Imagine the Quaker
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archives | newquaker.comSaturday, September 11, 2004
Hey, God! Snap, snap. Whenever I'm really bad and slip in beside Satan in some evil deed, I still can't fathom why I do what I do knowing that what I'm doing, while I'm doing it, is something I shouldn't be doing at all. I'm not thinking about the human temptation situations Paul cautions us about in 1 Corinthians 10:13, for even though God always provides me with a way out of the tempation, still I yield to it.
Perhaps this is what's happening: I am like a child who does something bad so he'll be punished. Not because I like punishment, for I don't and I've deserved my fair share of that. It's for attention. I'm not getting the attention I want from him and will even go so far as to flaunt a sin for the punishment—er, attention. As I look at it from this perspective, I see clearly that my willful sin is an act of manipulation, an attempt to turn the Father into a mere household god. Perhaps God hasn't blotted me out so that I could learn this lesson.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:58 PM
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Ever since the Republican National Convention in NYC I have been thinking again about the just war and how we are tempted to go from commitment to Christ to pagan practicability. The bulk of just war theory rests on two pieces of scripture: Luke 3:14 (John the Baptist tells soldiers to be content with their pay) and Romans 13:1, on Paul's entreaty for Christians to submit to civil authorities. The evidence for the just war as a sanction of Scripture is so slim as to be swallowed up totally by the compelling love of Christ. Although civil government is an institution established by God, it certainly does not follow from this that God necessarily approves of all individual governments, or their rulers, and it is certainly always permissible for a man to obey God rather than other men, including governing authorities [Acts 4:19; 5:29]. Indeed, Christian anarchy seems to be the logical alternative to the the unjust government that would demand that its citizens behave in ways that conflict directly with what is required for children of the Kingdom.
We really wouldn't have this issue if Constantine hadn't subsumed Christianity into the larger civil society under Roman rule. It isn't that one can't have a Christian nation, but Constantine and the Caesars after him were unable to take on the Christian model, unable to hold firm to the discipline that Christ demands of his disciples, and therefore unable to change Roman society. Instead Christianity became pagan, at least so far as the requirements of civil administration were concerned, and so what Christ called good became instead another end that could be reached by utilitarian steps over means that Christ did not call good. Historians tend to attribute the beginnings of just-war doctrine to St. Augustine, but he doesn't argue for that view at all. The main man for this is Thomas Aquinas. The just war is another medieval indulgence. The divine right of kings (and of US presidents) is a misappropriation of Scripture. At the RNC last week, Florida Republican chair Carole Jean Jordan's remark that President Bush is "a man sent by God to lead this nation in challenging times" is fantasy being paraded as Christian doctrine. [Source: AFP, August 30, 2004; archived at Religion News Blog.]
I didn't get to watch much of the RNC because of poor local coverage here in central New York, but what I did see alarmed me. Is it true that the GOP is throwing everything into the "war on terror"? Whenever I heard that phrase, it was always attached to the anti-insurgency struggle in Iraq, suggesting that we're still getting a bait-and-switch from the Bush administration. Now when I hear our leadership say the words "we will win the war ..." I just don't know what war they mean. On this I am reminded of John Woolman's observation [Journal, 1757]:"It requires great self-denial and resignation of ourselves to God, to attain that state wherein we can freely cease from fighting when wrongfully invaded, if, by our fighting, there were a probability of overcoming the invaders. Whoever rightly attains to it does in some degree feel that spirit in which our Redeemer gave His life for us; and through divine goodness many of our predecessors, and many now living, have learned this blessed lesson; but many others, having their religion chiefly by education, and not being enough acquainted with that cross which crucifies to the world, do manifest a temper distinguishable from that of an entire trust in God."
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:50 AM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
