The execution of Tiller is the kind of thing that reveals the glaring weaknesses in contemporary theology when it comes to dealing with the magistrate. We are so muddled on so many levels that when a crisis comes, we respond with simplistic illustrations, as though ethics dealt with individuals and individuals only.
The scenario usually runs like this: if you were walking down the street, and saw someone about to murder a child, would you intervene? And since the answer is always “of course,” we don’t know what to do with the apparently inexorable logic of someone like Tiller’s assailant. That’s what he is doing, right?
No, that’s not what he is doing. In the first scenario, you are dealing with a lone criminal, and if you successfully save the child, the society in which you live will acclaim your bravery, and throw their hats in the air. With the abortion evil, to declare war on the abortionist is to declare war on the whole society, which has sided with the abortionist, and has defined his gruesome practice as somebody’e “choice.” Note — at this point this is not an argument for not declaring war on the whole society. It is simply an argument against those who insist upon it without knowing that this is what they are in fact doing.
“Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?” (Luke 14:31)
We are pampered and spoiled, and we believe that civil order somehow just happens by itself. We are like city kids that believe that meat is something that “just appears” at Safeway, all neatly done in shrink wrap. We believe that if there were no police, everything would still go along all right, with maybe a few rough edges. Right.
So the issue is not whether you would step in to save a kid. The question is whether you would be willing to reduce a society to anarchy for the sake of saving that kid, when you (should) know that the anarchy you introduce is going to be responsible for the deaths of far more children than you managed to save. Generals in warfare have to deal with this kind of triage all the time, and we cannot indulge in the rhetoric of war without learning what war actually involves.
Is abortion evil? Yes. Does America deserve the wrath of God because of it? Yes. Could the Lord destroy us all for it and no injustice done? Yes. Am I the Lord? No.
This is why the magisterial Reformers had such a lofty view of the civil magistrate — they knew their Bibles and they knew the heart and capacity of ungoverned men. But even with these magisterial qualifications, is it ever lawful to take up arms against societal evil in this world? Certainly — and many times it is evil not to. But this is not the same thing as arguing for someone to take a position in a clock tower with a sniper’s rifle, all by his own self.
The American War for Independence was conducted by men who fought for liberty in full submission to the governments their grandfathers had grown up under. The modern connotations of “revolution” notwithstanding, the American Revolution was not a revolution in the sense that the French Revolution was. It differed for precisely the reasons being discussed here.
Do you want to stand against the abortion evil? Good for you. Count your troops. Learn some biblical civics. Stop indulging in two kingdoms schizophrenia. Stop accomodating academic detachment, that intellectual catnip for the Reformed intelligensia. Unless we do something like this, on a massive reformational scale, when it comes to saving the innocent, we will not be able to do it because we are not qualified.
But in order to get qualified, we will have to repent — not of our opposition to abortion, for we are opposed to that, considered in isolation. We will have to repent of keeping it in isolation, and repent of our longstanding denominational and theological traditions that keep us paralyzed. Ask one thousand American evangelical Christians, “who is the god of this world, right this minute?” You will get something like 995 responses to the effect that the devil is the god of this world. Okay, so why are we surprised when the devil governs the way you would expect a devil to govern? And don’t we have doctrinal appendices that say he has the right and privilige of governing this way so long as the Lord tarries?
But this is all wrong. Jesus is the God of this world. The devil used to be, but he was thrown down by the cross. Jesus purchased this world with His own blood, and commanded us to disciple the nations, teaching them all that Jesus commanded. This includes teaching them that butchery of their little ones is prohibited under the new king.
Until there is a reformation within the Church that brings us to this point, our impotence in the face of issues like abortion mills and sodomite marriages is an impotence that we have brought upon ourselves. So let me say it as directly as I can, with no varnish. The problem here is the American pulpit. If we want anything substantive to change, that is where the first changes will have to occur. If they do not occur there, then go ahead and grab your rifle. Suit yourself. Go save that kid. But you might as well shoot him yourself for all the good you’re going to do.