Why I'm Not a Pacifist (or Socialist)

During my time at UNC, I had several conversations with students who either were pacifists or who were seriously considering it. They were really thoughtful students, often studying a combination of Jesus' teaching (particularly the Sermon on the Mount) and the history of (and current expressions of) Christian pacifism.

Of course, just last week I was at UNC visiting a staff and a random middle-aged woman invited me a to socialist convention in Chapel Hill. There's about twelve socialists left in the world--most of them reside in France, I believe (please, no Obama comments)--and one of them lives in Chapel Hill.

But anyway, I was listening to an N.T. Wright podcast last week. And he had a brief aside on the issue of pacifism that sparked some better ways to articulate my own half-baked response to the invitation to cross over the pacifist side.

To briefly sum up, he argued that if there is nothing in place to enforce rules, then "the bullies and the bad guys always win."

He didn't elaborate much, but I think that gets to the core of it for me. Apart from a willingness to take on those that abuse power and exploit people (the orphan and the widow come to mind as the biblical poster-children for who needs protection and is most likely to be exploited) then we are conceding too much ground in the work given to us to do.

The command in the Garden of Eden was to tend to the Garden, to exercise dominion, to bring order out of the created order that teemed with life. This was good work, untainted by the fall.

Post-fall, the call to help bring order is no less in place. Anarchy and pacifism are vaguely related in that in either context, the victor will inevitably be whomever can connive, bully, and over-power the weaker, the needier, the ones who are more disadvantaged.

And so I believe that there are times (and certainly they are less often than our American history books would have us to believe) when military force is necessary to exercise holy and healthy dominion over the world.

Of course, the problem is that all those in power (even and especially Christians) are as much a part of the problem as anyone else. No one is "clean" when it comes to the question of sin impacting motives.

But to absolutely remove the option of military force, as sophisticated and thoughtful as the arguments are, seems to ultimately be overly-simplistic. The proper use of force to help keep or enforce moral order is a complex and weighty matter that I think calls us to draw upon the all the depths and breadth of the gospel.

We are commanded to care for the orphan and the widow. Is this only inclusive of acts of mercy and service? Does it not demand that we take on those who are committed to systematically exploiting the weak in ways that in some rare cases will require force?

Again, I recognize this is complicated The 'myth of escalating violence' means that responding to violence with more violence often complicates rather than solves the problem. And as Americans we are particularly indoctrinated with those myths.

But it's also a myth that providing bread to people as they march to gas chambers is finally more faithful than taking decisive action to end the oppression.

This whole thing is complicated. And that's not a bad thing. And this complication is part of why I think it has to stay on the table as an option: it demands of us as Christians that we wrestle with the truths and commands of Christ in a complex and challenging world...one that even includes those dozen or so socialists.

"Neither!" A Primer On Christians & Politics

This past week in my training for my new Area Director gig, we looked at several passages out of Joshua. Our time in Joshua 4 was rich--and reminded me of this post from a little over a year ago dealing with Christians and politics.

Since my guess is that my mother is the only one who consistently reads this thing from month to month and year to year, I thought I'd re-post for the July 4th weekend. Enjoy!

Joshua was leading the Israelites into their promised destiny after forty years of wanderings in the desert. Here's what happens from Joshua 4:

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come."

If ever any government or people-group had an officially God-sanctioned mandate to do something, it was Joshua with the Israelites. Yet even here, even as God's People, the Israelites, are about to take the land promised to them by Yahweh the angel of the Lord refuses to take sides other than His own.

Steve Shelby, my former pastor in Richmond, Va at West End Pres preached powerfully on this passage during an election year, much to the chagrin of many of his congregants. Who is God for in this election? "Neither!" Or more literally, simply: "No!"

God is not a Republican. He is not a Democrat. He is not for America. He is not for Israel. There is a third army in play in this drama with Joshua v. Jericho: God's army. And he will not self-identify with any one people-group, even though many of us would prefer to commandeer his name for our own purposes.

