A lot of this sort of “sky is falling” rhetoric is going around these days. While often spoken sincerely, it instills fear in many Christians. It is also used to motivate them to support certain political positions, policies, and candidates as the last, best hope left to the church and to America itself.
Four things need to be said in response.
First, to say that followers of Jesus should act like Jesus is not to say they should “just sit by.” The objection assumes that the only alternative to seizing “power over” is doing nothing. The objection exemplifies a complete trust in worldly power and a lack of trust in kingdom power. To follow Jesus is not only to do something; it is to do something far more powerful than fighting a “power over” battle ever could. Such battles may succeed in preserving one’s own rights, but it will not transform lives and advance the kingdom.
If, on the other hand, we collectively follow the example of Jesus and bleed for those who (some fear) may take away our rights—if we do not resist evil and instead do good to those who (some think) are persecuting us—this will sow kingdom seeds that will bear fruit for eternity. It is the one course of action that is not only faithful to the kingdom but contains the possibility of transforming those who (some believe) are trying to take away our rights. The kingdom of God does not seek to conquer; it seeks to transform.
Second, we need to understand that fear is a diabolic force. Its ultimate creator is Satan, and he uses it to keep us in bondage (Heb. 2:15). Throughout history, leaders have used fear to rally the masses around their causes, sometimes getting them to do things they otherwise would never dream of. Most of the worst atrocities committed in history—by so-called Christians and others—were motivated by fear. People felt threatened, demonized the ones who threatened them, and thus felt justified in doing whatever they thought necessary to protect themselves. It is impossible to live in love and live in fear at the same time, which is why Scripture says that love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
Now, as kingdom people we are called to live in love, which means we are called and empowered to live free of fear. Because our source of worth, significance, and security is found exclusively in God’s love and God’s reign, not our own immediate well-being, and because we believe in the resurrection, we are empowered to love even those who threaten our well-being—for this does not threaten our essential worth, significance, and security. We are, therefore, not to fear them (see 1 Peter 3:14–18). If we do fear them, it is only because some element of our essential worth, significance, and security is rooted in what they threaten. In other words, fear is an indication that we are living in idolatry, not love.
All this is to say that kingdom people whose lives are exclusively rooted in Jesus Christ will not succumb to motivation by fear. Our motivation for all we do is to be love, not fear (1 Cor. 16:14; 2 Cor. 5:14).
Third, like most slippery slope arguments, the logic of the question posed above is highly suspect. There is no inherent connection between allowing gay unions to be termed marriages on the one hand, and outlawing the view that homosexuality is a sin (let alone outlawing Christianity) on the other. Now, there is precedent from certain countries that have allowed gay marriages for concluding that hate speech against homosexuals may soon be outlawed. But why should Christians be against this? To the contrary, wouldn’t we find Jesus entering into solidarity with gays and others who might be the objects of hate speech? Is this not precisely what he did in befriending the tax collectors and prostitutes of his day, even though it cost him his reputation among the “socially respectable” religious people? And are we not called to imitate him in this, as in every other matter?
Nevertheless, let us suppose that the doomsday prophets are right. Let us suppose that the sky is falling. Suppose (as some have argued) that within ten years the government is going to make it a crime to say out loud that homosexuality is a sin. Let us suppose this will be followed (as some argue) by public evangelism being outlawed, by our Bibles being confiscated, and eventually by Christianity becoming illegal.
Should we be afraid of this? Should we rise up to protect ourselves from this slippery slope? Where do we find Jesus ever worrying about such things? When did Jesus ever concern himself with protecting his rights or the rights of the community he was founding? Did he not rather do the exact opposite and teach us to do the same? He had all the power in the universe at his disposal and had every right to use it, yet out of love he let himself be crucified. This is how he established and manifested the domain in which God is king. And we expand and manifest the domain in which God is king by imitating him in this act.
Instead of fearing the possibility of persecution someday, kingdom people should trust that if this happened, God would use it for the furthering of his kingdom, just as he used Jesus’ death. In fact, as terrible as they often are, persecutions have usually had a positive kingdom effect. While gaining political power has always harmed the church, as we saw in chapter 4, persecutions have almost always served to strengthen it. Tertullian was on the mark when he said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.13
As much as we would hate having our religious rights taken away (let alone being thrown into prison or even martyred) it would not be too much to suggest that perhaps this is exactly what the American church needs! As it stands now, the American church reflects pagan American culture in almost every respect, as numerous studies have shown. The radically countercultural and revolutionary movement that Jesus birthed has, in our country (as in every other “Christian” country), been largely reduced to little more than a preservation society for a national civil religion. A persecution would cure this ill, forcing Christianity to mean something significant. It would force us to be the one thing we are called to be: imitators of God, dying on a cross for those who crucified him.
