On government authority and Christian responsibility

From the e-mail archives: Thought I’d revisit a response I gave to a thoughtful discussion starter back in 2004. I should first say that the writer of the original comment regularly provides fair-minded, well-thought, balanced answers to many difficult questions and actively encourages others to think things through and not just take his word as gold. It was in that spirit that I wrote this response. Here it is:

I have a comment about your answer to the question at this link:

http://www.seriousfaith.com/question_detail.asp?questionid=718 (“A Jehovah’s witness told me that they do not vote or do anything with the government. Does the bible teach us not to vote?…”)

It’s very important, when dealing with scriptural questions, especially on matters of some controversy, to keep in mind some principles, and proceed accordingly. I’ve never forgotten an old saw that I heard many years ago: “A text without a context is a pretext.” This cautions us from being too free with pulling isolated texts from different places, stringing them together in support of an idea, and calling the result biblical doctrine. Closer to home is an Old Testament principle that is affirmed in the New Testament: “By the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established.” A strict application of my first principle above will quickly reveal that this has to do with what constitutes valid testimony (on the part of an accuser) in a court of law, but I take it that this is also helpful in biblical understanding, since “in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” Thirdly, we learn from the Revelator that “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” and from Peter (in his sermon to the household of Cornelius) that “to him [Jesus] all the prophets give witness.” and as Jesus says concerning the scriptures themselves, “It is they which testify of me.” I give you these principles, Brent, just so you can have at least an inkling of where I am coming from and on what basis I am thinking about these scriptural matters, since I will be disagreeing with you on certain things even though I also agree with you on many things and enjoy reading your devotional.

Now, in your response to the questioner, you provide a serious and reasoned answer with regard to voting, and bring in, additionally, some material of your own that the questioner did not ask about. Nevertheless your way of framing the question is legitimate and open-ended: “”what is our duty to the government and the authorities as Christians?” What I want to get you to think about more closely is whether or not a single answer covers all of the categories that you then identify: voting, saying the pledge of allegiance, serving in the military and general civic issues. You cite three passages (Romans 13:1-7, Matthew 22:21, and 1 Peter 2:13-17) to make your point (fulfilling the “two or three witnesses” requirement; good for you!); all of them deal with general issues of whether or not to submit to what is a clearly unjust, pagan government that is persecuting or oppressing the people of God. We know this by applying the context test: in this case, the historical context which is known to us. It is within this same context that you provide yourself a bit of balance with a fourth reference (Acts 5:29). I want to look at the textual context of each of these, one at a time, and draw some observations.

From the “What’d-we-tell-you” department…

Some of us (not many) were paying attention at the time, but now CNN reports:

Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war – CNN.com
WASHINGTON CNN — President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003, reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

According to the study, Bush and seven top officials — including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice — made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years.

The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources — mainly quotes from major media organizations.

The study says Bush made 232 false statements about Iraq and former leader Saddam Hussein’s possessing weapons of mass destruction, and 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.

Some of the details of this study surprised even me. The second-most-frequent prevaricator, after Bush, turns out to be Colin Powell. And believe it or not, this study finds only 48 false statements from Dick Cheney, who was beaten only by Scott McClellan (with 14) for lack of untruthiness. Of course, what Cheney lacked in quantity of statements he made up for in bald-faced confidence, as in this August 26, 2002, statement by Cheney to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction,” Cheney said. “There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

Search the scriptures

Here’s one who did:

“Love thy enemy” — U.S. soldier gets discharge

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. soldier who said his Christian beliefs compelled him to love his enemies, not kill them, has been granted conscientious objector status and honorably discharged, a civil liberties group said on Tuesday.

Victory Conditions Revisited

Watching another round of talking heads on Hardball with Chris Matthews, I see there is yet another discussion about “victory” in Iraq.  Of course, as I pointed out in an earlier post, there are many candidates for a victory condition.

  At the risk of repeating myself, let me state here, for the three or four people who might care and the gazillions who don’t, what I think the actual looked-for win condition is, as follows.

New Crisis Coming in Iran

Now that the IAEA and Iran are coming to agreement on contentious issues, the window of time is narrowing within which the Iranian nuclear threat will be available as a plausible reason to invade.  Given the logic and track record of our national leadership, watch for a ratcheting up, not down, of rhetoric about this threat, because the real threat, to the Neocons, is that diplomacy, and, worst of all, an agency of the United Nations, could succeed.The threat of successful diplomacy now makes an invasion of Iran more likely than ever, and sooner rather than later. You heard it here.  As always, I dearly hope I’m wrong. 

Out of the mouths of babes….

The following was shared by a mother on an e-mail list. No comment needed, really.

Tonight I slowed down a little when my nearly 4 year old was saying her prayers and thought I would share this. It made me think.We have a tradition that every night since she was old enough to talk when I tuck her into bed we say our prayers. I let her do the talking. It’s ranged from very funny to very interesting over the years. She usually says, “Dear God, Thank you for…. ” and then she proceeds to be thankfulfor ladybugs, but not snakes, and baby brother but not Camille at school and so on. Sometimes when she really doesn’t want to go to bed yet she starts naming fixtures – Thank you for the lights, the fan, my dresser, my bed, my sheets and so on. I usually let her ramble on for a bit, and then she goes to sleep. Tonight she said, “Dear God, thank you for America.” This wasdifferent for her, I’m fairly sure she doesn’t know what “America” is. Then in the next breath she said, and “Thank you for Iraq.” OK, again, I’m assuming my CNN running is what brought that up. Then she followed it up with “Thank you for our neighbors.” “Please let our neighbors be nice to us, and we should be nice to them, too” I asked her, who is our neighbor? And she started naming people in our neighborhood. And then she said, “And Iraq.”

