Why sweet defiance? In Psalm 119:23, we are told, “How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” Now these are wonderful words in every believing ear. We could do some nice graphics work with it, no doubt — along with a picture of a beautiful sunset and beach, have it made into a Christian poster, and sell it for ready money. But the sweetness of the Word of God, if truly tasted, will necessarily lead us to the next verse. “Through Your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way.” In a fallen world, true sweetness and godly hatred always go together.
All who understand the sweetness of the Word of God will also understand the corresponding need to hate falsehood. For those who do not hate subtle falsehood, overt lies, and every type of deception in between—hating all lies, whether public and private — the Word of God is not really sweet to them. Whenever the Word of God is sweet, hatred follows. For those who don’t hate falsehood, the Word of God is not sweet to them, despite what they might say.
There is a long tradition in the evangelical Church of empty and hollow pietism, where the Word of God is acclaimed as sweet, but the pietism never collides with anything contrary to the Scriptures. We desire wonderful and glorious quiet times. We taste the sweetness of the Word of God, we roll it around on our tongues. And we sing wonderful, syrupy choruses (fifteen times each) because the Word of God is so sweet, we say.
But then when it comes to a possible confrontation with evil in the world, we do nothing. This means it is not really the Word of God that is sweet to us; the sensation is nothing but the result of overwrought and pious imaginations. If it were truly the sweetness of an authoritative and divine voice, we know that we have finally learned to taste. When that sweetness is experienced, then a man will come to hate every false way. A related truth is that as the people of God, we cannot hate every false way individually without that hatred emerging corporately when we come together to worship.
We should all understand by now that our current cultural and political system is corrupt, but we don’t yet understand how much we have contributed to that corruption. Evangelical Christians do not believe that we have created this state of affairs when in fact we have been leaders in the creation of it. We are complicit.
This is why we must begin by addressing the basic corruption of our system — the moral illegitimacy of our rulers and authorities and the source and nature of that illegitimacy. Too often moral illegitimacy is made the basis for a call for revolution when in fact the illegitimacy arises from such revolutionaries. The fact that our rulers have lost moral legitimacy does not keep them from representing us well. We are as illegitimate as they are. We are ruled by bastards, but we are a race of bastards. Why shouldn’t we be ruled this way?
The Bible recognizes what we might call de facto rule. We know where we have to mail our taxes. We know what the address is. We know de facto who rules over us; we know the color of their uniforms; we understand their authority, and the nature of it. But the Bible also teaches something more than simple de facto rule. “Shall the throne of iniquity which devises evil by law have fellowship with You?” (Ps. 94:20). This is obviously a rhetorical question — we must also learn to shake our heads no, and learn to meditate on the consequences of that answer.
So what does the Bible say about true civil resistance? What sort of examples are we given in Scripture about such resistance?
When do we say, as Peter and John did in Acts, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye” (Acts 4:19). At the same time, we must recognize that there are many passages in Scripture — in Peter and Romans and elsewhere, where we are encouraged, what is more, commanded to be submissive to out-and-out pagans. We are told that we are to honor the emperor, even when the emperor was not exactly a choir boy. We are told that we are to submit ourselves to every governing authority.
In addition, at some point we must address how we are to understand the flow of history. This is simultaneously one of the most important and infrequently considered aspects of this whole bundle of civil resistance problems. What is the role of constitutions and common law and ancient practices among our people? What authority do they have, and what role do they play as God-established authorities in our culture?
And last, we must also deal with some very practical issues. In today’s Christian world many people are struggling with many different questions: “Should my son register for the draft?” “I get these nasty–grams all the time from the IRS saying, ‘your kids must have a social security number.’” “What do I do when the building inspector comes up and starts walking around my house and telling me to do all sorts of crazy things?” “What do I do when I can’t farm effectively because the EPA is chewing on my ankle all the time?” “Should I ever take any money from the government?” How are we to understand such dilemmas in the light of the Word of God? These are the issues that take up an important part of our lives and necessitate this small study.