In the early church, Christians considered it an honor to be martyred for their faith and to testify to the loving lordship of Christ by dying the way he died. They weren’t gluttons for punishment; they simply saw their life and death from a kingdom perspective. If dying furthered the purpose of the kingdom of God, they considered it an honor. How things have changed! We now find ourselves in a version of Christianity where protecting ourselves is one of the main things we stand for—“in Jesus’ name”! In the name of the one who surrendered his rights and died for sinners, we fight against sinners for our rights! As with many other things, we do what ordinary pagans do—we simply Christianize it.
“But if we lose our rights,” some people object, “we lose our power to speak into people’s lives and into the culture at large.” In response, I simply ask, “Where is your faith?” Our power to speak into people’s lives and into the culture has never been given by Caesar, and it therefore can’t be taken away by Caesar. Civil religion worries about such things, but not the kingdom of God. Our power has always been our willingness to imitate Jesus, our willingness to suffer for the sake of righteousness, and our willingness to bleed for others as Christ has bled for us. It has been the availability of Caesar’s power and the quasi-Christian veneer of our civil religion in America that has caused many of us to forget this.
With or without persecution, our call is to simply live in sacrificial love and trust that the sovereign God will use our love to further his kingdom, as he did with the love Jesus expressed to us and all people on Calvary.
5. DON’T WE BEST SERVE THE OPPRESSED BY OVERTHROWING THEIR OPPRESSORS?
How can we come under and serve people who are oppressed by unjust laws unless we’re willing to work to gain power over those who oppress them?
Of all the questions in this chapter, I have personally struggled the most with this one. I offer three considerations that I find helpful in gaining clarity on a unique kingdom-of-God perspective on confronting unjust, oppressive laws.
First, while the kingdom of the world focuses on controlling behavior, the kingdom of God focuses on transforming hearts. When hearts are transformed, behavior follows. Laws simpl
y reflect the hearts of those empowered to make them. So, the focus of citizens of the kingdom of God should be on changing the hearts of oppressors rather than on trying to conquer them with a greater coercive power.
As both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. realized, the oppressors are themselves oppressed by their oppression of others. The goal of kingdom people, therefore, must be to free the oppressor from his or her oppressed heart, which in turn frees those who are oppressed by them. To accomplish this, we must first possess a genuine love and concern for the oppressors, as Gandhi and King both said. We must genuinely love our enemy, as Jesus taught. The kingdom of God is a radical way of being before it is a particular way of acting against injustice and oppression. It is about living in love, as Christ loved us and gave his life for us (Eph. 5:2) before it is about acting in a loving manner that will improve the world. And we will never be able to do the latter unless we have cultivated the former. Only to the extent that a heart and mind has been purged of “all bitterness…wrath and anger” (Eph. 4:31) and saturated with the reign of God can a person even see the sensibility of the kingdom approach to oppression and injustice, let alone be empowered to carry it out consistently.
Second, as with everything else in the kingdom of God, we “come under” oppressors and help free them from their own oppression by being willing to replicate the Calvary-quality love of Jesus toward them. And we do this primarily by replicating the Calvary-quality love of Jesus toward those they oppress.
As we saw in chapter 6, Jesus exposed the ugliness of inhumane religious laws by healing on the Sabbath. He exposed the ugliness of patriarchy by his respectful treatment of women. He exposed the ugliness of cultural taboos by touching lepers and having close fellowship with socially unacceptable “sinners.” He exposed the ugliness of institutionalized Jewish racism by ministering to and praising Gentiles and Samaritans. And he exposed the ugly injustice of the Roman government and the world by entering into solidarity with a rebel race and letting us crucify him on the cross. Jesus’ whole life was the kingdom of God, and his consistent sacrificial love, in solidarity with the oppressed, consistently provided a beautiful contrast to the ugliness of the oppressive kingdom of the world and the oppressive principalities and powers that are over it.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to do the same. While we, along with all decent citizens, should work against unjust laws by political means, our distinctive calling as kingdom people is to go far beyond this and manifest Calvary-quality love. We are called to enter into solidarity with all who are marginalized and crushed by the powers-that-be and to allow ourselves to be marginalized and crushed along with them. This Calvary-quality love exposes the ugly injustice of laws that marginalize and crush, and in this way just possibly leads oppressors to repent.
This solidarity involves refusing to participate in and benefit from unjust, oppressive laws. Kingdom people are called to obey societal laws insofar as this is possible (Rom. 12:18; 13:1), but when obedience to the laws of the land conflict with obedience to God, the laws of the land must be broken. As Peter said, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” when the two conflict with one another (Acts 5:29). Of course, as with Jesus, this civil disobedience may bring us under the power of the sword—and that is the point. When we, following Jesus’ example, allow ourselves to be unjustly crucified at the hands of an unjust, oppressive regime, we serve the oppressor by further exposing the ugliness of the oppressive regime. Our love for the oppressed and the oppressor heaps “burning coals on their heads” (Rom. 12:20) and puts to shame those who malign us (1 Peter 3:16).
