I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
Letter April 16, 1963, From Birmingham Jail

 

Repeat after me, please:

Romans 13 was not written to me.
Romans 13 was not written to me.
Romans 13 was not written to me.

And nor was any other book of the Bible yet we use the words of letters, histories, narratives, poems and apocalypses as if they were. None of us would take an email written to a good friend by his wife which expressed her love, trust and desire for her husband and read it as if it were written to us. Yet we continually do this with the Bible. We have a really really bad habit of it.

Reading the scriptures in context is a must; reading it out of context, grabbing verses to prove our point simply twists the scriptures. We end up with common or well known situations like…

Jeremiah 29v11: People think, pray, wait  decide based on this very poster friendly verse but it is a verse written to a nation of people – not to an individual. It is not God speaking to a certain individual nor to you or I; it is not promising personal provision.

Or how about this one?

Psalm 46v10: Verses 1-9 role forward like a tidal wave. God is refuge, strength, protector, thunderer & melter of earth; come and see his glorious works! Yet when we get to verse 10 <pause for silence> Be still and know… <awkward pause> and I wil be exalted in the heavens. I will be exalted on the earth.
Another poster friendly line that is twisted & miss used. I actually love when people read this whole Psalm aloud because they generally get into the flow of it and have an awkward moment at vs. 10…it just doesn’t fit our common reading. Verse 10 rolls on with the rest of the Psalm – mighty, strong, victorious. “You, reader of this Psalm – BE STILL and know that I AM GOD!” (emphasis mine) and by inference you & I are not. God will be honored not us. This verse is forceful! God is mighty and strong. I love the intent of 46v10 but this isn’t the place to prove that point.

I could go on & on with these but hopefully you get the idea.

Over the past few days, well years, this happens with Romans 13. Mainly verses 1-7 when just a bit of contextual work will quickly reveal what’s going on here. A few thoughts…

1) Romans was written to Roman believers by Paul. It was a letter that preceded his attempt to visit them. It was not written to us or any other group and we cannot read it like an email received by an acquaintance, a friend or a spiritual mentor.

Think: Who wrote this letter? Who was he writing to? What were the circumstances? What would the readers hear?

2) Romans 13 follows Romans 12. (Thank you very much! I’m here all week.)

But seriously, Romans 12 speaks of living sacrificially & clearly echos jesus teachings in Matthewe 5/6.
We get gems like…

be eager to practice hospitality (v.13)
Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. (v.14)
Live in harmony with each other (v.15)
Never payback evil with more evil. (v.17)
Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.(v.18)

Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that righteous anger of God.(v.19)
“Instead “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.”
Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. (v. 20-21)

3) Paul’s letter to the Romans as written didn’t have chapters. It is constant flow. It didn’t have the subheadings that now subtly dictate to us what the passage is really about. Paul didn’t write the pericope headings that your Bible probably has “Respect for Authority” and “Love Fulfills God’s Requirements” (both in Chapter 13).

4) Now we tend to read this section with full appreciation of Chapter 12 and Chapters 13v8-14. We read verses 1-7 like Paul is ADD and just interjects a random thought that can be used on it’s on, but it is in the flow of Paul’s intent – sandwiched between “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.” and “Owe nothing to anyone – except for your obligation to love one another.

5) Now verses 1-7 most often show up in conversations about Christians and the use of force/violence and conversations about capital punishment.

So…the intent.

We live in the wake of Luther & Calvin who both taught that the sword was the focal point of this passage and the governments right to use violent force to punish; I do not agree with this reading. Both of these historical figures lived in worlds whether the church was deeply intertwined with the state. Calvin being involved in both worlds.

So…Why pull out 1-7 from the flow of the rest of Paul’s writing? To use the sword as the focal point is to basically disregard Chapter 12 and verses 8-14 of Chapter 13.

So is the intent..Paul allowing for government intervention through mortal means or is something else there?

