A Few Lessons From Norway

https://www.jw.org/en/news/region/norway/Jehovahs-Witnesses-to-Appeal-Unconstitutional-Ruling-in-Norway/

This unfortunate if instructive article from the Watchtower Society's website reveals that even the Jehovah's Witnesses still struggle with the nature of antithesis. Obviously the group cannot be reckoned Christian due to their glaring unorthodoxy regarding the Person of Christ. That said, they are in many respects more obedient to simple New Testament imperatives than the bulk of the Confessional and Evangelical world. In many respects the Witnesses put them to shame. For this reason, I will from time to time 'check up' on them and read of not just their struggles but how they deal with them.

Obviously at present their biggest struggle is within Russia which has targeted them as being subversive. They are not but at the same time are. So it will always be for anyone refusing the imperatives of sacralism and the demands of its idols. The group has had its share of troubles in the United States as well in the realms of public schooling and conscription. These battles were largely won decades ago and now there's a danger of them being forgotten. My heart goes out to this group. I find them easy to speak with in some respects and can resonate with them in many ways and yet they're not Christians and I always press for people to leave them.

The struggles in Norway hark back to lessons from Church history that are worth reviewing and its clear the Watchtower folk have not learned them.

The state has turned against them because they will excommunicate members. Such basic requirements and discipline are incompatible with humanism and the liberal regime of 'rights' - which has now reached a decadent and degenerate phase in the West. The 'rights' of the individual and questions of feelings, offense, and identity trump all - except when they don't. This is highly subjective of course and the Witnesses are not liked by states and so it's no surprise that the courts would turn against them.

The first problem is that they registered with the state at all. I'm not for a moment advocating some kind of extreme libertarian or sovereign citizen-type narrative which is all unbiblical rubbish. It has nothing to do with rights and freedoms. It has to do with the fact that the state and the Church have nothing to do with each other. We obey laws and pay taxes but when we gather as the Church - it's 'nothing' in the eyes of the state. It's not a recognizable institution and should have never been tied to buildings let alone prominent ones with large steeples. All of that is error derived from the Constantinian Shift and the new ethos, ecclesiology, and ethic it produced.

The Church should never register, never seek tax breaks, have no bank accounts and the like. The Church concept of marriage has nothing to do with the state. We can marry in the context of the Church - the elder officiant should not be an officer of the state or serve in that capacity. The state license itself does not grant the marriage legitimacy in the eyes of the Church. How could it? The state marries people who should not be married - divorced people and sodomites. Why would we care what the state says about this? Why get the license at all? You certainly don't need to but it's a practical matter and the license itself is not sinful to procure. It's about legalities, taxes, personal bank accounts, medical decisions, inheritance, and the like. That's the only reason. You can go get it at the court house. The confusion of the county registrar and Church leader is not only unfortunate... it's theologically problematic.

For centuries the underground Church functioned without state sanction and Christian children were bastards in the eyes of the state. Consider it a badge of honour. We live in a society where the concept of bastardization is meaningless. So be it. We believe in marriage and while it's a Common Grace institution it takes on a different meaning for Christians. The state has no say in this, cannot understand it, and cannot sanction it - what madness to think otherwise! And for those who think this changes if the state is Christian - my words are exactly the same and understand the aforementioned underground Church functioned in that very sacral context - refusing to be married by the priests of Rome.

The Witnesses are not thinking straight on these points - not for a moment. Needless to say, the same applies for the conventional Protestant/Evangelical sphere as well.

It would be pointless to pray that the Witnesses get this figured out - as they're still heterodox. But as they are about the only example at present that one can use to illustrate these points, I hope some readers will at least start to think about these things.

Tragically the only people speaking about these things today are those who have fallen into Far Right patterns of thinking and in the name of Enlightenment Liberty they reject state oversight of anything, any kind of registration, taxes, and the like. They approach this from a completely different and largely partisan vantage point. I know of one church in a nearby town that refused to register and to adopt the 501c-3 non-profit designation that almost all churches embrace. But 'why' I asked him? In his case it's because he wants to unabashedly preach politics and activism. His sermon was a Tucker Carlson-like political monologue/rant. I'm glad he sees the problems with registration but to what end?

What I'm arguing for is something different - the application of pilgrim life and Kingdom ethics to the situation, one that Christians in places like the United States need to revisit - as do the Witnesses in Norway.