A Church, a Church-affiliated campus, with a police force?
Why the controversy?
This move by an Alabama PCA is hardly surprising and will
even be praised by many. Not a few Evangelicals are confused as to why this
would even be an issue. It's normal for colleges and universities to have
police forces, so what's the big deal? Why are people so bothered by this?
Many a lost person just finds some incongruity with the
notion of a 'Church' having a police force. They're right though probably for
muddled and misunderstood reasons.
Christians are the ones who should be most disturbed by this
and yet it's unlikely that very many Conservative Bible-focused voices will
speak out. A lot could be said but for starters I will raise just a few issues
for consideration.
1. There is a great deal of confusion with regard to
Christianity and American narratives regarding guns and violence.
To many Christians, guns are as American as Apple Pie. This
troublesome simile is exacerbated by its synthesis with Christianity and
Biblical ethics.
The thinking goes something like this. Guns are an essential part of American culture.
American culture is Christian. Therefore gun culture is part and parcel
compatible with Christian culture.
Few actually put forward such a syllogism but if you read
between the lines, it's actually quite common.
This reasoning can be dismantled on various levels. No doubt
guns are a big part of American history and identity and no doubt much of
American culture has been interspersed with, wed to and syncretised with
Christianity. But it doesn't mean that any of it is right.
The reason this question can't be honestly addressed by most
Americans is that they are unwilling to face several realities.
American Christianity has largely been heretical and
something less than reflective of New Testament doctrine.
It is often guilty of idolatry with regard to its culture,
the state, its history and wars. This has led to revisionism and an almost
endless whitewashing of its history and many crimes.
If gun culture is to be rejected it implies there is
something defective, something less than Christian about America and its
understanding of and manifestation of Christianity.
Each of these points is worthy of considerable elaboration
and yet very few American Christians we even get past the first sentences or
paragraphs of such a debate. Traditional America is so equated with Chosen
Nation/Kingdom/Holy status that it is unassailable. To question America is akin
to questioning one's faith.
That is at the very heart of what idolatry is. It's an
allegiance and worship of something other than the True God. For many an
Evangelical their 'faith' is not in the Christ of Scripture, but the Christ of
America.
2. There is great confusion with regard to the Church's
posture vis-à-vis the world.
This point is related to the previous but I mean it here in
the larger context of concepts such a citizenship. The first category addresses
nationalism and the narratives that surround it. Here I'm speaking of our
relationship to the world at large as far as 'rights' and property. Classical
Liberalism has sowed confusion and many Christians think they find modern
political theory within Scripture. Confused and even deceived they actually
come to a point that they think it's their 'duty' to fight, to strike back, to
use the courts, to wage war etc...
Ironically the New Testament raises many of these points and
comes to the exact opposite conclusion. Having rejected the pilgrim and exile
teaching of the New Testament they believe that we're in the world to fight the
forces of evil, and stand for truth wielding the sword.
It's true that we're called to combat, but the fight we fight
is not carnal, the sword we bear is not made of steel. And this point pains
them the most, the fight is often won by bearing witness in the face of
suffering. It is Christ's example that we are called to follow. That's how we
'win'. Our victory all too often comes in a form that the world thinks is
defeat. This is the wisdom of heaven that is foolishness to the world... and
they have not understood it.
They are like the rich young ruler. When confronted with the
truth, when their hearts are exposed, they turn away in disappointment. This
message of New Testament Christianity is not one they want to hear.
Filled with pride, their hubris will not allow them to say
their works, their lands and money, the things they have laboured for and
poured their lives into... are but dust and dung. They don't matter.
And it would be better to let them be stolen by gangs of thieves
(wearing badges or not) than to use violence, let alone use violence in the
name of righteousness and thus commit blasphemy.
The New Testament has no concern (or time) for the modern
Christian Right's focus on rights, guns, property, wealth and all the things
that go with protecting it. Consider the latter point. How much of the struggle
is really about securing wealth? How much ink is spilled in developing corrupt
and false theologies that justify its accumulation and protection? They whisper
lies to themselves over and over again about stewardship, legacies, aiding the
Church etc...
Read the New Testament again. You've misunderstood.
Money is nothing. It's not important. It's not even something
we're supposed to give much time to. A roof, clothes and food are all we need
and all that we should want. If there's extra, enjoy it, give it away, use it
to help others. You can't take it with you. It belongs to the world. It belongs
to Caesar and bears his image. We can take it or leave it. It serves a purpose
but we must not be enslaved to it. Do not love it.
The idea of building financial empires, gathering lands and
investments... it's all a waste and a trap. It's bondage as we then obsess over
these things and dream up ways to protect what we have. The world whispers
endless lies about money and how we should think about it. The Church and a myriad
of false financial 'worldview' teachers promote not what Scripture teaches, but
the values and attitudes of the world.
This leads to the following point.
3. There is a great deal of confusion with regard to the
state, the police, the violence they represent and how we are to think of these
things.
Paul identifies the state as that which bears the sword.
That's what the state is. It's a sword. Whether we base its legitimacy on the
vote of a Senate, the choice of Praetorians, the consent of the governed, noble
blood or some other bureaucratic procedure is largely irrelevant.
Always a pilgrim-remnant the Church doesn't play a part in
selecting who is in control. Providence takes care of that and practically
speaking it may prove boon or bane. We're not told, nor are we to worry
excessively about such questions. We're positioned in a time and place and
called to bear witness in that setting. The state will generally speaking,
leave well-behaved people alone and may even reward them. So be it. That
doesn't mean that it's holy or that 'the good' it represents is somehow related
to the Redemptive Spirit-applied Covenant. Its 'ministry' is that of Rome in
Romans 13 and Assyria and Persia as mentioned in Isaiah.
