Tag Archives: submission

The rulers without rules: What would Jesus do?

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Christians are scrambling to reorient their thinking, now that Trump and his rulers have upended their experience of the Empire. The church has had a rather large comfort zone in society for the last 50 years. As a result, we had the freedom to “mail it in” rather than showing up in faith. Now there is crisis every day, our wealth is dropping, government services are diminishing, and the world is no longer functioning under Pax Americana. It is back to every MAN for himself.

When you ask “WWJD?,” you’re asking within a new context.

Jeffrey Goldberg outs our rulers

The recent Pete Hegseth debacle is a good example of the new context, as we see the faulty new rulers acting faulty. Hegseth and the major players in national defense actions (except the President and the General in charge!) were making decisions about bombing a Yemeni apartment house via Signal this month. The fact they brazenly did that (maybe to hide what they were saying), and now that the whole world knows what they said, lets everyone know that truth and law-following are fundamentally NOT central to the new regime. I think the Signalers firmly believe whatever they say is the truth because they said it. I think they might be narcissistic (or psychopathic) enough to think they are like Allah speaking the Koran to whoever has a pen.

This problem, in a long series of problems, goes like this. A national security advisor, Mike Waltz, included Jeffrey Goldberg, a reporter and editor for The Atlantic, in the group chat on Signal. The very chat they had to know was easily monitored by Russia and the China was also being delivered to someone who should never have been in their group chat. Goldberg did not have clearances, of course, and one would suspect he just might broadcast what they were trying to keep secret. When Goldberg made it known he had listened in, the liars doubled down, as the liars who run the country do. They tried to create their own media reality, or at least tried to produce enough fog so no one would remember what’s what after the news cycle was over.

Using the communication platform was wrong and what they were planning on it is probably a war crime. But instead of admitting that (God forbid!), the president said nothing they did was illegal or classified. The Trumpspeak was: “The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.” The story goes on. Goldberg has already published the screenshots of the conversation belying what Trump asserted.

That story depicts the new context in which we live in a nutshell. What is a U.S. Christian to do?

We’ll sort it out on Reddit

For years a great number of Christians, following what they called a “literal” understanding of the Bible extracted Romans 13:1-7 as plain-speaking instructions for how to relate to the government: one should submit because the rulers are God’s servants and you’ll be judged if you don’t. So they teach we need to submit to Trump; he’s the ruler.

In relation to something I posted in Reddit about Elon Musk, a person engaged me in a little chat about that passage last week.

Person: What do you think about the Romans 13 doctrine of government?

Me: If you start it off with the last verse of Romans 12: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” And end it with 13:8: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” I think it can make sense. I usually say I need to tell the government what to do because it is as faulty as I am. But most of the time, I let God handle it.

I would not call Romans 13 a “doctrine.” It is missional advice for church planters and survival tips for the persecuted.

Person: you wouldn’t consider the first six verses of Romans 13 to be doctrine of government?

Me: I think people turned it into doctrine. I don’t think Paul was writing doctrine. He was being practical about how to live in the world as God’s people. He obviously teaches “theological” truths. But if you put Romans 13:1-7 in context, as I noted, it really should not be extracted as if Paul were writing a treatise.

Obviously, plenty of people base their doctrine of government on those verses. If they chose to extract John 18:36-9 the doctrine would be quite different, I think. If they decided the Sermon on the Mount was a blueprint for government, the world would be transformed.

Person: how do we know if someone is intending to write doctrine?

Me: The word “doctrine” came to have its present meaning in Middle English.

I think there’s a good chance Paul did not intend to write the kind of “doctrine” we argue about these days. Paul’s writing in Romans 13, when put in the context of what he says before and after it, is a classic example of his two-tiered thinking, which I assert here.

In essence, I think would agree he’s saying, “Jesus is the Lamb on the Throne, the Way the Truth and the Life. His law of love rules the citizens of heaven; by following him we fulfill the Law. Our submission to the authorities is based on our submission to Jesus, first.”

What is “due” to whom?

I certainly do not feel I “owe” respect to Pete Hegseth because barely half the Senate confirmed him and he is now “in authority!” I don’t think Paul lives in unqualified submission to the Roman or local governments, even to the town synagogue!  There are actually quite a few qualifications in the Romans 13:1-7, which the Constantinians made a “doctrine” of government.

  • The whole section begins with “Let ,” which I take as Paul including us in his strategy. “Let’s keep submitting ourselves to the authorities, who God raises up and deposes according the same mysterious working we accept when we consider everyone coming before the judgment seat.”
  • I think his teaching is quite practical, not an abstract theory. In essence he says, “It is smart to keep your nose clean when it comes to the rulers; we have bigger fish to fry than subverting or running away from the prevailing law. The authorities are supposed to be doing good for us. Let them.” That being said, I think it would be ludicrous to say Paul thinks governments are going to do him good, be just, or act godly. He has already noted in his letter that the Roman Christians are facing persecution (chap. 8) and the government is not doing them any good. Quite the opposite of doing him good for doing good, the authorities have been misleading or chasing Paul ever since his name appeared in the New Testament!
  • Then in verse 7 he says, “Give to everyone what you owe them” (in the NIV). This is a misleading translation. I think Paul is talking about paying what is due. He’s saying, “Keep yourself on the right side of the tax collectors and tariff officials; don’t go underground or smuggle. Tip your hat and make friends with the enemy. To those to whom honor is due, bless them. Give honor as it has been given to you; they are as undeserving as you are.”  That’s how the subjects of the Lamb are subject to the authorities.

I wish the powermongers who wrote doctrine to justify their hegemony would have been more honest. Had it been as unsafe to be themselves as it was for Paul, maybe they would have written a different way. We are certainly going to find out what we write, now that millions of us are undermined or persecuted by the powers-that be!