Do verses 1-7 in the flow of Paul’s writing deal with our owing nothing but love to our enemies, and in this time the Roman empire was the enemy of Christianity. The Roman Christians were to live at peace with them. And I believe it is indeed a reach to take this passage and use it as a blanket statement that we should support and submit everything that governments do. If this position were so, then you can kiss the American Civil Rights movement good bye. Do we really believe that?

German theologians Friedrich, Pohlmann and Stuhlmacher lay out the contextual situation well and make a compelling case in their work of Romans 13 that…(paraphrase of their research)

Paul wants to go to Rome.
He wants Roman Christians to submit and pay their taxes.

Why?

Previously Christians had participated in a tax rebellion.
Christians had been expelled from Rome. This included Priscilla and Aquila (companions of Paul’s)
He doesn’t want this to happen again as Nero is imposing new taxes.
And…another insurrection is brewing. Paul wants to be able to get to them w/o strife.

Machaira (the mentioned sword in 13v4) refers to the weapon carried by Roman police who accompanied tax collectors. It is not the offensive weapon of war or the executioners broadsword.

Paul urges them to make peace; pay the tax; do not rebel.

Paul is arguing against violent response not for it!

The context of the letter does not give us carte blanche privilige to be a part of and support government activity that could stand against the character of Christ. It is the opposite. It is a letter from a spiritual giant to friends he hasn’t met yet. He asks them to keep their cool so that he may come to them in peace.

Now.  This is miles; I mean miles a way from the interpretation that most of us have been taught of this passage. I will let you work through the implications.

Summary:

Romans 13 isn’t about the government’s authority to take life.
Romans 13 isn’t about our duty to just mindlessly obey governments. Just in the past century this reading has lent its aid to apartheid in South Africa and the atrocities of Nazi Germany. The Kairos Document from South Africa calls this out as the Churches slide to a “state theology.”

Romans 13 is about Paul (a respected apostle…late in his life) asking a group of insurgents (as the Christians were in this culture) to keep their cool. Live at peace. Owe only love…I’m on the way & can’t wait to meet you. He speaks from a specific situation to a specific situation and this passage is not a unilateral manifesto on church-state relations.

Over & over I’ve seen this verse beaten up and abused. I saw it a number of times on Monday and Tuesday. It was used to lend support to the killing of Osama Bin Laden or if not support to the killing at least to support the government. It seems to often be used to suit our own need to win and take revenge. We have treated it with as little respect as Ike gave to Tina or Chris gave to Rihanna.

I’m not sure where the problem lies. I do know that if I handled my wife & kids the way the evangelical church has handled this passage, I would have nothing of a marriage or family left. I also think we as teachers of the scriptures have got to do better. We are much more students of the cool and trendy than we are of the scriptures and our story or our history.

We must, must do better than this.

Peace ~

William

Suggested Resources:

Free Bible Commentary and Resources (Utley…Don’t let the suit & tie fool you. Great, great teaching here. Grounded in history.)

A response to Dr. Piper’s Commentary: Is God Glad Osama Bin Laden’s Dead?

So after a comment here and a post there, this is my official dive into thinking through & discussing the killing of Osama Bin Laden and really maybe a more important point – our response to this event. I took a few weeks off of blogging/social media. I decided to do this during Lent as Easter approached. May 1 would be my re-entry day. I should have waited ’til Cinco De Mayo.

(I must admit nervousness here. Over the past few weeks, more specifically since the TO HELL or NOT TO HELL debate and after reading Facbook once news of Osama Bin Laden’s death broke, I have determined that the two people you better not speak against are John Piper & George W. Bush. Both seem to be beyond iconic in circles. I know people that would care less if I called their grandmother’s vile ugly names than to speak cross of these to gents. So…knowing full well that some of you who I regard as friends and some of you who are not, will not jive with this response…I go forward. Mer actually asked me why I was going to do this post and more to come this week.

