12 and 13 together, as they should be. Paul, in Romans 12:14, 17, and 19, insists that believers must never retaliate, seek vengeance, or resort to violence, but must always leave judgment to God’s wrath. Paul then goes on (in Rom. 13:4) to grant the governing authorities responsibility for exercising the very functions that Christians are commanded to leave with God. Consequently, there are certain government activities that must forever remain alien to the followers of Jesus. Whatever “bearing the sword” may mean, whether it is the power of law enforcement, imposing capital punishment, or sending men to war, it involves some degree of violence and some acts of punishment, all of which must be foreign territory to the Christian.

“Early Christian leaders understood this to mean, at the very least, that Christians could not join the military (see chapter 10) or serve as judges. Aside from the fact that men in these positions were required to participate in any number of idolatrous Roman rituals, soldiers had to be ready to use force in law enforcement; more important, they could be ordered to kill at any time. Similarly, judges were responsible to punish, imprison, and impose the death penalty; but Christians were forbidden to involve themselves in any of these things. A typical discussion appears in On Idolatry (17.2–3) by Tertullian (AD 160–ca. 225). When answering the suggestion that Christians should seek positions of official authority—such as becoming a judge—in order to influence government positively, Tertullian points out that a man would have to find some way “to avoid the functions of his office . . . without passing judgment on a man’s life [i.e., imposing capital punishment] or honor . . . without condemning or forejudging, without putting anybody in chains or prison or torturing.”  In other words, a Christian could only take the job after first deciding never actually to do the job, an obviously impossible scenario.

“In a similar vein, one version of the Apostolic Constitutions 16.10 (ca. AD 375–380) makes an allusion to Romans 13:4 while insisting that “anyone who has the power of the sword, or who is a civil magistrate wearing the purple, either let him cease (i.e., resign his post in government) or be cast out (i.e., excommunicated from the church).” The only way a Christian could honestly serve in the Roman government (and a post-Constantine government, at that!) was by deliberately avoiding all of his major responsibilities. It is apparent that early Christian leaders were not interpreting Romans 13 in light of a two-kingdoms theology, in which a temporal realm and a spiritual realm make parallel claims on the Christian’s attention. Instead, the disciple was a citizen of only one kingdom, the kingdom of God, which is now invading a fallen world. John Howard Yoder explains that “these two aspects of God’s work are not distinguished by God’s having created two realms but by the actual rebelliousness of men.”

“Martin Luther’s two-kingdoms theology allowed him to recommend that Christians volunteer for the civic roles of hangman and executioner because “it is not man, but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, kills and fights” when the state punishes criminals and goes to war. Unfortunately, Luther merely demonstrates how blind he was to both the role of conscience and the priority of God’s kingdom for every believer. God may well be the ultimate executioner standing behind a judge’s guilty verdict, but that does not change the fact that the Father forbids his children from having anything to do with a process that kills, demeans, tortures, or seeks vengeance against another human being. Government authority is God’s remedial measure to preserve some semblance of order among sinful human beings. Luther was correct to say that God is the one who punishes when a just, properly functioning judiciary renders a guilty verdict; but he was sorely mistaken in assuming that the divine Judge invites members of the church to share in his work of punishment.”

The Catastrophe in Yemen Continues to Worsen Because of US #yemen

The folks at Just Foreign Policy are sending a petition to Congress and attempting to rally popular support in order to end American support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

Yemeni children are dying of malnutrition and cholera.

Please take the time to read the excerpt posted below from their appeal.  Check out the embedded sources.  Reread my past blog posts about the tragedy unfolding in Yemen (here, here and here).

And remember…this is not a natural catastrophe.  It is an entirely man-made disaster.  

Recalling the Old Testament story of Nathan the prophet confronting King David:  The prophet today points his finger in the face of America and Saudi Arabia saying, “You are the nation.”  WE are the culprits condemning innocent Yemeni people to starvation and disease.

The guilt and responsibility is ours, America.  And we have the power to end it whenever we choose.  Here is the excerpt:

“The long-feared U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida, where four-fifths of Yemen’s food imports enter, has begun. ABC News reports: “Assault on Yemen’s largest port threatens to increase mass starvation.” Aid experts warned that an assault on the city could immediately threaten the lives of 250,000 people and put millions more at risk of starving to death. The U.S.-backed Saudi-UAE war against Yemen’s indigenous Houthi rebels has already created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, leaving 60% of the population – 17.8 million Yemenis – food insecure, and 8.4 million a step away from famine.
 
