----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 4:17
PM
Subject: [TruthTalk] Trapped in the
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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 soldier's 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
