The Little Friar

The prophetic witness of Christians in the face of the State is muted, I think, by a serious misreading of Romans 13.  Particularly 13.1:  "Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God".  I want to explore what it means to read Romans 13 in light of the rest of Scripture, in order to help us understand that we don't necessarily have to accept every line that proceeds out of a particular politician's mouth or every policy proposed by any certain politically reigning group. A caveat lector is probably in order here, though:  What you're about to read is the way I read Romans 13, which is informed by the way folks like Bonhoeffer and Barth read Romans 13 and resisted the Nazi German agenda.  It's the foundation of why I resist Donald Trump (and, before him, Obama and lots of other American politicians).  To let the cat out of the bag early:  ...

In a violent world, violence seems to be the most logical response.  So when guys like me insist violence actually isn't a logical response, we're often challenged with a typical rejoinder question:  "What would you do if, say, someone broke into your home with a gun to kill Kendra and your three fur babies?" The challenger often uses this question as a way of demonstrating that my (the pacifist's) conviction about violence is inconsistent, and that the existence of violence is necessary.  It's often posed in such a way that if the pacifist cannot give a satisfactory answer then violence is apparently vindicated, even in terms of warfare, despite the fact that the analogy between personal and collective violence is flawed.  I think the question suffers from a number of debilitating assumptions that are almost always unconscious to the challenger.  There's no such thing as a self-interpreting situation so let's get at the assumptions of the question ...

"Let your yes be yes and your no be no" (Matthew 5.37). Jesus said this.  Sitting on a hillside, delivering his Sermon on the Mount. This phrase is on my mind tonight because it seems we Christians aren't so great at this. I've had a few experiences lately with folks who love God.  They deeply care for the Church.  They follow Jesus.  But these particular words of description of disciples seem quite problematic. We all have issues (me more than most), but these folks have simply not been letting their yes be yes and their no be no.  It's not like they've had the intention of lying to me, but it will go something like, "I'll email you by the end of the week" and the end of the week comes and there is no email from them in my inbox.  Or, "Let's set up a conference call towards the end of next week", and the end of next week rolls along and I don't hear from them.  Or my favorite, "Let's set up a time in the ...

Thus far, I've been articulating an understanding of the powers and principalities that hopes to reclaim living humanly as the heart of the NT vision.  What drives my theology is theodicy -- the problem of suffering, the problem of death.  Living Christianly, I've been trying to say, is nothing more than living humanly in the midst of death.  If Americans are dehumanized by the violence of babel and brutalized in the social chaos wrought by the demonic powers and principalities, how can a person live?   How can a person live?   How can a person live in the midst of death, in the face of demonic, dehumanizing forces? The answer, I think, comes in resistance to evil .  Resistance toward death is the only human way to live.  Resistance is what gives us hope.  The biblical response -- again, an answer which also has empirical authority -- is that hope is known only in the midst of coping with death.  It is a person's involvement in that crisis...