“ABC noted that the U.S. is providing “vital guidance and supplies” for the Saudi-UAE attack on Hodeida. The Wall Street Journal was more explicit: “The U.S. military is providing its Gulf allies with intelligence to fine-tune their list of airstrike targets in Yemen’s most important port, one sign of the Trump administration’s deepening role in a looming assault that the United Nations says could trigger a massive humanitarian crisis.”
 
“33 Representatives tried to stop the attack by threatening the Trump Administration with a vote invoking the War Powers Resolution to force an end to U.S. participation in the war. They were: Mark Pocan, Justin Amash, Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, Barbara Lee, Walter Jones, Ted Lieu, James McGovern, Tulsi Gabbard, Yvette Clarke, Pramila Jayapal, Peter DeFazio, Debbie Dingell, Earl Blumenauer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gwen Moore, Adriano Espaillat, Judy Chu, Bobby Rush, Keith Ellison, Jan Schakowsky, Raúl Grijalva, Jamie Raskin, Donald Beyer, Karen Bass, Frank Pallone, Beto O’Rourke, Alan Lowenthal, Betty McCollum, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Huffman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and Hank Johnson.
 
“The Members wrote: “We urge you to use all available means to avert a catastrophic military assault on Yemen’s major port city of Hodeida by the Saudi-led coalition…We remind you that three years into the conflict, active U.S. participation in Saudi-led hostilities against Yemen’s Houthis has never been authorized by Congress, in violation of the Constitution…In light of a possibly disastrous offensive on Hodeida, we remind you that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare and authorize war, and the War Powers Resolution allows any individual member of Congress to force a debate and floor vote to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities.”
 
“Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration have ignored these warnings. They don’t believe that Members of Congress have the courage to follow through on their threat.

“Help us prove Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Trump Administration wrong. Press Members of Congress to invoke war powers to force a vote to end unconstitutional U.S. participation in the catastrophic Saudi-UAE assault on Hodeida by signing our petition.”

A Look at Romans 13:1-7, Must Christians ‘Obey’ the Government? Part 1 #christianityandpolitics

Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech at the Southern Baptist Convention, thankfully, sparked a debate over whether he should be welcomed or disinvited.  Pence’s defenders predictably quote Romans 13:1 as their argument for welcoming a political speech at the convention.

In Romans 13 the apostle Paul says:  “let everyone submit to the governing authorities.”  So, that means Pence needs to be given the time normally allotted for group prayer in order to deliver a partisan, political speech?

In light of this current debate, I thought I’d post a few serialized excerpts from my book, I Pledge Allegiance, that looks carefully at what Paul actually says in Romans 13:1-7.  The complete excerpt is from pages 56-62.  Here goes:

“Paul had specific concerns in mind as he wrote his letter to the Roman church and describing a comprehensive political theology of church-state relations was not one of them. Recalling the church’s precarious standing with the local government in a time of tax revolt is far more illuminating of Paul’s argument in this chapter. The early church lived within an authoritarian state. There was no expectation that the average person could exert any meaningful influence in bringing about broad-based, systemic social or political change. Neither Paul nor his readers had any conception of participatory democracy. Modern strategies for popular political and social transformation through civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance were inconceivable at the time. Naturally, this does not mean that Paul was devoid of political opinions or that he might not write something of universal political significance for the church, regardless of its particular location in time and space, but it does mean that properly understanding Romans 13:1–7 requires that we keep the actual historical situation foremost in our mind.

Observing God’s Order

“Several details in Romans 13 need elaboration for Paul’s ethical instruction to become clear for the modern reader. The chapter’s opening sentences twice affirm that government authority is put in place by God (v. 1). God has established a hierarchy of civil authority to regulate the otherwise strong tendency toward unruliness in human society. Anyone who rebels against this ordering of authority, therefore, is rebelling against God’s design (v. 2). Two details of Paul’s vocabulary clarify his point.

