This is an excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans 2018). “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is the title of chapter 7. I intend to offer a series of similar posts, all taken from this chapter of my book.
I give my attention to the nature of authority, its abuse and how easy it is – frighteningly easy – for people to fall prey to the most outlandish abuses by
dangerous authority figures. The classic example, of course, is the German Christian church under the spell of Adolf Hitler.
No. I don’t believe that the US is now comparable to pre-war Germany, though I will refer you in an upcoming post to an American historian who convincingly argues that the two are closer than you might imagine.
What I do believe, however, is that the mindset controlling vast swaths of American Christianity today, especially in its more conservative sectors, reflects many of the same dangerous errors that eventually led the German Christian church to support Hitler.
Trump may not be Hitler. But widespread Christian enthusiasm for a morally repugnant president who delights in dehumanizing others – reflexively, without inhibition or remorse – who demonstrates all the traits of a sociopath, suggests to me that conservative Christians in this country have managed to lobotomize the mind of Christ – at least within themselves. We have become expert at steeling ourselves against the work of the Holy Spirit, of silencing the Spirit’s voice, ignoring His conviction, and perhaps of expelling Him altogether.
Resistance is the spiritual imperative for every true disciple. But who, what
and where do we resist properly? And how do we resist in a way that pleases our crucified Lord Jesus?
Here is the first excerpt, from page 98:
“…we all regularly face the challenge of knowing when to submit and when to disobey authority. Often the authority is as seemingly benign as public opinion, the status quo, cultural expectations, tradition, or peer pressure. Yet, for a people who believe they have been called out of darkness into the light, who understand that living by the standards of God’s kingdom will frequently put them at odds with the practices and expectations of a fallen world, defying authority in some way should be common practice. Perhaps it means befriending the outcast shunned by everyone else at school. Or calling friends to account for laughing at a racist remark. Paul’s admonition in Romans 13:5—to act “because of conscience”—is one of the implications he draws from Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (see chapter 4). Learning to defy the patterns of this world by renewing our minds after the model of Jesus and cultivating a genuinely Christian conscience requires learning when, where, and how to disobey any authority, no matter how familiar, issuing wrongful directives, regardless of the consequences. From this perspective, every Christian is called to be a dissident. Discipleship is the life of dissent from this world in the affirmation of Jesus and his kingdom.”