This is not to say that Christians should not affiliate or be committed to specific political parties. Christians are needed in both major parties to be salt and light.

But we do so as aliens, strangers, always. Neither party is the kingdom of God. Both have major flaws. We must soberly see those flaws clearly and work with love and faithfulness first to the Lord and secondly to the political parties we affiliate with.

This is not un-like our relationship with our jobs. A Christian IBM'er is to work faithfully and whole-heartedly, but ultimately realize that IBM is not the answer to the world's problems and there are going to be fundamental differences in terms of ultimate purpose.

I think history will show that the late-20th century move of evangelical Christians aligning themselves with the conservative right was pivotal in terms of mobilizing evangelicals to re-engage the political and social arena.

And I hope that the 21st century will show us mobilizing into every area of society, including both political parties, as agents of blessing, full of faith, hope, and love.

Re-Thinking Christian Creation Care Through the Lens of the Main Thing

So I've been listening to this class from Itunes U taught by Tim Keller and the late Ed Clowney about preaching. Their main beef: most stuff on Sunday mornings is all about moralism. It's all about trying harder, will-power religion, which has nothing to do with Jesus or the gospel.

So their corrective for this is to take all our good moral teaching and run it through the lens of Jesus, his perfect life, his death and resurrection. This is what takes our good moral concerns and anchors them in something much greater.

So take, for example, my posts from the past couple of days. In one, I'm talking about Christian and creation care, in the other I'm talking about over-working. Both of them are convictions about what Christians ought to do without any reference to what Christ has already done and how that frees us to live differently.

So let's "Keller-ize" one of these: Christians and creation care. Let's run the (I think) good points through the central truth of Jesus and how his life, death and resurrection color and shape how Christians need to live today in relation to caring for God's earth:

Christians should care about the environment because we know and love the one who made it. If we don't, we sin against God, just as someone who took my Jeep and ran it into a telephone poll on purpose would be sinning against me.

But here's the problem: most of us just don't care about the environment--at least not that much. All but a very few of us will make choices out of convenience and/or job security and/or fashion and/or, and/or, and/or rather than make hard decisions to live caring for God's world as we should.

But there is one man who did handle the Father's creation perfectly. He was tempted to manipulate creation to meet his own needs in making stones into bread. He resisted. He enjoyed the harvest without raping the earth. He ate and drank but did so in moderation. He fed those who were hungry.

He walked on water and calmed storms--he had dominion over all the earth but he handled that power with humility, restraint, and acted only in order to bless others rather than to serve himself.

He re-ordered disordered cells, healed broken bodies, and ultimately he overcame the grossest disordering of all things in the overcoming of his own death.

This is Jesus. He is the only one to relate to his Father's creation without malice, selfishness, exploitation, self-righteousness, pride, or wrong-headed self-abasement that misses out on the fullness of the blessings of creation.

And our work is to relate to the Father's world in Christ, through Christ, by his power, in his same Spirit, with his heart as he gives it to us. We do not act out of our own strength. We look to him and ask him for his strength, his heart, his passion and his energy to love the Earth the Father has made with the heart of the Son who knew it and loved it perfectly when he was here.

That's Christ-centered Creation Care, Tim Keller style--with a little Alex Kirk thrown in for good measure.

Caring for My Jeep and Why Christians Should Lead In (Not Wrangle Over) Creation Care

In college I drove a cool red soft-top Jeep. Unbeknownst to me, my wife had declared to her dad at some point in her life that she was going to marry the first cute guy she met with a red Jeep. I covered the "red Jeep" part, anyway.

At any rate, I loved this little red Jeep. But I loved my friends even more. If someone needed to drive it somewhere, I was glad to lend out the keys.

My friends were welcome to drive it and even take the top off. But the people who knew me, knew that I loved my Jeep. And what I found was that the ones who knew me best were the most generous--refilling the tank with gas, for example. The ones who knew me best took the best care of my stuff--they did so because they knew me and knew that I loved my Jeep.