“First, Paul describes civil authority as part of the way God “orders” the world. This idea of God’s ordering, organizing, appointing or arranging is central to the passage, with several derivatives of the verbal root “to order” appearing five times in three verses (vv. 1 [twice], 2 [twice], 5 [once]). It is clearly Paul’s key concept. God “establishes/orders/institutes governing authorities” (v. 1) not by bringing any particular leader to power—though he may at times also do that—but by providentially creating structures of governing authority that exercise responsibilities delegated by God. When Paul says that “there is no authority except that which God has established” (v. 1), he is not claiming that divine providence places all rulers in their specific positions of power. He is saying that the various stations of authority that make up civil government are put in place by God’s providential ordering of human society.

“Understanding Paul’s use of “ordering” vocabulary helps to answer long- standing questions about Christian obedience to tyrannical rulers. The problematic logic, based on Romans 13, usually goes like this: If every governing authority is put in place by God, so that disobeying the authority is the equivalent of disobeying God, then even a man like Adolf Hitler must have been put in place by God, and disobeying even Hitler becomes the equivalent of disobeying God. This was, in fact, the logic used by many German Christians who swore allegiance to Hitler, the “divinely appointed” Führer.

“Though some additional arguments will be advanced below for addressing the question of obeying Hitler, Paul’s emphasis on ordering rather than personnel makes it clear that God establishes positions of authority, positions that are occupied at different times by different leaders of greater or lesser ability, wisdom, and moral fiber. Paul does not make God responsible for ordaining every leader who ever fills an office. Christians are obligated to respect the role of government per se in their lives, but that is a far cry from being obligated to obey, much less enthusiastically endorse, every wretched leader braying for national allegiance to his every foolish decision.

Subordination vs. Obedience

“A second—equally important—matter of vocabulary arises once we notice that Paul does not command believers always “to obey” the governing authorities (Rom.13:1). Translations that render Romans 13:1 along the lines of “obey the government” (Living Bible, Contemporary English Version, Good News Translation, Worldwide English) seriously misrepresent Paul’s words. Instead of commanding obedience, Paul tells the church “to be subject/to submit” to the way God has “ordered” governing authority. If Paul had intended for the church always to obey the government, he could have used the common word hupokouō (obey) to make his point. But he doesn’t do that; instead, Paul stays with the “order” word group and directs believers to be “subordinate (vv. 1, 5) to the authorities that “have been ordered” by God. In effect, he is reiterating the need for believers to cooperate with God’s design in ordering human society.

“Following the logic of verse 3 is crucial for understanding the full significance of Paul’s refusal to tell the church that they must always obey the government. Notice that Paul’s description of civil authority is utterly idealistic, in so far as he assumes that the church can always count on the government to faithfully enforce God’s expectations. “Rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong. If you don’t want to be afraid of the one in authority, do what is right and the authority will praise you” (my translation). Had Paul intended to deliver a lesson on Christian obedience, he missed a perfect opportunity to do so. Notice that he does not say, “Shed your fear of authority by doing what you are told; be obedient.” Instead, Paul counsels the church to free itself from any fear of authority by always “doing what is right.”

“At least two assumptions are at work in this statement. First, Paul’s argument assumes that government authorities will never be corrupt. Their judgments will always faithfully reflect God’s judgments concerning what is good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. But we all know better. The claim that “rulers are not a terror to those who do what is right but to those who do wrong” is not always true, and Paul knew it. The civil rights demonstrators who walked across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, with Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965 were excoriated by the state’s governor, condemned by the local sheriff, and beaten with clubs by the local police. It is no secret to us or to Paul that rulers can easily reward those who do wrong and become a terror to those who do what is right, but Paul is describing the ideal, the way things are supposed to be, for the sake of his argument.

“Paul’s second assumption is that when government functions as it should, citizens never need to be afraid about doing what is right because “the right” is always what governing authorities will want from their citizens. Those who do what is right can be confident in their Christian obedience because they are simultaneously being submissive to authority, as God requires. In an ideal world, a believer’s act of submission will be synonymous with obedience because the perfect, incorruptible government will never ask its citizens to disobey God.