The state wields the sword to suppress evil. Will fallen man
twist and distort what is good and evil? You can count on it. Will fallen man
nevertheless in most situations still retain some rudimentary concept of right
and wrong? Yes, though at times it can pretty bleak. And yet as bleak as our
culture is, it only requires a little reflection to understand that despite all
the embrace of evil there's still a basic sense of right and wrong that
everyone agrees on. We may not all agree on the extent of what adultery,
murder, theft and lying are, but despite that there are still basic concepts
that even most lost people seem to grasp. They will find ways to justify their
adultery, murder, theft and lying but the very fact that they wrestle with how
to justify these issues and behaviours indicates they still possess something
of the basic premise, the moral foundation that makes these questions
pertinent.
The state is necessary to keep violence and chaos at bay.
That said the state sows plenty of it and the more wicked states have a lot of
blood on their hands. Rome was such a state and yet at the same time Rome
provided a secure matrix for the growth of Christianity. The Apostles were not
going to praise Rome, serve Rome or anything of the sort. And yet Rome, even
Bestial Rome was better than anarchy. Unlike many Christians of modern
Libertarian inclination, the Apostles had a pretty pessimistic understanding of
human nature and what can only be described as a robust doctrine of sin. Sinful
and evil government was still better than no government at all. One need only
look to Libya, Congo or parts of Syria and Iraq to understand this.
The Wild West of America, so idealised by many was barbaric
and brutal and has been grossly romanticised. Of course when the Christian
ethic has been perverted and gun-toting swagger and violence are glorified...
then I suppose the Wild West can be transformed into a land of freedom of opportunity,
a means to live out Christian worldview.
Government, even wicked government is better than nothing. It
can pretend to wield its power through mythic majesty, the power of ideas or by
forging a social consensus. It doesn't matter. We obey the laws because we
understand its purpose and we submit to Providential governance. As pilgrims,
it doesn't really matter all that much anyway.
We hold forth a Romans 12 ethic, one of transformation, mercy
and faith in God. We know that the Judgment is coming and we live accordingly.
We would rather bear witness of God's love and mercy than ever dream of violent
retribution... let alone calling on the state to give us justice. What a
mockery! The very notion is absurd. But of course when Christians confuse the
state with the Covenant-Kingdom such notions seem likely and attractive.
The state and its arm of violent enforcement, the military
and police are necessary evils and yet these are not institutions we as
Christians should have anything to do with. That's 'them' as Paul so clearly
identifies in Romans. We are called to a different calling. Our vocation or
calling is to be Christians, to be heavenly citizens in the midst of a dark and
demonic world. When we abandon our calling and sanctify the world (ironically
through a false doctrine called Vocation) we are in danger of corrupting Christ's
Kingdom and are in the process of abandoning it.
The state is violence. It's necessary but to live as
Christians every hour and every day of the week we cannot be part of what the
state does. As I've stated many times it is the supreme irony that the very
people who compromise this point through the false theologies of Vocation and
Dominion accuse people like me of being Separatists, of being Sunday-only
Christians.
It is they who live as Christians on Sunday and yet on Monday
morning put on the tokens of the world, sometimes literally badge and gun, and
then live by a different ethic and for a different cause. Their theology allows
them to literally put on a mask, to become hypocrites as they serve the idol
and yet profess to retain their ethical integrity as individuals.
It's a lie straight from the pit.
4. Finally the Alabama PCA demonstrates that it shares in the
almost universal confusion regarding the Church as an institution.
By institution I largely refer to a bureaucracy wed to
property, legal standing, bank accounts, offices, titles, accreditation,
security and respectability, an organisation invested in the society, part of
it, flourishing or flagging, waxing and waning along with the culture and the
social order.
The bureaucracy has a pedigree as well. It's part of a
tradition wed to the social narrative.
When this sort of thinking is applied to the New Testament
Church it creates a brilliant counterfeit, something that looks like the
Church, appears to be a plausible outgrowth of it and yet at every point
undermines its actual essence and definition.
The Church in the New Testament is a body of believers (and
their children) that is called out of the world. They are from every tribe and
nation. They are a new tribe as it were, a kingdom of priests. Their allegiance
is to no nation. And yet we do not seek to create a geographical or tangible
nation in which men will be able to visit. The kingdom is not defined as
buildings, campuses, a political boundary, halls of government or courts of
law. It's not represented by a distinctive architecture, a mode of dress, diet
or some other tangible form.
Spirit-wrought the Kingdom is something that's only
accessible to those who live in the Spirit. Its only physical tokens are the
water, bread and wine set apart for holy meetings. The said elements revert to
common use afterward. Being part of the Church has nothing to do with
institutional thinking. Those who engage in such projects do little but deceive
themselves. Prestige, pride and honours are in the end all about the same old
power and money that the rest of the lost world chases after.
The Church can certainly educate its people but our concerns
to this end are not those of the world. Yes, we have to make a living but
perhaps that question and its very nature need to be reconsidered. Institutional
trappings are not required and the idea that we as Christians require armed
men, certified by the state to wield violence in the name of Babylon's laws...
is an abomination, a true apostasy. It is the capstone on an edifice to
Baal-worship and Babel-confusion.
They're building miniature Tower's of Babel in Alabama. They
think it's okay because they've slapped a cross on top of it and it's guarded
by America's finest.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.