[TruthTalk] Trapped in the Flag

[Bill Taylor]

David, you assert that Jesus' words in Matthew 5.39 ("But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also") do not apply in our discussion concerning submitting to governing authorities. I would like to point out to you (for the sake of any readers who may be half-heartedly following this thread) that I have not yet claimed that they did. I shall be asking you a couple questions (below) as to why you even chose to point this out. But first I would like to direct your attention to another statement from our Lord in the same discourse, where I believe Jesus is very much speaking to the kind of citizens-in-submission-to-government relations that we are discussing here in our disagreement over the American Revolution. In fact, you can find his statement only two verses after he commands his hearers to turn the other cheek: "And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two" (v. 41).   What does Jesus mean when he says if someone compels you to go one mile, go with him two? He is speaking about the Roman law which stated that citizens of a Roman province, if requested to, had to carry a soldiers gear -- or in some other way go into his service -- for up to one mile. This practice was called angariaverit, from a word of Persian origin meaning "impressment of service." In Persia there were public couriers stationed by the King of Persia at fixed locations, with horses ready for use, to send royal messages from one station to another. If a Persian citizen (male) was passing by such a post-station, these couriers had the authority to rush out and compel the citizen to ride back to another station to do an errand for the king. Angariaverit found its way in various forms into Roman law. This is the law which compelled Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross of Christ (Mat 27:32).   The Jews hated this law for several reasons: 1) It was very degrading to them. After the Exodus and their return from Exile, and the freedom from captivity which both brought, the Jews were quite reluctant to yield their rights once again to yet another foreign power, especially when it was in their own homeland that they were required to do so! 2) It presented a major inconvenience. When angariaverit was called, it meant that the Jew had to suspend whatever he was doing, to do that which was requested of him -- and this again to serve a "foreign" ruler, the status of whom many Jews refused to acknowledge. 3) It was brutal. The Roman guard often exploited their authority by whipping and prodding their already shamed Jewish servants to "move it along." And 4) it presented a logistical problem. Even when his angariaverit was finished, the Jew still had a mile to travel, whipped and bruised, on tired and sore feet, to get back to whatever it was he had been doing.   By the way, the Latin root for our word "anger" finds its origin in this same word.   With this background I believe we are able to begin to apprehend Jesus' position regarding rebellion against governing authorities. Rather than speak out against angariaverit -- a practice, the brutality of which, I'm sure he abhorred -- he was completely silent. We may surmise from this silence (as well as from other places such as at his own trial) that Jesus did not consider it his vocation or the vocation of his followers to protest against the laws of the land. What should one do instead? Do as the law requires: go the one mile rather than refuse; in other words, there was nothing intrinsically wrong with angariaverit that should prompt a Jew to refuse to submit to the governing authorities on the grounds that it violated God's law.   But not only did Jesus make this very clear in his silence, he also used the occasion to speak to his hearers a transformational initiative. Instead of showing contempt for the law and hating its purveyors, the way to change the brutality of the practice was to act out in love: "go with him two." Can you imagine the bewilderment that passed over the crowd when the weight of those words began to register? "What! go with him two?" Far from giving his fellow Jews a warrant for rebellion, Jesus commanded them to do just the opposite. Don't rebel against your governing authorities; instead go with them two miles -- the first out of obedience to God (yes, God) and the second because you love them and want them to know why.   In the Jewish frenzy to find a warrior king, is it any wonder that Jesus found himself hanging from a tree?   In the mind of Jesus and that of Paul, pacifism is the door to divine intervention. Why are wars so prevalent? because over and over Christians have misused their mandate. They have become aggressors rather than peacemakers. I get a little bit put off -- dare I say angry? -- at those who think to refuse to rebel means you are weak or effeminate. "Oh you're a pacifist," as if there's something un-American about the word. Or "I'm not a pacifist," meaning you have the courage of your convictions. Well let me enlighten you: there is nothing passive about being pacifist, not in its biblical sense anyway. To love your enemy always takes more energy than it does to hate him. And do you want to talk about the courage of your convictions? Stand up in the Coliseum, as many a Christian did, and cry out "This is wrong," knowing that in the very act you will surely be the next to be fed to the lions. No! To love your enemy is not to rebel against his authority but to wage war in a transformative way: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds" (II Cor 10.3-4). Do you want to live in a peaceable kingdom? Christians will need to repent.   David, you used the scenario of some evil man having his way with my wife to draw out of me whether I thought it was right in that situation to turn the other cheek. You then justified your very intrusive inquiry by defining the family unit as the most base form of government. I do not disagree with your assessment (although I wouldn't use it). In a family the wife is to submit to her husband and children are to honor their parents. My question for you, as it pertains to your scenario, is this: Whom does the bad guy represent? If it is another governing authority other than the husband (in this case England), then what does he have to do with our discussion? In your scenario the wife is analogous to America and she is to submit to her husband, represented in the scenario by England. Where does the bad guy come into play? If you want to discuss the merits of defensive action against an invading army/nation, perhaps we can do so at another time -- but not under the heading of submitting to your own governing authorities.   To wrap this up, let me say that I know there will be some, including yourself, who disagree with me -- that, it seems to me, is a given. The reason I am not impressed with your justification for calling the use of military force a means of love in certain situations, is because it draws too heavily upon the silence of Scripture. Yes you do a very thorough job of reading between the lines -- but when you do so, it seems to me that you are reading over the top of some very explicit statements. I am not comfortable doing that, not when in the act I am putting people's lives -- and perhaps their right standing with God -- in harm's way. I would rather be wrong about the plain reading of a text and send no person to his ultimate demise, than risk being right, having argued compellingly from silence, when the stakes are so very high. I'm with Terry on this one: Where was your teaching during the formative centuries of the Church? If ever there were a time to speak out and band together in rebellion against an oppressive regime, surely it was then. In view of the extreme persecution of those early Christians, I dare say our American forefathers knew only "light and momentary affliction." May the Lord have mercy upon me if I am wrong, but they should not have rebelled.  "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." -- Romans 13.1-2 Bill