“Unpacking these assumptions at the root of Paul’s idealization of earthly authority also exposes the prick hidden in his argument. Paul knows that the Roman government does not measure up to this ideal. He cannot possibly in- struct the Roman church always to obey a government that made public sacrifice

Roman Christians were thrown to the lions for refusing to obey the law

to the Roman pantheon a civic responsibility; but he can tell them always to do what is right. When Christians act on what they know is right and those actions coincide with the government’s expectations, Paul’s argument predicts the happy outcome—“do what is right and the authorities will praise you.” But when doing what is right puts the believer on a collision course with government expectations, Paul’s instructions take on even greater significance: “Still do what is right.”

“God’s own perfect government awaits the coming age, when Christ is seated on his earthly throne. As long as Jesus’s disciples live in this world, however, they must anticipate times when the governing authorities will not praise them for doing what they believe is right in the sight of God. So Paul diplomatically commends the Roman government as much as he is able to in his description of the ideal, but he also assiduously avoids giving the church advice that could eventually lead it to compromise with the ungodly designs of a government that is out of step with God’s vision of truth and justice.

“Christians are not commanded always to obey their government or its laws. The church is told to be submissive and always do what is right. Obedience is one way of showing submission to authority, but submission and obedience are not synonymous. In some circumstances the submission God requires will work itself out as disobedience to governing authority. When a government expects believers to do things that the latter believe are wrong, things that will compromise their relationship with Christ, things that will violate their kingdom citizenship, then godly adherence to what is right demands conscientious disobedience against the government. At that point, faithful disciples remain submissive to misguided governmental authority, not by compromising their Christian conscience, but by freely submitting themselves to whatever punishment the authorities threaten to impose for disobedience. Living out the values of the kingdom of God always comes first for the followers of Jesus.”

Venezuela is on the American Empire’s Chopping Block

Yesterday’s post addressed the wholesale propaganda war being waged against consumers of US news.  The purpose of this particular campaign is several fold:

First, the ultimate political goal is to force Venezuela back into the international fold of global capitalism (sometimes called neoliberalism), thereby reopening its doors to American corporate interests (especially our oil companies);

Second, to persuade the American people that economic sanctions and even military action against Venezuela is entirely justified, should we decide to act in those ways. (Note – the US has already imposed severe economic sanctions against Venezuela which are helping to cripple the nation’s economy and its supply of consumer goods).

Third, propaganda – which is the standard diet dished out to every American who depends on the major corporate news outlets – serves as the information artillery barrage used to soften up the American battlefield of public opinion long before our government unleashes the military on “the enemy.”

Making the general public believe that, once again, the US has been “forced” into using our military as “the last resort” in “fighting for democracy, freedom and human rights” in another part of the world, keeps the public subdued, pliable and supportive of The Empire’s latest acts of international barbarism.

In addition to yesterday’s information, here are several more video reports from journalists working in Venezuela that help to fill out this picture.

First, reports from Abby Martin’s The Empire Files: She walks the streets of Venezuela, goes shopping in the stores, reads the newspapers, attends demonstrations, interviews people on both sides of the confrontations, including average people and their political leaders.

I think Martin is one of the most important journalists working today.  Granted, her personal interviews can be needlessly profane, but from all I have seen, her journalism is excellent.  Check out:

Why Socialism Keeps Winning in Venezuela (24 minutes)

Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly: Dictatorship or Democracy? (26 minutes)

Abby Martin Fact-Checks “No Free Press in Venezuela” Claim (3:39 minutes)

Inside Venezuela’s Markets: Propaganda vs. Reality (22 minutes)

Abby Martin Meets the Venezuelan Opposition (26 minutes)

For another thorough analysis of the Venezuela issues, here is Michael Prysner’s excellent response to John Oliver’s recent segment on Venezuela during his HBO comedy show. Granted, it is 45 minutes long, but you don’t have to watch it all at once.  Prysner takes the time to debunk, point by point, all of Oliver’s thoughtless repetitions of the mainstream media’s statements on Venezuela.  You can easily follow up on Prysner’s work online.

You can also find similar analysis from others by searching sites like the Real News Network, teleSUR English, RT News, and RT America.

Here are some of my thoughts on becoming a well-informed, thoughtful news consumer.

In order to find this type of journalism – that is, REAL journalism, something that the corporate media abandoned many years ago because their top executives decided that it did not make enough money – we must turn to independent, genuinely investigative journalism.  Most of these folks nowadays work for online publications and video outlets (check out youtube).