So it is with those of us who call ourselves Christians and this whole eye-roll inducing conversation in some circles about how involved we should be in issues of creation care.

We know the One who owns the place. He has lent it to us, granted us temporary and bounded power over all that he has created. And he commands us to care for it, to tend to it.

There is no question where Christians should be in issues of creation care if we read our Bibles. We should be out front. We know the Owner. We know that he loves people more than animals and plants, but not at the final expense of animals and plants. As people who know the Owner and who have been given a sacred trust, we respect what is his and we care for it even at great cost to ourselves.

Obviously we are to do so in keeping with what is actually true and happening. And this gets admittedly squirrely as there is much pressure on scientists to "spin" research to make things look about as bad as they possibly can. There are also those who would prefer to ignore even common-sense calls to conservation and caution for reasons that mostly have to do with money.

But those who object on the grounds of jobs lost are forgetting their history: necessity drives invention, invention often (though admittedly not always) drives employment. The growth of the automobile industry spelled the end of the horse-and-buggy industry. Some people lost jobs. But many more were invented.

Bottom line: honoring and loving Christ means honoring and loving his stuff. If we don't do that, we sin against him and our vision of what it means to be Christians is too narrow. My prayer is that Christians as a global community will wake up and take seriously what it means to honor God by caring for the earth he gave us.

The Last Word on Christians in Politics

Okay, so maybe not the real last word, but the last word from me for a while. This passage of Scripture has profoundly shaped how I think about political stuff (so much so that I've blogged about it before), maybe it'll be helpful for you as well.

Joshua was leading the Israelites into their promised destiny after forty years of wanderings in the desert. Here's what happens from Joshua 4:

Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come."

If ever any government or people-group had an officially God-sanctioned mandate to do something, it was Joshua with the Israelites. Yet even here, even as God's People, the Israelites, are about to take the land promised to them by Yahweh, the angel of the Lord refuses to take sides other than His own.

God is not a Republican. He is not a Democrat. He is not for America. He is not for Israel. He is ultimately not on any side other than his own. God is passionate for His own kingdom, His own glory. We dislike people who are like this, but God is a little bit different.

For a human to worship anything other than God is idolatory. If God were to exalt anything over Himself, even and especially humans, he, too, would be an idolator. So thankfully He doesn't. He is always and ultimately for Himself...which blesses us immensely. In so doing, he remains good. That is good news.

Circling back to Christians and politics, this is not to say that Christians should not affiliate or be committed to specific political parties. Christians are needed in both major parties to be salt and light.

But we do so as aliens, strangers, always. Neither party is the kingdom of God. Both have major flaws. We must soberly see those flaws clearly and work with love and faithfulness first to the Lord and secondly to the political parties we affiliate with.

This is not un-like our relationship with our jobs. A Christian IBM'er is to work faithfully and whole-heartedly, but ultimately realize that IBM is not the answer to the world's problems and there are going to be fundamental differences in terms of ultimate purpose.

I think history will show that the late-20th century move of evangelical Christians aligning themselves with the conservative right was pivotal in terms of mobilizing evangelicals to re-engage the political and social arena.

And I hope that the 21st century will show us mobilizing into every area of society, including both political parties, as agents of blessing, full of faith, hope, and love.

"The Coming Evangelical Collapse" Freak-Out Meets Evangelicals for Obama Bumper-Stickers

Yesterday I linked at the end of my post to an article by a current evangelical (which generally means "theologically conservative," for those of you outside our little fish pond) who predicted "the coming evangelical collapse." This aticle has generated much buzz in my part of the world--I've been forwarded a link to the article several times.

Here's his first reason why the collapse is coming:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

I think here the author, as in other places in the article, has a pulse on something but overstates and misses what has already happened around him.