Third, while this approach will always place self-sacrificial love at the center, it will look quite different from situation to situation. The way Gandhi united Indians and others and led them to nonviolently resist unjust British rule was different from the way King united blacks and others to nonfiolently resist unjust Jim Crow laws. What is effective in one context may not be effective in another. So kingdom people need to be “wise as serpents” in how they approach issues of injustice, just as they need to be in their approach to evangelism and all other matters (Matt. 10:16). Shrewdness is not inconsistent with the kingdom of God, for it’s not inconsistent with Calvary-like love. To the contrary, the kingdom that Christ established and is now growing is a subversive movement that depends on shrewdness.
Thus, it’s imperative that in any given context, confronting any given issue, kingdom people seek the “wisdom from above” (James 3:17). This is the kind of wisdom Jesus always manifested in his dealings with the religious authorities of his day, and the kind of wisdom both Gandhi and King consistently exhibited in dealing with the oppressive, unjust regimes they confronted. It’s the kind of wisdom Oskar Shindler exhibited in rescuing over a thousand Jews from certain death in Nazi Germany—without violence—and Paul Rusesabagina exhibited in protecting over a thousand Tutsis from Hutu genocide in Rwanda—again, without violence. It’s a godly wisdom that is willing to suffer for others and that can discern the most effective way of doing this. It’s a wisdom that effectively manifests the life and love of the kingdom of God, while exposing the demonic dimension of the kingdom of the world.
Of course, many have argued that this approach is naive when one is dealing with evil people empowered to make and enforce evil laws. Such people cannot hope to be converted, it is argued: they must be overpowered. This is the very kind of thinking that was behind Peter’s use of the sword and that has fueled the bloody “power over” merry-go-round throughout history. It is, sadly, the staple of the way all versions of the kingdom of the world operate. Yet from a kingdom-of-God perspective, we must simply conclude that if it’s naive to think there is an alternative “power under” way of addressing issues and changing the world, then so be it. The attitude of the kingdom-of-God citizen has to be that we’d rather lose by naively following a Calvary-like approach to issues than win while trusting the “power over” approach to issues.
While our goal is to be faithful rather than pragmatic, experience has shown that Christ’s approach, while costly, is often effective —the liberation of India from oppressive British rule and the acquisition of civil rights for blacks in America being the two most noteworthy examples. But even when it looks like this approach doesn’t work, even when it looks like evil triumphs by putting us and others to death, the kingdom person is to remember that it’s still a “Good Friday” world. We are to have faith that things will look different when Easter morning arrives. The ultimate hope of the world is not found in achieving victory now. The ultimate hope of the world is the resurrection, when all things shall be reconciled to God (Col. 1:20). Then we will see that no act of kingdom love has ever been wasted.
In the meantime, faithfulness to our Lord rather than carnal effectiveness in gaining the upper hand in the affairs of the world is to be our guide.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
INTRODUCTION
Gregory writes, “This book may well irritate and offend you at times. You may never agree with me. But I believe that wrestling with these issues will benefit you nonetheless. I only ask that you hear me out.” (11) Having read the introduction, what questions do you have about this book’s premise that you hope to see addressed in the coming chapters?
In John 18:36, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” What implications do you feel Jesus’ words have regarding how you express your political views? What implications might Jesus’ words have on how much weight you place on your political views?
Do you know anyone who has been put off by Christianity because of American Christians’ tendency to link their faith with their politics? What messages do you hear repeated?
In what ways do you exercise “power over” those around you? In what ways do you exercise “power under”? Can the two ever co-exist? If so, how? If not, why not?
Do you agree that “while t
he way of the kingdom of God is always simple, straightforward, and uncompromising, the way of the kingdom of the world is always complex, ambiguous, and inevitably full of compromises”? (15) Why or why not?
CHAPTER 1: THE KINGDOM OF THE SWORD
“Though all versions of the kingdom of the world try to influence how their subjects think and feel, their power resides in their ability to control behavior…. Laws, enforced by the sword, control behavior but cannot change hearts.” (18) Christians often turn a relationship with God into moral behavior modification, both in the community of faith as well as outside of it. Do you think the world could become better if we focused more on transforming hearts and less on controlling behavior?
God does not create or ordain kingdoms of the world, but rather orders them (19–20). What is the distinction between these? Does this distinction change your view of God’s sovereignty or affirm it? If it changes your view, how?
Gregory writes, “Satan, the ultimate ‘power over’ god of this age, watches the bloodshed with a demonic sense of amusement.” (24) A study by the Barna Institute showed that roughly eight out of ten Americans call themselves Christians, but that about six out of ten reject the existence of Satan. Do you believe Satan is real or simply a caricature for evil? Support your position with Scripture.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some claimed that the only way to end the conflict was to “rid the world of evil.” (26) Is this ever possible apart from the second coming of Christ? Why or why not?
The Myth of a Christian Nation Page 19