I give greater attention to journalists who report from the ground inside the relevant country, especially those who speak the language (for instance, Abby Martin’s reports from Venezuela; she is fluent in Spanish) and interview their subjects on their own or at least use a translator by their side.

The kinds of journalists I am talking about are people like Max Blumenthal, Dan Cohen, Glenn Greenwald, Abby Martin, Michael Prysner, Amy Goodman, Jeremy Scahill, Iona Craig, Eva Bartlett and others too numerous to list.  You can find them if you begin to look.

Another good source for alternative perspectives appears in outlets backed by foreign governments.  I watch and read them as much as I do US news.

Places like RT (Russia Television), Al Jazeera (coming from Qatar) and teleSUR (financed by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Bolivia).  Yes, these broadcasts will certainly have their own biases, but all US media are biased, as well. They certainly are no more biased, and in many, many instances they are much less biased, than any of our American news corporations.

Furthermore, foreign news stations typically offer a different perspective on the world’s problems.  It is good and necessary to break out of the American bubble.  We need to stop looking at ourselves in the mirror and learn how other people from around the world view us.

For instance, did you know that when the people of the world are asked which nation poses the greatest threat to world peace, the United States (not Iran, Russia, China or North Korea) tops the list (here and here)?

Finally, no one can say that they are well-informed until they look at all sides of an issue.

If I don’t know what the other side is saying or thinking – not from my perspective but from their perspective – if I haven’t engaged the evidence used in their arguments; if I don’t understand how they are refuting my arguments, then I simply don’t know what I am talking about.

We need to listen to alternative voices, perspectives and analyses.  Things that not nearly enough Americans do.  And, I am afraid, that American Christians tend to be among the worst at gathering a diversity of perspectives from which to learn.  (OK, I have to say this:  Please, TURN OFF THE CHRISTIAN RADIO AND TV NEWS BROADCASTS.  MOST OF IT IS PURE PROPAGANDA AND LIES.  SUCH BLINDNESS ONLY SERVES TO KEEP THE CHURCH IGNORANT, OFFENSIVE AND PLIABLE TO AMERICAN CORPORATE & IMPERIAL INTERESTS).

Our Creator gave us minds for thinking not strings for pulling.

Hands Off Venezuela, America! You’re a Big, Fat, Bully Nation!

I have been meaning to write about Venezuela and the distorted coverage of its internal affairs that we have been receiving in this country for some time now.  Well, I better do it now, before the US sends our troops to help complete the overthrow of another democratically elected, South American government, and the US press extolls the virtues of yet another one of our “humanitarian interventions.”  (That was sarcasm, in case you missed it).

Crowds of voters during the 2012 elections

Western news coverage of Venezuelan politics, whether by print, radio or television, not only in the US but in Britain and Western Europe, offers a perfect example of how corporate media dishes out pure propaganda to its consumers.

This includes everyone.  I have yet to find a single exception to this rule in the case of Venezuela, whether it’s Fox, ABC, NCB, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, you name it.  They are all the same.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro

Everyone is touting the same line: Nicolas Maduro is a dictator.  He has killed Venezuelan democracy.  The people are oppressed. There is no freedom of speech or of the press. The entire nation is starving due to government mismanagement. And on and on…

Sound familiar?

For a legible version see http://lati-negros.tumblr.com/post/31490408699/56-us-military-interventions-in-latin-america

Anyone who knows anything about the long, bloody history of American intervention in South American, however, will already be suspicious of such uniform, lock-step reporting.  Especially when few if any of this “reports” are coming from (a) journalists who speak Spanish (b) doing investigative journalism (c) on the ground in Venezuela (d) by speaking to a broad spectrum of actual Venezuelans still living in Venezuela.  (For information on US-sponsored coups in South America see this, this, this, this and this).

From what I can discover, the reality in Venezuela today is exactly the opposite of what our news media is telling us.  They have democratic elections. In fact, Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring organization observed Venezuela’s national elections in 2012 and concluded that “The election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”  (For further discussion, see this article on “Why the US Demonizes Venezuela’s Elections” by Mark Weisbrot, another guy I pay attention to.  Another great source of information is Venezuelanalysis.com, where you can find “Facts About Venezuela’s Presidential Elections and the Voting Process”).