Evangelicals, especially in their 30's and under, have already shifted away from being solely politically conservative. We are no longer in the hip-pocket of the Republican Party, thank goodness. The preponderance of "Evangelicals for Obama" bumper stickers are a small window into this movement.

Many, many 30-something and younger evangelicals voted for Obama. I did. I'm theologically conservative and socially/politically moderate. I voted for him while simultaneously preparing to work against him in regards to the abortion issue. It's not much different from backing Bush in previous elections while simultaneously preparing to work against him when it came to issues of the environment, gun control, and bending over backwards for big business.

Much of evangelicalism has waken up to the realization that we cannot be in the back-pocket of any one political party. What's pushing many of us past the stale old partnership with political conservatism is doing what evangelicals have always been famous for: reading our Bibles.

This is not to say that political liberalism is more biblical--it's to say that neither of them are biblical, so we must walk as faithfully as we can between the two and not be either groups "pet."

I've got theologically evangelical friends and students that I work with who range from libertarian to practically socialist. There's a political broadening already happening that will help evangelicalism to mature and continue to have an influence in our culture.

This is a good thing, and something that I think just might stave off "our collapse"...at least for a couple more years.

For a more comprehensive (and thoughtful) response to the article, check out Christianity Today's response here.

Obama-Palooza

It's a winter wonderland day here in North Carolina. After a morning of playing in the snow, the fam cuddled up to watch the inauguration.

Some thoughts:

-Obama continues to be who we thought he was: a leader. That may or may not mean he makes good policy decisions, but he's tremendously poised and articulate and has "it"--that leadership thing that you can't fake.

-His inauguration speech captured "the genius of the and" that so mobilized the country to vote for him. Global leadership AND global partnerships, environmental issues AND economic growth, governmental activity AND individual responsibility, national security AND a willingness to extend olive branches.

His part about dismissing the cynics who are finding the ground shifting beneath their feet was genius--as was his dismissal of "big v. small government." It's exactly true: the old bifurcations and either/or's aren't there any more, or at least as far as most Gen X'ers and Y'ers see it.

This is a critical piece that McCain just didn't get and that I wonder if Republicans in general understand. Obama isn't just bridging in terms of race (more on that later) but also world view.

Obama's rhetoric represents the best of the post-modern over-corrective: less tribalism, less us v. them that so effectively galvanized the country during the Cold War era. Reagan traded on this ingeniusly during the '80's. G.W. tried to recycle it post-9/11. Whether or not Obama is able to live out the rhetoric consistently in terms of policy decisions and working the political machine in Washington obviously remains to be seen....but I find the early signs hopeful.

If Republicans do not want this to be the end of their parties' influence in our country, they will have to find ways to re-cast some of their primary values in terms that connect with the next generations willingness to embrace "the genius of the and" rather than the old dichotomies that no longer seem all that relevant.

-Pulling back a bit, let's just marvel for a moment at the 44th peaceful transfer of power in our nation's history. In the grand scheme of history, this is one of the most breath-taking and unexpected things imaginable.

-Finally, for those of us who take the Scriptures seriously, today was a tremendous day regardless of who you voted for. The Biblical picture of "powers and principalities" at war against God's created order has manifested itself most powerfully and grotesquely in our national struggle with racial issues.

Today, in the peaceful transfer of power to an African-American president, I think we at least partially exorcised a national demon.

Wise Turks?

I recently read a great quote by Martin Luther about politicians and faith: "I'd rather by ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian."

Of course, given the way things are going around here with the stock market, perhaps the best idea might be to go ahead and move to Turkey.

But then again, I did just have my "proud to be an American" post yesterday, so maybe I'll just stick it out here and see what happens.

Whichever of the two Turks that we choose from will have his hands full: a messy and unpopular war, an economic mess that no one really knows how to fix, and lots of other potentially explosive issues to deal with as well over the next four years (Supreme Court justices, and all the fun abortion/gay marriage stuff that entails).

At least we have Saturday Night Live skewering politicians recreationally to keep us entertained.