Christ Before Pilate — Mihaly Munkacsy (1881)

Introducing Romans 13:1, the NIV heading reads: “Submission to Governing Authorities.” But we all know the editors of the NIV made the titles, not Paul, right? The supposed summary of submission to the authorities should include vv. 8-10

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

A Jesus follower submits to the authorities in grace and truth, discerning the spirits. You owe them nothing and can afford to give them everything. They have no authority unless God gives it. If they do not fulfill the law of love they receive the submission they are due. We are fulfilling a Law to which the government is ultimately subject, too. They are only the “law” provisionally.

Unlike our present rulers in the U.S. executive, Paul says Jesus followers don’t commit adultery, kill, steal, lie or covet. We love God with our heart, soul mind and strength in Christ and love our neighbor as ourselves. As such people, we salt our society with truth and love, with energy and compassion. We will not invite the wrath of the authorities unnecessarily. We will do our best with the leaders we have. But we will never give up the rule of Jesus for anyone.

I think our terrible rulers might end up doing the corrupted U.S. church a favor. If you are praying for a revival, Trump would be a good cause for it. In the past, our strength of character and our purposeful living regularly saved the country from its worst instincts. But an aggressive minority of “Christians” in the 21st century have lusted to claim their self-ordained right to be rulers. Project 2025 is their manifesto. The abjectly corrupt Trump is honored by them as he implements it, even though most of them admit he scorns the commandments Paul uses as markers above.

I believe their project will come to a bad end, as Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth so ably demonstrate. But I hope the church, in general, as it is starting to do in many places, will get out from under its faulty submission doctrine and follow Jesus, to whom every knee will bow. We can’t mail it in anymore — especially since Elon Musk is likely to destroy the postal service any day now.

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Keeping the Covenant Real

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Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. –Ephesians 5:21

Paul writes the sentence above to exhort the Ephesians to a new way of relating. He immediately proceeds to exhort husbands and wives, in particular, to relate in that new way as married people, to have sex like that, to form families suffused with mutual respect and fidelity, just like Jesus relates to the church and the church relates back. I think Paul presumes (wildly assuming the presence of the transforming Holy Spirit, as he is wont to do!) that most of the believers to whom he is writing know how Jesus and the church relate, so he can boldly exhort people to apply the example to their marriages and to other relationships in the body.

Such love is a struggle

We’ve been struggling to be that deep as we ponder living in mutual submission as a covenant people who call themselves Circle of Hope. It all came into focus when we talked about the Love Feast this past fall among our leadership team and then at our discerning retreat. Oddly enough, the Love Feast had become a very popular public meeting! People would invite their mother, their unbelieving friends, people would wander in off the street. We were not sure what to do with that.

In some ways it was kind of great. It is exciting to think that people are interested in looking at Christians making love at their covenant members celebration. But it was also kind of creepy to have people looking in, being invited into the intimacy of communion when they don’t even believe, even being called on during the event to accept people into a covenant they don’t intend to make. I suppose that since we put up all our intimate pictures on Facebook these days and invite strangers to look at them (that is, until we understand the privacy controls – which I don’t), we are kind of comfortable with public “intimacy.” And I suppose that since so many of us have sex with random people and spend a couple of years living with our spouse before we marry them, we don’t have a great deal of respect left for the boundaries of covenant.

 

So what about the Love Feast?

So we did not know what to do about the Love Feast. On one hand, by being so public about it, we invited people to drink the blood and enter the covenant circle when they had no idea what they were doing. Paul says this could make a person spiritually ill, handling spiritual things one has no business handling! On the part of the covenant members, it might be something like leaving one’s door open and letting the toddlers watch you have sex, inviting a person into intimacies they have no way of processing.

What’s more, on the other hand, it was awkward to be asking those who have a common covenant to listen to a person’s story, to accept another person into their covenant when they knew that all sorts of people at the feast had not made the covenant themselves. That dilutes the idea, at best, and mocks it, at worst. In some ways, allowing that to happen, is caving in to the strange propensity we have these days to always be a show, like it would be OK to be making a covenant with the body like we were on reality TV with people watching, somehow virtually – but then it would be “like” doing it, rather than doing it. It is not a show, we are really doing something!

Trying to hold on to the depth of covenant

There are many ways we follow Jesus. Most of them are public but some are done in secret. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honor, others reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and personal interests, others are contrary to both. In some ways we may please Christ and please ourselves, in other ways we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves. In all ways, Christ is our way and gives us the strength to follow.

The covenant we make with the others in our face-to-face, heart to heart rendition of the church is more on the secret side, like closing our door and praying to our Father in secret. We have the relationship, we act on the relationship and then we express our character in public. The act of making a covenant and making covenant love is more likely to be difficult, not just another party. Crossing the boundary into a public allegiance to the body of Christ is more likely to bring reproach, and should not be diminished so it seems more “normal.” Committing to treat people like Jesus treats the church, becoming vulnerable to receive the love of Jesus like the church receives grace is probably contrary to the natural inclinations and personal interests of most of us, so it must be entered with reverence for Christ if it can be entered at all, Christ who is the one who gives us the strength to make such submission, who so completely demonstrates such submission.

So we are figuring this out. We think it is crucial for people to learn to make a covenant like Jesus makes with us, if they are going to be a long-term believer, if they are going to live in love and truth. I’m sure we will never feel free to be invulnerable and restrictive and so bar the door to people who shouldn’t be at the love feast – that is not our way, and not the Lord’s way. But we need to get better at not luring people into places we have not prepared them to be and to make sure we are maintaining our sense of being the people of God with an unalloyed allegiance to Jesus in an age where all the forces are working to erode that.