The answer is simple, I hope I’m protecting and feeding sheep. I believe with very little real reservation that teaching like this is way off course & helping us to justify our own American exceptionalism, entitlement and violent tendencies. It bouyes our greed that is often met through economic and military expansion. I believe that several things said in this letter will do nothing more than to help continue to spread or deepen the historic spiral of  violent activity. Seen as if it were ours to do by divine right or mandate. I believe that this theology and our mixed messages (like delighting in death) taint the gospel message and diminish the glory of God. Messages that I do believe Dr. Piper cares greatly about.

Dr. Piper opens his post with what I believe is a very true statement, “God’s emotions are complex – like yours.” He then proceeds to point out his opinion that God does not and yet does delight in the death of the wicked.

The first concern that I have  arrives in his belief that God takes delight, at some level, in the death of the wicked. Not only do I disagree here but also am perplexed by the next statement that “there are things in every death that God approves in themselves…” Now if he means God “Okays” some things so that the events happen, okay I can see that. If he means that God shakes his head in agreement…giving a big “thumbs up” at the occurrence of the events, I completely disagree and do not believe that he would be more inclined to do so with the wicked. I see no scriptural precedent for this thought.

I cannot imagine Jesus…
the image of the invisible God; (Colossians 1v15)
God in the flesh; (1 Timothy 3v16)
The one who said, “When you have seen me, you have seen the father.” (John 14v9)
and “I and the father are one.” (John 10v30)
yet all of the Godhead rested in him (Colossians 2v9)
THAT GUY
…nodding in approval or giving approval to the death of even the most corrupt or ruthless as maybe Bin Laden was.

Or, picture this:

There’s Jesus, long dusty brown robes flowing in the dust. He get’s word that Osama Bin Ladin, has been taken down. Killed by Roman soldiers. All at once with a hop and a skip, Jesus rips forth with a Tiger Woods fist pump. “Yes!” He shouts, in delight. Then Jesus takes off like a rocket (literally, because he can) and bolts to the walls of the praetorium and joins the crowd in chants of “Caesar is Lord!   Caesar is Lord!   Caesar is Lord!”

My bet is he would weep.

Jesus even told us that we are to forgive not once, not twice but how many times? (Matthew 18v22)  This line of thinking seems to be out of line with the picture of God that we’ve been tangibly given. Before we start casting onto God what he would do we need to reason through the lense of Jesus. We have seen who God is. We have seen his character. And I’m not sure that he delights in any form of death.

Also, in the death of OBL the opportunity for forgiveness is taken away, the potential for redemption of Paulinic/epic proportion is lost, the story of Jesus, who told us to pray for and bless people like OBL, is tainted for we certainly have not done this. When we cast the OBL’s of our world off then…

A sheep is considered to be off the cliff
A valued coin is not looked for
A demoniac is left in the graveyard
And a demon possessed  woman is mocked and left overwhelmed and useless
A samaritan is left in the ditch and by a well
A lopped off ear is left on the ground
And two thieves are left hopelessly hanging on the cross.
And Jesus could have stood judgmentally in heaven thundering commands at us
instead of helplessly hanging on a cross for us.

But that is simply not our story.

No God does not delight because Jesus’ message of love, hope and forgiveness is rejected and I believe that this grieves the heart of God.

Only a brief nod to the movie story even though I believe it is faulty in it’s logic. Our opinion about movies is a judgment call. We weigh our opinions, critiques, emotions to come up with whether we approve or disapprove of a film. This can be effected by everything from lighting to popcorn flavor to whether or not our dinner sat poorly with us & we had to go to the restroom in a key moment. God’s reaction to the death of OBL is not a judgment call on his part. He did not sit on the thrown & count pluses and minuses or weigh the skills of the terrorists or soldiers determining whether this was a good thing. He responds from his steadfast character and this character took him to the cross as an offering for the sins of all mankind.

We now arrive at the part of the commentary that disturbs me the most: the complete misuse of scripture. Dr. Piper uses four texts to speak of why he says death and judgment of the unrepentant is God’s pleasure. Each these scriptures is lifted completely out of context. Each speaks to situations completely different than this. They are far far away from this situation.