WW 2 propaganda poster

I mention all of this, not only to highlight another clear example of the way our government and corporate controlled media try to propagandize us all, but also because propaganda often paves the way for military intervention and war.

Remember that President Trump has already threatened using “the military option” on Venezuela if Maduro won reelection (also here).

So, why does the US government hate the Maduro government in Venezuela?

First, Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves in the world and is a significant source for US imports.

Second, the Venezuelan people have chosen to elect a socialist government, which is a convenient way for the US to resurrect the Cold War bogie man of creeping communism sucking at American’s underbelly.  There are several problems however:

  • If America is the great defender of democracy around the world, what business is it of ours to interfere in country’s that democratically choose a socialist government?
  • Venezuela has not threatened to invade any neighboring countries. The US is the only nation threatening to invade another in order to overthrow its (democratically elected) government.

Third, beginning with Hugo Chavez and continuing with Maduro (but not as aggressively) the Venezuelan government has worked at nationalizing its industries, including its oil production.  This has been good news for the general population, but not such welcome news for the CEOs of the major oil companies operating in Venezuela.

Whenever more money flows into the pockets of the local people, ensuring that less money will flow out of the country and into the pockets of foreign oil conglomerates, the corporate executives always call Washington, D.C. and demand some of that ole’ time “regime change.”

Mohammed Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran

Don’t forget that in 1953 the CIA and the British overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mosaddegh in Iran (and had him executed) after he decided to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, depriving British Petroleum of its windfall profits at Iranian expense.  There IS a clear precedent for all this.

So, in preparation, the government propaganda machine has been rolling for some time now, preparing us for the possibility of another illegal military/CIA intervention overseas.  If/when it happens it will be described as another chapter in the noble saga of America’s sacrificial “defense of freedom around the world.”  (Wave flags and play patriotic music, with predictably mind-numbing effects, here).

US orchestrated coup in Chile, 1973

In fact, it will be one more bloody intervention in another nation’s affairs where innocent human beings will be murdered by the thousands simply because US business interests are lusting after more and more money.

This government overthrow will then be followed by the imposition of a conservative, right-wing government, perhaps even a military dictatorship, as has happened so many times before.  The multinational corporations with return. The resource extraction will be denationalized and reprivatized so that the majority of the benefits will go back overseas to Western companies, and the local people are once again deprived of what is rightfully theirs.

THIS IS WHY CHRISTIANS, and by this, I mean the entire Christian church in this country, NEED TO CARE ABOUT THE NEWS AND POLITICS!

Because we want to obey Jesus’ teaching that “we do to others as we would want them to do to us.”

Because we want to “love our neighbors as ourselves.”

The US military kills people all around the world in our name, using weapons created with our tax dollars, pursuing policies supposedly for our benefit, sacrificing the lives of our children and the children of many others, all in the name of “American values.”

I am firmly convinced that nobody who genuinely knows and loves Jesus Christ; no one who understands Jesus’ values and the manner of living he taught and modeled for his disciples, can possibly be at peace with our country’s interventionist policies around the world.

We must object, speak up, write letters, call our representatives and insist that we stop meddling in Venezuelan internal affairs.

No US military or CIA in Venezuela!

(This post originally included a section on finding reliable news sources for this type of information and discussion.  I have decided to make that a separate post to follow shortly.)

The Meaning of Holiness, Part 3B:  Sinners in the Hands of a Forgiving God

We have come to the end of our brief investigation into the Biblical definition of holiness.  We discovered that it is, first of all, a theological term describing God’s nature (here).  Then it becomes a redemptive term describing the results of God’s saving grace (here and here).  Finally, it is a sanctifying term characterizing the ethical goal of a life in relationship with God (here).

But here is where a problem arises.

Any reflective, self-aware believer will quickly recognize that the Lord’s command “to be holy as I am holy” sets an impossible standard, even for the most scrupulously attentive disciple. The distance separating vision from reality could not possibly be greater.  Who in their right mind would ever claim that they are living such a morally pure existence that they are as qualitatively distinct from the world around them as the eternal, Creator God is distinct from his temporal Creation?

