In The God Who Is There, Francis Schaeffer argues that Camus missed the boat because he didn't recognize that the world is fallen. The world we see and experience is not the world as God created it to be. Therefore it's possible to fight evil in the world without fighting God.
Fine, if we're talking about disease, but what about political evil? If a tyrant instead of a plague had been destroying Oran, would the priest have been right? Does Romans 13 create a special exception for oppressive regimes? Are we free to fight all other kinds of evil, but not that kind?
Schaeffer and Chesterton write that traditional Buddhism offers no basis for fighting evil -- everything is part of God and therefore right. It seems like Romans 13 is saying that every political situation is God-ordained and therefore right -- or at least not to be resisted. Seems to create a passivity that's more Buddhist than Christian.(A clarification here -- I don't suppose for a moment that Romans 13 is prohibiting political involvement or efforts to change things within the system -- if that's an option. I'm thinking here of situations, such as dictatorships, in which change through the existing political system isn't possible. Democracy presents problems of its own, to which I will return in a later post.)
God's sovereignty should never be a shelter for evil in the world. Is that true, or one of my own ideas?
3 comments:
I have some more Union Jack flags if you need them at home...
Hi Laura,
A few muddled thoughts of my own on this complex issue; I am surprised that fewer conservative (both theologically and politically) Christians in the US have wrestled with this in print.
Firstly, if you allow, for any reason an exception to be made to Romans for unjust, evil regimes, you must allow more than 1776. I think you'd have to allow the Russian and various FRench revolutions as well, which faced a worse enemy than Hanoverian Britain? The testimony of Christians resolved to effect chnge by non-violence is moving, even if the regime they're under is oppressing them. I have just been reading a book of testimonies of Palestinian pastors and lay Christians from in and around Bethlehem. Whatever you may think of the situation in the Middle east, the way they wail and bemoan life behind the wall and yet at the same time renounce viloence is inspiring and surely more Biblical than either their stone throwing colleagues or the Minutemen of the eighteenth century.
I've heard this question argued from the perspective that Romans 13 doesn't necessarily forbid sedition led by a lower level of government against another. In other words, I'm not entitled to rebel against Queen Elizabeth, but I am allowed to obey the Prime Minister if he orders me to do so because she is acting illegally. This is the Biblical and orderly way to respond to radically unfair government. I'm not sure if you could justify 1776 on that basis.
Finally, I am more than happy to argue theoretically for democracy as a more Biblically madated system of govenement than absolute monarchy. this doesn't mean we have a right to overthrow our monarchs, it is just to argue that where possible and legal we should press for constitutional change, as in the UK has happened through the significant reduction of power by the hereditary peers.
The implications of this question are enormous: the US is far from the only former colony with a significant Christian population.
Enjoyed your thanksgiving post as well. I am also thankful for the Pilgrim Fathers.
Hi Michael,
Many thanks for your thoughtful comments. A few musings in response:
First, I'm not comfortable granting an exception from Romans for unjust, evil governments. I don't think the text itself allows this.
Secondly, I agree with you that Hanoverian Britain wasn't very oppressive as these things go. The grievances of the American colonists don't begin to compare with the suffering of the French or Russian peasants.
I plan to return to the idea of lower vs. higher levels of government in a future post -- this seems a promising line of inquiry.
Does a literal reading of Romans 13 rule out the very establishment of democracy, however biblical once it's in place?
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