Posted on 09/17/2014 6:23:14 AM PDT by WXRGina
Last week on Facebook I was chastised by a fellow Christian for being politically active. She accused me of blasphemy, idolatry, apostasy and scripture twisting for my defense of Christians being engaged in the public battle for the soul of our nation. She is apparently one of the “pacifist” Christians who believes that we are never to speak out against the evils done by civil government, because God ordains all authority. Our conversation thread was on a press release I posted from Senator Ted Cruz announcing his proposed legislation to strip the U.S. citizenship of any American who joins ISIS.
The lady, who uses a pseudonym of “Barefoot Inhispresence,” wrote that God is sovereign. Then she cited Daniel’s proclamation (2:20-21) that He establishes kings and removes them, and she takes Jesus’ silence before Pilate to extrapolate that we should remain silent in the face of governmental injustice. I wrote to her, “Yes … the Lord is sovereign. He also calls us to expose the works of darkness.”
To which she responded:
As they apply to the Church, not rant about the gvmt. There is nothing in scripture telling us to focus on that except to pray for those HE has set in authority. Oh, except that to grumble against them is blasphemy against Him, and He takes that very seriously. Politics are not any focus in scripture…it should not be ours either. We are here to proclaim the gospel, period. And to make certain the Church is not being tainted by leaven. Like a bunch of professors who serve the enemy by distracting believers from their one commanded duty…to proclaim the gospel. And to obey the Lord.
To that, I replied:
How many times did Jesus rebuke the Pharisees? Remember, the Pharisees were not only the “religious” leaders but also the political leaders of Israel at the time. Jesus had strong words for the injustice and the hypocrisy the Pharisees displayed.
There are many evils that Christians have rightly condemned throughout the ages, slavery being one of them. Using the argument that Christians should never engage in the “culture wars,” slavery would not likely be abolished anywhere, and no one would speak out against the mass slaughter of pre-born babies. We have no way of knowing how many lives have been saved because Christians have been willing to target abortion mills to pray and try to persuade women not to have their babies killed.
Our Founding Fathers were overwhelmingly Christian, and if they believed they should never speak against tyranny, such as that of King George, there would be no United States.
That was enough for her. She then threw the harshest of labels at me, a fellow Christian, and afterward “unfriended” me. She wrote:
Ah, that’s too bad. You are more wedded to your “cause” than to the word of God in context and application. You ARE good at fallacious straw man diversions though. Very disappointing. Well, sis…that is idolatry, as well as blasphemy (again, only according to God in His word in Romans 13…you can easily ignore that some more I’m sure). Well, I did what God said to do, I warned you. Your choices and your idols are on your head not mine. But this ungodly, scripture twisting apostasy…I shall not “walk with”.
Putting aside the fact that this woman is a stranger to me who knows nothing at all about who I am, what I do (other than the limited knowledge she can glean from my columns and Facebook posts) or the status of my walk with the Lord, and setting aside her condemnation of me (the very kind the “judge not” scriptures are actually talking about), is she right in her claim that Christians should not be politically active? This is a question with which many Christians have struggled, due to the lack of overt New Testament admonitions to do so.
Yet how many Christians throughout history, inspired by the fire of God’s Word in their spirits, have stood firmly against evil actions by civil governments? Were they wrong? Was William Wilberforce wrong, as a member of the British Parliament and a Christian, to work to abolish slavery and to speak out against other societal ills, while advocating for God’s morality in the public square? Was Telemachus the monk wrong for standing against the barbaric Roman gladiator spectacles, for which he paid with his life? Were our Founding Fathers (most of whom were Bible-believing Christians) wrong for standing against the tyranny of King George, standing to the point of violent revolution, in establishing a nation by God’s grace? The list of Christians who have firmly engaged civil government with the powerful weapon of God’s truth is long and includes the apostles and Jesus Himself.
As I said to “Barefoot Inhispresence,” Jesus strongly rebuked the political-religious leaders of Israel, and this includes His fiery demonstration against the money changers in the temple. The apostles regularly defied the civil authorities when they refused to silence the message of the Gospel. You could argue that this was all exclusively in the furtherance of the Gospel, but does the Lord not call us to apply His Word to all areas of our lives?
Writing at the Good News Herald, Gary DeMar states:
First, while it’s true that civil government is ordained by God, so are family and church governments. If there are problems in a particular family or church, shouldn’t we be about fixing the problems? Civil governments don’t get a pass when they do bad things.