The Old Testament addressed this issue straight on.  It was the rationale behind God’s instructions for animal sacrifice.  Leviticus 17:11 says,

“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”

A sacrifice of atonement covered or expunged the guilt created by one’s failure perfectly to obey.

God’s people were expected sincerely to do their best in obeying the law of the covenant.  But knowing full well that no one could keep the law perfectly, God provided a variety of sacrifices (not only animal but vegetable sacrifices such as first-fruit offerings) in order “to cover over” – to make atonement – for the people’s failings.

Offering these proscribed sacrifices, as they were instructed, was also a part of what it meant for Israel to be a holy people.  So, every Israelite was to take God’s word seriously.  Obey the law as fully as possible. Not taking it lightly.  Which included making regular sacrifice as a confession of one’s failings, recognizing the need for God’s forgiveness.

This is the Old Testament prescription for “being holy as Yahweh is holy.”

When we get to the New Testament, both the law and the sacrifices of the Sinai covenant have been fulfilled, completed, realized and thus brought to their conclusion in Jesus of Nazareth. (Obviously, there is a lot to be discussed here, but that is for another post or two or three).

Jesus’ life fulfilled the Old Testament law of the covenant (Matthew 5:17-20, compare 24:35), while his death became the ultimate, atoning sacrifice (Matthew 26:27-28, compare Exodus 24:8; Mark 10:45).  This is both the consistent teaching of the New Testament and the historic theology of orthodox Christianity. Thus, by fulfilling the old covenant Jesus inaugurated the new covenant.

Jesus Teaching a Crowd by Rembrandt

Nevertheless, there is a curious stream of continuity flowing from the old into the new:  namely, the seeming impossibility of fully obeying Jesus’ requirements for his disciples.

Here is only a brief sampling:

If you even speak badly of someone, you are guilty of murder.

If you lust after another person, you are guilty of adultery.

If someone hits you on the right cheek, let him hit the other one too. Never seek revenge or go to court.

Love your enemies and pray that your heavenly Father will bless them.

Give to anyone who asks and be so generous that you can’t keep track of where your giving goes (Matthew 5:21 – 6:4).

If you do not hate your immediate family and even your own life (in comparison to your devotion to me), you cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26-27).

If you do not give up everything you have, you cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:33).

The apparent impossibility of living out Jesus’ instructions is the reason several Christian traditions have devised different ways of avoiding the literal intent of Jesus’ words.

Some suggest that Jesus intended there to be two different types of disciples.  One, like priests and nuns, who will obey his teaching literally.  And another, sometimes called laypeople, who are free to adhere to a lesser standard.

Others find creative ways to reinterpret Jesus’ words so that they don’t actually intend what they appear to say.  I criticize this way of dealing with Jesus’ hard sayings in my book, I Pledge Allegiance (pages 38-39).  I believe that we must take Jesus at his word.

It’s true that Jesus’ teaching is rigorous. It’s also true that no one, not even monks and nuns who take vows of poverty, can follow Jesus’ teachings perfectly.  We can see this in the gospels themselves as the devoted disciples who live with him every day are periodically rebuked and corrected for their failures and misunderstandings.

If you want to read a fine discussion of this dynamic, I recommend taking a look at Richard Burridge’s book, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Eerdmans, 2007).  Burridge provides a thorough look at the many ways in which the theme “impossible expectations – failing disciples” plays out in the gospel storyline. The apparent tension is harmonized by taking Jesus’ words and his actions together.

Jesus’ words are hard, but his behavior is merciful.  He asks for the impossible and then extends compassion with forgiveness.  Burridge notes:

“His [Jesus’] demanding ethical teaching was delivered in the context of keeping company with outsiders and sinners, those who had ethical difficulties, yet he seems to have accepted them, ate and lived with them – which leaves us with the challenge of how imitating him requires New Testament ethics to be done within an inclusive community.” (page 179 and throughout)

Jesus Eating with Sinners by Caravaggio

Jesus’ resurrected life is the gift that keeps on giving.

He still requires that we follow him; that we obey his impossible words, conform to his perfect life, and imitate The One beyond imitation.

And when we fail, which will happen frequently, our perfectly holy Lord Jesus will be there every time to pick us up, to forgive us, brush us off and provide the encouragement we need to give it another try.

That’s what it means for a true disciple to be holy as the one and only Son of God is holy.