I’m wondering when the rest of the world’s Christians will catch on.

Words of wisdom from a real commander in chief

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953

Y’all, just thought I’d post this friendly reminder. Once upon a time it was not just the left-wing peaceniks who recognized that the “military-industrial complex” (Eisenhower’s term) represents the most inefficient and unproductive segment of the nation’s economy. The fact remains that such unproductive, inefficient economic activity is hugely profitable for those who are in control of it — especially because the tab is paid by unquestioning taxpayers. But military hardware grows no food.

Imagine with me what twelve billion dollars a month — the amount we are now told is being spent in Iraq — would produce if devoted to health care, low income and workforce housing, research for alternative energy sources, food production, medical research, disaster relief. Oh, but how the voices would howl that we can’t afford such things!

Ike, what has become of us?

Peace Scriptures

Psalm 46:9-10

9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.

He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear.

He burns the chariots in the fire.

10 “Be still, and know that I am God.

I will be exalted among the nations.

I will be exalted in the earth.”

Jim Wallis likes to point out the ironic fact that many people trained in teaching Bible in their churches seem to have missed the thousands of scripture texts that speak of God’s special concern for the poor. Similarly, many who have attended evangelical churches could easily, based on the teaching they hear, gain the patently false impression that the Bible rarely speaks of peace, and that the few places where it does do so, it is with disapproval. They repeatedly hear just a handful of seemingly relevant texts: “I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (in which Jesus is actually speaking, not of armed conflict but of the danger his teaching is to traditional family values); “They have healed the wound of my people slightly, saying ‘Peace’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah’s assessment of the false hopes being raised by false prophets who, more interested in profits than real security, were insisting that the Babylonian army would fold up and go away if only the people kept up their armed resistance a little longer); and perhaps the incident in the temple where Jesus physically disrupts the profitable business of those who were taking advantage of the religious sincerity of others by spilling their carefully counted money on the floor and driving their merchandise (animals destined for slaughter) from the temple courts.

But in fact there are hundreds of texts throughout the Bible that teach about peace, its source and its place in God’s plan for the world, and it’s time that Christians everywhere stop being afraid of them. Below is a very small sample.

So he goes « Tinsel Wing

So he goes « Tinsel Wing

Couldn’t have said it better:

April 12th, 2007

Mark Twain died in November 1910. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was not born until November of 1922. Probably his temporary absence was a major contributing factor to the planet’s failure to avoid the Great War. The country and the planet can ill afford another twelve year wait before he returns to us. If nothing else, there’s this Iran thing around the corner…

From the Books of Bokonon:

(1)

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.

What bothers me about Iran

Now that the drums are beating which will eventually make war with Iran look like it was unavoidable, two significant items stick in my brain. First, of course is the nebulous “evidence” which no one has seen about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. I took note last May that one side-effect of the leak of a CIA operative’s name may well have been to degrade the capability we have of knowing whether or not Iran’s nuclear ambitions are for the purposes of developing weapons, or not. On May 1, 2006,

MSNBC correspondent Shuster reported that intelligence sources told him that Wilson was part of an operation three years ago “tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran.” And the sources asserted, he said, “that when here Wilson’s cover was blown, the administration’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions was damaged as well.”

It’s unthinkable that in the Office of the Vice-President of the United States, there could have been someone who would think it a Good Thing to make us less capable of knowing what Iran is up to — less capable of knowing whether or not Iran’s claims that its nuclear ambitions are for energy, not weapons, comports with the facts. It is unthinkable — isn’t it?

Meanwhile there is a new dribble, dribble, dribble of commentary masquerading as news to the effect that Iran is involved somehow in the guerrilla ground war in Iraq; not implausible, but again, no actual evidence has been produced, and what few, mostly old, bits of information that might be construed as evidence in that direction are being fed through the megaphone and into the echo chamber. Have we seen such a pattern before?

The second thing that bothers me is a short passage from Page 224 of Bob Woodward’s book, State of Denial, which contains the following short narrative. The scene is the White House, after Jay Garner, the first person appointed to run post-invasion Iraq, has returned from Iraq, having been replaced by L. Paul Bremer.

As Garner got up to leave, Rice stopped him and extended her hand. “Jay, you’ve got to stay in touch with us,” she said….

….. On the way out, Bush slapped Garner on the back. “Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?”

Seemingly, The Decider already had plans on his mind, way back then, for how to administer Iran post-invasion. The same Iran concerning which the official line has been that we want to solve its issues “diplomatically” while at the same time refusing to have an actual conversation with its leaders.

Whaddya bet The Decider “runs out of patience” at some politically convenient time, after concluding that the (non-existent) “diplomacy” has “failed”?