Second, is praying for those who are in authority all we should do? How often have the people in Germany been criticized when the majority of the population did nothing when they learned of what Adolf Hitler was doing to the Jews? Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian, who with her father and other family members helped many Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust during World War II. When Jews entered their watch shop, should they have sent them away and told them that the Nazi government was “ordained by God” and that they would pray [for] the frightened Jews? Should we praise the informant who turned them in to the Gestapo because the informant was “supporting the God-ordained” government?
… Third, it’s the duty of citizens to insure that civil governments stay within their jurisdictional boundaries. This is exactly what the apostle Paul did when he questioned the authority of a civil official regarding his rights as a Roman citizen (Acts 22:23–30) and later appealed to Caesar (25:11).
… If it was right for Paul to “protest” this single violation of his rights as a Roman citizen, why is it wrong to protest constitutional violations given the fact that Constitution itself in the First Amendment gives us the right — the obligation — to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”?
It would be hard to support the argument that Christians are wrong for opposing government actions that God calls evil. Abortion is murder. God calls us to defend the powerless among us. How can anyone justify standing by silently as millions of pre-born babies are slaughtered in the evil name of “choice”? Are the dear Christians, whose hearts are heavy with the burden of grief over this hell-born “woman’s right,” wrong to tirelessly spend countless hours in prayer and abortion mill sidewalk ministry to the women and girls who enter these dens of death?
Are Christians wrong for speaking out against the dangerous political agenda of the tyrannical homosexual movement? God calls the sin of homosexuality an abomination. This abominable sin is being used by our evil culture and political leaders as a “right” to wage a full-frontal assault on Christianity itself, as well as our God-given freedoms and the very foundations of our constitutional Republic—a Constitution and a Republic that is, next to the nation of Israel, the most God-blessed in human history.
Yes, God will avenge every wrong done by the Godless in this world, but I do not believe He desires us to stand silently by in the face of evil done by our civil leaders. Further, opposing this same evil is not “blasphemy” against the Lord nor apostasy against His Word.
In conclusion, here is an excerpt from a column by John Neish published at the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod:
Many Christians seem to be unable to distinguish between their duties as Christian witnesses and as Christian citizens. They criticize politically active Christians.
Those well-meaning Christians who criticize politically active brothers and sisters are mixing apples and oranges—using the definition of the spiritual mission of the church to criticize Christians who exercise their political rights.
… God gave us this political system. Through it, he allows his people the opportunity to influence the political process. If we as Christian citizens are to give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, we should participate. We also have a responsibility to act on our Christian principles.
We should not be content to treat political responsibility as though it were separate from faith. We are the light of the world. Is it proper for us, therefore, to stand silently by and watch those living in blindness steer themselves—and us and our children—into destruction? I feel very strongly that we will be held accountable for our continued silence.
We have the same political freedom as unbelievers. We have the same opportunity to stand up for and vote for legislation that represents our values. We have as much right to work for legislation to restrict evil as our opponents do to propagate it.
… The apostle Paul used his civil rights. Why shouldn’t we?
Frankly, I’d suspect your friend of being a “seminar caller” employing Alinsky tactics to shut you up.
Crazy sort of Christian
I’ve never heard conservative Christians speak that way
If that’s the case, it backfired badly on her. :-)
Yes, I was astonished at her, since she had been visiting my page for a while, “liking” stuff I posted and commenting. My Facebook page is almost purely politics. She whipped out her “hidden face” that day.
I, too, have pacifist friends who live in la-la land. Drives me nuts.
Good government is a gift of God and requires participation on the part of Christians in order to be virtuous. It is never an end in itself, but through government our neighbor is served, being permitted peaceably to go about his business, which is also serving one’s neighbor though various stations and vocations along the way.
If she’s really serving Alinsky, she’ll just shrug and move on to her next target.
Amen!
America would not exist if Christians were not politically active throughout it’s history.
Even more.. America would not exist if Christians had not been willing to take up arms against tyranny.
Today, Christians are losing the battle against that tyranny.
Beware when the enemy attempts to use your own beliefs against you.
I made those very points in the column.
Christians need to be in politically organized, ARMED, community groups.
Jehovah’s Witnesses enjoy the fruits of our society but give nothing in return. Perhaps she is one of them.
John the Baptist was not silent in matters of civil government. Just be prepared, as every Christian should be, to suffer persecution when you speak what is right and true. Take heart. Be of good cheer. Christ is risen, having been put to death for our transgressions and raised up for our justification before God.