We must also discuss our only hope for reformation in the civil order, which is reformation in the liturgy and worship of the church. We will both begin and end these posts with that question, because all these issues do the same. Although these issues vary and various solutions will be offered for various situations, it is important that the argument stand as a whole. If one post is taken out of the context of its neighors, the apparent message might be, “Well, no matter what they do, roll over. Just obey.” Or, if a different post is taken apart from the nest the message might be, “To arms, O Israel, every man to his tent!” Or, in modern parlance—”lock and load.”
So I want to urge the reader to think through everything that is said. This is a very difficult subject, and we cannot just give voice to our grievances. God will not bless the envious mutterings of slaves, but He promises to bless their prayers and labors. So we encourage the reader to make sure to think through everything that is said, and then pursue it in wisdom beyond the specific situations discussed here.
How should we as Christians, corporately gathered together in the Church, understand the modern state? How should we understand what is occurring around us? The evening news spits information at us night after night; how are we to process it in the light of God’s Word? We are not to take our signals from the right wing, or the left wing, or from some moderate (and very squishy) position in the middle. We are to seek to understand everything that occurs according to the ultimate authority of Scripture.
On the subject of “politics,” it is perilously easy for the saints to misstep. We might take one truth out of context and blow it up to function as the whole truth, which is a sure way to become a political crank — arguing that the minutes of the First Continental Congress were not properly approved or something. We need to understand all of what the Bible says on this very important subject.
We cannot simply choose sides from the current options presented. Our political system is corrupt, along with many of those who oppose it. We need to address the corruption of those in power and the corresponding corruption of those people who are out of power and griping about it. The corruptions on both the right and left wing may seem to be at odds with each other, but they are in fact soulmates, interconnected to the point that if one were eliminated the other would soon die. The secular right wing and the secular left wing need each other.
Within the Church, if we refuse to deal with the issues scripturally, people will begin to gravitate to political opinions that are consistent with their upbringing, personality, background, economic class, and so forth. But we must not divide up as Christians in this way. The Church of God is not for the rich, and not for the poor. The Church of God is not for whites or blacks. The Church of God is not for Jews or Gentiles. The Church of God is for all men and all women from every strata of human society. Consequently, when we consider politics, if we see by our own lights, going by our own instincts, then we will wind up dividing up the Church according to an alien principle, according to a false antithesis. Rather than this, we should turn ourselves to radical obedience to the Word of God.
Because of the state of our nation, there will be a wide range of responses to some of the things that will be said here. I know some will say I am a radical troubler of Israel. They will be fully expecting, by the end of this book, to have their reading of the most recent post interrupted by men with big guns and big letters on their jackets swarming in, like that last scene in The Blues Brothers. We also understand that others are going to think that what is said is far too moderate. To those, I am a temporizer, one who whispers constantly, “No. We in the Church are not yet prepared for resistance.” But the fact is that we are not mature enough to think in terms of overt resistance, and so I am not be urging such conflict.
But at the same time, I want to call for preparation for true resistance — preparation of our hearts and our minds for what we may be called to do over the course of the next few generations. Preparation for godly resistance is something that cannot be done properly in three weeks or six months. When God prepared Israel for the invasion of Canaan, it took Him forty years to get the slavery out of their collective bloodstream.
Modern Americans have a convenience–store mentality. We want our reformations the same way we want our hot coffee or slurpies — now. However we will not be ready for a true reformation for another generation or more. We cannot start subscribing to febrile newsprint magazines, get wigged out by various right wing-nut web pages, and three months later be ready to completely undo what has been done over the course of centuries. We are in the mess we are in because of the Enlightenment, along with the ongoing compromise of the Church (for several centuries) with that Enlightenment. And until we come to understand this, we are not going to be able to get out of this hole. A man can climb out of a hole, but he cannot dig out.