“Marry, Sirs, if Merlin who was the Devil’s son was a true King’s man as ever ate bread, is it not a shame that you, being but the sons of bitches, must be rebels and regicides?” (That Hideous Strength).
A fight, by its very nature, is not delicate. This is true in spiritual warfare, and it is also true in the resultant political conflict. But at the same time, we must make and maintain an important distinction. There is always a great difference between a warrior and a thug. A knight and a terrorist both kill, and they both kill for political ends. But a vast distance still separates them.
Some men fight because they love fighting. Others fight because they love what they are defending. With the former, we find malice and cruelty. With the latter, the attitude is chivalric. But chivalry in conflict is not pacifism, and it is not weak sisterism. The Christian faith does not require us to send off Little Bo Peep to slay the dragon. At the same time, the need for fighters does not ever justify thuggery, and the fact that Christian gentlemen must sometimes fight should not keep them from hitting hard. But how they hit is important. In his book The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis points to this important truth.
“Little Swine,” shrieked Eustace, dancing in his rage. “Dirty, filthy, treacherous little brutes.” . . . But Tirian with his face as stern as stone, said . . . “And peace, Eustace. Do not scold, like a kitchengirl. No warrior scolds. Courteous words or else hard knocks are his only language.”
Related to all of this, in our current morass, our demeanor must be one of patience. When a civil government has overstepped its bounds, as ours most certainly has, many Christians tend to react in one of two ways. The first group rolls over and takes it in the gut, submitting at every opportunity because the civil magistrate is “appointed by God.” “Romans 13” is repeated in mantra-like fashion. The second group begins talking overthrow, immediate secession, all while dreaming great dreams about constitutional intricacies and founding-father technicalities — before taking the next momentous step of turning their trailer park into an independent republic.
Of course there are also those Christians who have continued to play the standard game against the current establishment, in the long shot hope that there might be a fluke upset. Call it a rear guard action by delusional lobbyists. These Christians are to be commended for their perseverance, but it is only a matter of time before they realize that nobody can beat the system at its own game, on its home court, with bribed refs. Eventually, you can only become part of the travesty. When they finally realize this, most “make-the-system-work Christians” will then fall into one of the two categories already listed—complacent victims or scrappy fools. But membership status in either of these two clubs is not something to be desired, and thankfully, there is a true third option.
First, let us look at the premises of the complacent victims. This is how the argument goes: We are told in Romans 13 that the civil magistrate is God’s deacon. He is placed over us by God, and his authority comes from God, regardless of whether or not he wants to admit it. We have no authority to overthrow God’s deacon. He is there for a purpose and it is not our place to dispute what he does, whatever he does, or so the thinking goes. We may think what he does is wrong, but we can not resist it because it is from the Lord. While this sounds initially noble and righteous, if it is carried to its logical conclusion, it ends in insanity. Those who hold this position would say that if our ruler requires you to give up half your income so that he has the funds he needs for murdering people, you must not resist him at all. He is from God. How can we, the thinking might go, mere men, even vote against God’s anointed? We must not try to hinder him.
But while it is obviously true that our ruler is in place because God put him there, this in no way necessitates that we must keep him there for as long as we live. If he breaks covenant, if he rebels against the fundamental promise he has made, the covenant is broken. He remains our ruler—unless we want to do something about it. But what constitutes a “fundamental promise”?
For example, if in a local election a man is elected sheriff, and in his oath of office he swears to protect the people from violence, and in his first term crime increases twenty percent, the solution is easy. The locals can vote him out of office. That is part of the covenant. Suppose, however, the sheriff is elected and then promptly brings in the mob to help run things. If he ignores the people, and the mob keeps him in office through illegal balloting, then the sheriff has not failed in his covenant, but is rather in high rebellion against it. The solution is equally easy to see. The people could throw him out by force, although it could be a rather difficult and possibly bloody operation. In short, failures and inconsistencies are quite a different thing from rebellion — the magistrate’s rebellion, I mean, not ours.