Very interesting
Jesus Himself reminded Pontius Pilate that his authority as gubernator came directly from God. Pilate realized Jesus’ ministry was no threat to Roman rule & wanted to release Him but was overtaken by events.
Anyway, this critic sounds like a real busybody who is especially harsh on Christians whose activism comes from the political right.
“Unfriended” on Facebook? Oh, the humanity.......!
M4L
HAHAHAHAHA!!! :-)
I would be stronger.
Our form of government REQUIRES the participation of its citizens (even though it is ultimately flawed, being of man).
Religion is not banned, as in some countries. It is the opposite - Amendment 1. The representative process requires participation. Freedom of speech recognizes that we speak up and against as necessary. We live under the rule of law, not of a king.
So I must be aware, become educated, educate others, and vote.
This is for the good of all the citizens.
To mention in advance one critical point of difference, the colonists assumed that there was a right way of doing things. Any modern reader who lingers on the passage I quote in the Introduction in which John Cotton evokes the colonists' determination to establish "purity" is abruptly confronted with this assumption. Purity is purity, and purity is God's law, a premise Cotton translated into the argument that Scripture mandated how the true church should be organized and religion practiced........As I have learned from trying out some of this book on other historians, the Puritanism in these pages does not coincide with the entrenched opinion that the movement was authoritarian or "theocratic." For persons of this mind-set, the most "Puritan" aspect of my story may be the migrants' confidence in the "saints" and the attempts to establish "godly rule" (Chapter Three). But in contrast to interpretations that focus on social discipline or the suppressing of dissent, I bring other aspects of Puritanism as we now understand it into the story, including the currents of popular or insurgent religion that can be discerned in fears of "arbitrary" rule and ecclesiastical "tyranny," the emphasis on participation, and the importance given to consent. Nowhere do I presume that Puritanism embodied a particular political ideology, and nowhere is it translated into social control or top-down authoritarianism, for reasons I spell out in the Introduction and in more detail in succeeding chapters.
-- David D. Hall, Preface, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New EnglandAfred A. Knopf, New York, 2011....the Puritans had "a more elevated and complete view" of our social duties than the Europeans of that time. They took care of the poor, maintained their highways, kept careful records and registries, secured law and order, and, most of all, provided education for everyone — through high school. The purpose of universal education was that everyone should be able to read the Bible to know what's most important — his or her duties to their Creator — for themselves. Everyone must read in order that no one be deceived or suckered by others. This noncondescending egalitarianism was the first source of the American popular enlightenment that had so many practical benefits. "Puritan civilization in North American," our outstanding novelist/essayist Marilynne Robinson observes, "quickly achieved unprecedented levels of literacy, longevity, and mass prosperity, or happiness, as it was called in those days"....
....In Robinson's Calvinist view, generosity, liberality, and nobility are all synonyms in the Bible, and they express even better than charity the virtue that distinguishes who we are. What's left our culture, with our surrender of the common celebration of Sunday — what impressed Tocqueville as our most precious inheritance from the Puritans — is the respect, and so the time, for the disciplined reading and reflection required for us to practice the social, civilized virtues that are the truest source of our happiness.
-- from the thread Thanking the Puritans on Thanksgiving: Pilgrims' politics and American virtue....we should not be surprised to find that the Calvinists took a very important part in American Revolution. Calvin emphasized that the sovereignty of God, when applied to the affairs of government proved to be crucial, because God as the Supreme Ruler had all ultimate authority vested in Him, and all other authority flowed from God, as it pleased Him to bestow it.
The Scriptures, God's special revelation of Himself to mankind, were taken as the final authority for all of life, as containing eternal principles, which were for all ages, and all peoples. Calvin based his views on these very Scriptures. As we read earlier, in Paul's letter to the Romans, God's Word declares the state to be a divinely established institution.
History is eloquent in declaring that the American republican democracy was born of Christianity and that form of Christianity was Calvinism. The great revolutionary conflict which resulted in the founding of this nation was carried out mainly by Calvinists--many of whom had been trained in the rigidly Presbyterian college of Princeton....
....In fact, most of the early American culture was Reformed or tied strongly to it (just read the New England Primer). Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, a Roman Catholic intellectual and National Review contributor, asserts: “If we call the American statesmen of the late eighteenth century the Founding Fathers of the United States, then the Pilgrims and Puritans were the grandfathers and Calvin the great-grandfather…”
-- from the thread John Calvin: Religious liberty and Political liberty
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