Ezekiel 5v13: God warns his people, Israel, of what will come upon them if they don’t change their ways. These are not wicked people outside of his dominion. They are part of the family that he called; they are not pagan, gentile, “others”. They are members of the people who were blessed to bless the world & they need to get their stuff together. I don’t really think that we want to adopt a theology that says that when we are sinful God wipes us out.

Proverbs 1v25-26: Once again a message to the people of God. This time to prominent Judeans who were not accepting the message of Wisdom as she spoke to God’s people. Again…not outsiders.

Revelation 18v20: Maybe, maybe on a stretch on this one but here their is judgment on the merchants of Babylon (the picture of Rome or evil…however you choose to read the text.). But still the death of one man isn’t judgment on a nation or group of people and I think as well that we better be very careful labeling America as the bearer of God’s righteousness. We as a nation are pretty far from proving us as righteous. Yet the past 48 hours of conversation in social space seems to prove that many American militaristic Christians really believe that we are.

Deuteronomy 28v63: You guessed it! A verse speaking to Israel – not to pagans deserving judgment.

Unless I am misreading intent here, this is actually pretty scary. I saw friend after friend pass this around and not one person questioned this article, but why would they when they were followed by this caveat…

We should not cancel out any of these passages but think our way through to how they can all be true.

What??!!!??

We shouldn’t question? I thought we were to test everything.
This, I fear, and I hope that I am misreading this is sheer manipulation. It is someone with a platform pushing those who follow him…and their are thousands in this case, to just take his word for it. He is correct and so why would anyone who is deeply devoted to Dr. Piper’s teaching even take a second to look at any of these passages. To disagree or raise a red flag is inferred to be wrong or out of bounds here.

As well Dr. Piper I can think with all my mind, heart, soul and MacBook that a charcoal briquet would be a Filet Mignon. I can think this all day long but it’s simply not gonna be. I can think it in a boat or with a goat, in the rain or on a train, it will not work. These verse with or without the “no cancel/just trust me clause” at the end, simply from this read don’t support the point presented and to think it through to becoming truth would be scripture twisting. We practicing what we already have an inclination to do, we would make the Bible fit our dispositions.

Finally, let’s assume that all of the afore mentioned scriptures were used well and logically supported this argument. (That’s the presumed reception of the article.)

I’m not sure the next section heading should read: God is Not Malicious or Bloodthirsty

It seems that if I agreed with those readings that the case has been made that God is completely that. He has been shown to be continually abusive toward the humans that he created. I guess none of these say bloodthirsty but malicious, yes! If he continues to over & over again bring judgment as presented here, how can he not be a sadist? He setup the system.

I am going to give space to this day after tomorrow in a post on judgment but there seems to be bandwagon thinking here that this act was “judgment”. Also again Dr. Piper writes along the lines that God is exalted in truth and righteousness and in the vindication of his own glory. So are we saying that America and let’s drill in here…American soldiers are bringing truth and righteousness: at the divine level? I don’t think we really mean that. I also don’t think that we believe or want to say that America is vindicating God’s glory.

The more & more I think through this paragraph, the more & more I am reminded of McLuhan’s phrase, “The medium is the message.” No matter what our troops said day before yesterday, they were troops with guns that shot bullets which killed people. The message could have been crystal clear or completely garbled but the medium told the truth: America has the power and our desire to win and get revenge is greater than your right to live. I do not believe that God’s honor and glory (pictured in Jesus) is vindicated in this.

The next two paragraphs concern me as well but at the root of their issues they are the same problems that have been mentioned before so I’ll begin heading to the end by summarizing my concerns.

1) In the murder of the wicked evil is confronted with a stronger or more cunning evil and the message of forgiveness, love and hope as taught and exhibited by Jesus is rejected. And I don’t believe that God has space for delight in this just grief as yet another group of people have rejected what Jesus modeled and called us to model.

