Friends,  How dare God presume to be in charge of our really awesome human government structures on this planet? We do so well when He’s not involved …  Blessings, Bob

--- --- ---

Spirituality Column #876

August 29, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

You Talkin’ to Me?

By Bob Walters

“Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities…” Romans 13:1

If First Corinthians 13 is the Bible’s “Love Chapter,” Romans 13 is its “Government Chapter.”  The Apostle Paul covered these bases well.

“Love is patient, love is kind; it does not envy, it does not boast …Love never fails” (1 Cor 13:4-8) are instructive words often spoken in wedding ceremonies.

“… For there is no authority except that which God has established” (Romans 13:1) are Lordly, commanding words virtually never heard in modern political discourse. Not in America, nor – I daresay – to my knowledge anywhere else.

While matrimony still clings – though often threadbare – to scripture, government has gone rogue.  We will “love, honor, and cherish” the prospect of a spouse, allowing God to squeeze into the ceremony if only for the day and only for lip service.  God has no such gracious invitation to, nor promotable authority in, the modern public square.

Does God actually have that authority? Yes, He does, and we’ll get to that.  Like its constant focus on God’s love, the Bible’s plenary emphasis on God’s authority colors every verse.  But where we may be willing to bargain with a spouse on mutual terms to “love, honor, and cherish” – traditional words that are civil, by the way, not biblical – assigning all authority to God just because the Bible says so is widely seen as irrational, unseemly, and unworkable.  As in, “I’m not going to let God tell me what to do!”

That is our general culture’s self-crippling, modern, behavioral posture relating to God and revealing humanity’s evil streak that brings death, not love.  And with our secularly errant, prideful, and dismissive misunderstanding of “the separation of Church and State,” no way will we accept subjection to government just because God said so.

“God has no business in government!” shrieks backwards modern Liberalism, the bureaucracy, the media, the progressives, the Woke, my atheist neighbor and, I’m sorry to say, more than a few practicing Christians who accept salvation but fight Lordship.

It is a dumb fight we cannot win.  We can resist God and ignore scripture – heck, that is Satan’s central game plan for us – but joy and order come only in submission.

Huh? Submission? We are indignant like Robert DeNiro, “Are you talkin’ to me?”

Romans 13:1-7 makes the most sense when we look at what God’s installation of civil government does for us, not against us. We may think the current U.S. government/ leadership is yucky, but it is no yuckier than the pagan Roman Empire or cruel Emperor Nero. Paul’s teaching makes perfect sense when you look at God’s perspective.

Paul is promoting a distinction between Godly obedience by Christians and the chaotic rebelliousness of the Israelites. Israel prayed for a Messiah who would kill the Romans; Jesus the true Messiah commanded us to pray for the Romans, i.e., enemies.

Paul – a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, and a Roman prisoner – understood God’s institution of human government to provide order for and protection of humans.  Chaos and anarchy are antithetical to God’s plan for humanity but natural to a sinful, fallen world.  Roman rule could be harsh but it did provide order and safety if it was obeyed. 

Our citizenship on earth, such as it is, is temporary; our eternal home is Heaven.

I imagine God sees our no-God politics and muses, “You should be talkin’ to me.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites DeNiro in the 1976 film, “Taxi Driver.”

Spirituality Column No. 544
April 18, 2017
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

By Bob Walters

Broadly, I think American culture looks at the Ten Commandments as good advice.

Narrowly, only theft and in certain situations murder actually violate modern civil law.  How one does or does not deal with God is a personal choice, as is murdering an unborn child.  Idolatry is intellectually arcane.  Capitalism largely laughs at observing the Sabbath.  Envy and greed are “good”; accepted as cultural “get-aheads.”  Whether bearing false witness – telling a lie – is wrong depends on who has the best attorney.  Child protective services will intervene if your parents bug you (if they chose not to abort to start with).  Adultery?  Oh please … just get a no-fault divorce.

And yet there they still are, The Ten Commandments, represented in stone on the U.S. Supreme Court building and physically etched or displayed in countless courtrooms and public buildings across America.  Everyone has heard of them, though few can recite them and fewer heed them.  Check them out in Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21 in the Old Testament, or just Google “Ten Commandments.”

Interestingly, in the New Testament’s most succinct listing (Mark 10:19), the Rich Young Ruler parable ticks off the last six commandments, ignoring the first four about God.  All 10 are scattered elsewhere, though “observing the Sabbath” is redefined because the person of Jesus became humanity’s Sabbath.  But our central point is not what the Ten Commandments are, but what a “commandment” actually is.

Spoiler alert: Commandment doesn’t mean what most people think it means.

Once again, thanks to Bible teacher George Bebawi for a good perspective on this as we’ve recently been studying the “submission” section of Colossians 3.  To wit, commandment doesn’t mean “have to” and “submission” doesn’t mean tyranny.

The best place to start is with the Romans: the empire, not the book.  Much of how we today regard command, control, obedience, submission and punishment comes from the Roman legal model of 2,000 years ago.  Follow the law or be punished.  Fear the Emperor, his laws, his court and his army.  Submit to Caesar or die.

God’s commandments, on the other hand, are about well-ordered life, not death.  They are directions for how things work best both before God and in human society.  The heart of the Hebrew word “Mitzvah,” translated “commandment,” much more deeply implies Godly opportunity, understanding and principles, not a threatening “or else.”

Our submission to God and others is to be a divine exercise in love and trust, not fear and tyranny.  Look at how Jesus submits to God.  Paul and Peter instruct wives to “submit to your husbands” and today’s feminist world glows with rage.  Yet biblical submission is a shared life journey of love, fellowship, trust, help, responsibility, sanctity, family, faith, hope and freedom.  Fallen people in a fallen world need to cooperate.

Before there were commandments there was love, and before fallenness there was perfection.  The Good News?  We can win it all back.  It’s called victory in Jesus.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) responds better to love than to commands.