2) Four times scriptures seem to have been lifted from context to prove a point. This is typical of modern American theology and this is in my opinion one of our biggest weaknesses as American Christians. We have usde this lifting of single lines (proof-texting) to do everything from making inspirational prints with poor theology on them to supporting wars and the enslaving races of people.

This is in no way unique to this writer, Dr. Piper. This happens over & over again in most Christian messages all over this country. We must not go to the Bible looking to prove our own pre-dispositions. It does not matter one ounce what a pulled line of scripture means to us. What matters is what it means in the narrative or message from the original author to his audience. What did he want them to hear? What did they hear? Our trite lifting of lines gives us a Bible that can mean anything and a Bible that can mean anything means nothing.

3) Test Everything! Whether it comes from Dr. Piper, me, Rob Bell, Billy Graham, Rick Warren or Larry the Cucumber. None of us can own or define another person’s walk with God or understanding of the text. As Bob Utley often said, “We must walk in the light that we are given from our own study of the scripture and the Spirit’s inspiration.”

4) We cannot use the scriptures to justify death via warfare, torture, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, or through economic systems that yield it and then expect others to not think that our God is bloodthirsty or malicious. I feel like this very thing happened in the argument presented in this commentary.

5) Where does the idea that if a person is killed that this is God’s judgment? If so, is that it? Are they then forced to be judged again later? The idea that blessing or destruction is the result of God’s judgment is a tenuous scary argument which seems to be contradictory to the message of Jesus. And how do we prove that Earthly wrath on communities, groups, nations or even individuals is poured out by God since the tomb was found opened.

6) Along with this idea…we have some how taught people that they deserve justice. That justice should be granted in our earthly existence; this is simply not always the case and to depend on earthly justice for closure or relief says, consciously or subconsciously, that God is not enough – we need to be made whole by human means because what God can/will provide simply isn’t enough.

The Ending/I Promise: I do agree with Dr. Piper that in the grand scheme of things God is not mocked but we really need to be careful that we are not suggesting that OBL mocked God, more than we do, and that America is his hand of judgment. I am sadly feeling this in this commentary. I hope this is not the case. OBL mocked America and much of Islam for that matter; he rejected God.

I love the passage that ends this commentary. The one who had all the power didn’t use it. Jesus could have called legions of Angels and wiped out humanity for it’s terror, murder, thievery, lust, greed, wickedness, and TORTURE OF HIM. Dr. Piper acknowledges this and that Jesus endures it and goes to the cross for our Justification, but I would like to take Dr. Piper’s thought a bit further down the road.

Jesus didn’t respond as we habitually do. He didn’t meet evil with violent power. He submitted to the plan of his father and died to justify and empower all of the ungodly just like me, Dr. Piper, you (if you are reading) and Osama Bin Ladin. Sadly, it appears OBL said no to his message of love and hope. He rejected forgiveness and thus he is eternally left wanting and another of God’s creations is lost to him.

Osama Bin Ladin did many evil things and reaped what he had sown. Evil (my interpretation of the weekends events) came back to him in a stronger form….he lived & died by the sword. OBL failed. He failed to as far as any of us know embrace to story of Christ; he failed to live up to his God given potential but as well, we failed him. Terrorists are not born. Yes there seem to be people who are born with a proclivity for mischief, anger, evil and violence , but terror at this magnitude isn’t born; it is cooked in over a long time with elements of fire and pressure.

The Osama Bin Laden’s of our world exist because many of us have turned our little lights into light sabers (just run with the metaphor) or we have hidden them in fear. Osama Bin Ladin’s exist because we have kingdom built and not shown kingdom love. Throughout time and place in many, but not all instances, we have failed him and his counterparts. My fear is that much like the commentary cited, we send mixed signals: soldiers with crosses; Bibles with guns; a God who loves the sinner but who delights when he is killed.

Nope. That’s not our story.

I just wish we could get the story straight.

Peace ~

William