C.C., and R.C. Sprowl Jr.

In his latest comment in the conversation I quote in my previous post, C.C. gave a link to this blog, where the author writes that Romans 13 commands obedience not just to government as it ought to be, but to government as it is. "That means governments whose authority is on shaky grounds, as well as governments whose activity is on shaky grounds, if they are the ones in power, are to be submitted to, unless or until they command us to do what God clearly forbids, or forbid us to do what God clearly commands."

What God clearly commands, as C.C. pointed out, is to give up to the government however much money it demands no matter what that government is going to spend it on.

This link doesn't really address the issue I raised, which is that there cannot be a moral duty to fund something that would be immoral to commit.

A few times I've heard people call Christianity a slave religion, and this is one of those areas where I think that name is more than appropriate.

A Facebook Comments Conversation on the Census, God, Tax Resistance, etc.

[as a status update] J.R.B.: Does anyone know if you actually have to fill out the Census (i.e., did you or someone you know get in trouble for not filling it out in 2000)?

[after a couple comments about fines] C.C.: Yes (I Peter 2:13).

X: Constitutionally, they are only allowed to ask you how many are in your household. But the law means nothing to lawless men.

They're training people to go to households that don't respond to all of the questions to ask them in person. They've sent a letter to our church requesting the use of the building to train these "enumerators." If they don't get the answers they want, they'll starting issuing the fines mentioned above. I'm not sure how efficient the process will be (like how many people will actually get visits and/or fines), but that's what the threats are this time around.

Me: I don't know if 1 Peter 2:13 applies to the coerced surrender of information.

I actually applied to work in the Census. I took the application test, which could have been aced by an 8th grader, and then decided that working in a project that empowers a government with information on its citizens would violate my convictions. The job would have been exactly as X describes. I don't know what was going through my head, I was already an anarchist by then. I guess unemployment + student debt does things to people. There are a few things worse than unemployment, and working in the Census would be one of them.

C.C.: Isaiah, considering the context of I Peter (i.e., the apostle is writing to people who have been driven from their homes by a violently hostile government), I think we can fairly say that if they were called to submit to that government, it goes without question that we can answer some inane questions on a form.

I don't believe all of the questions asked are constitutional, so on a civic level I'm appalled by the current census; however, as a Christian, I'm not sinning by answering questions the government has no business asking, so I have no business resisting those whom God has placed over me (cf. Romans 13:1-6).

J.R.B.: I, honestly, don't know what I'm going to do with my form right now. I'll probably just completely fill it out, and turn it in. Not so much in a Romans 13 way; just in a 'I don't want to get hassled way.' I'm pretty sure God likes civil disobedience at times, but I don't think the Census is where I'm going to make my stand. It's just not that important to me.

Me: C.C., that was a good point you raised about the context, which is why I wonder why passages like these were put in the Bible in the first place.

I think the point you were trying to make by bringing up the 1 Peter verse wasn't so much that we're *not* sinning by anwering questions the government has no business asking, but that we *are* sinning *against God* by refusing to answer those questions. That looks like an uncomfortable position for freedom-loving Christians to take, since (a) it conflates morality with obedience, and (b) it draws no line in the sand to show where we may and should stop obeying.

If Romans 13:1-6 and 1 Peter 2:13 mean we have a God-given duty to answer some inane questions on a form, then they also mean we have a God-given duty to pay for abortions, since the Federal government subsidizes those with our tax dollars, and we are to render tribute to whom tribute is due.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something...

C.C.: Isaiah, I think that even though all of the Bible was written in a certain context that almost always differs from our own, we can still fairly and confidently draw out principles that apply to us. That's why even though we're certainly in a better situation than the people to whom Peter and Paul wrote, it's not unfair or inaccurate to look at the heart of what they're saying and apply it to ourselves. I think we really can look at the very different situation in which the apostles and the early church found themselves and still learn a lot from it.

You do understand what I'm saying about I Peter, but I'm not sure I understand your objections. As to the first one, of course there is a close relationship between the concepts of morality and obedience for Christians; I'm not sure why anybody would want to obey something they consider immoral. If obedience is the commanded "default" reaction of Christians to their government (which I believe these passages assert), then obedience is the moral requirement. Secondly, other passages in the Bible do give us examples where it is the moral imperative to "obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). However, these are certainly the exception to the rule.

Again, looking to the contexts of the passages shows that disobedience is wrong in this case. Romans 13 specifically points out that Christians are required to pay taxes (v. 6), and that was to a government which was actively persecuting and murdering Christians. The tax money they were compelled to pay went toward paying for crosses and keeping wild animals, but they were still compelled to pay them. As detestable as abortion is, it doesn't trump the policies which the early church faced, and they still had to pay.

Me: So if I interpreted those verses correctly, and I think you're saying I did, they mean that Christians have a God-given duty to give money to someone who they know for sure will spend that money on things that are flat out immoral.

C.L.: Depends on the context. If those irresponsible and immoral people are the civil government, and that money is in the form of taxes, yes, that's what I'm saying.

I don't think the Bible forbids civil disobedience in every instance. The fact that our government is a form of democracy means that we as a people have the ability to overthrow the government simply by voting bad leaders out. As I've already pointed out, the government which makes demands of Christians that would be sinful to keep (e.g., worshiping other gods, not gathering together to worship, not praying, not evangelizing, not teaching their children the faith) must not be obeyed in those instance because obedience to the government would be disobedience to God.
At the same time, disobedience and disrespect for the civil authorities (including those appointed by the chief of state) in non-essential matters (e.g., taxes and censuses) are disobedience and disrespect for the God who sovereignly placed them in their position (again, cf. Romans 13:1-7, I Peter 2:13-25). Peter makes it clear that the heart of this command is for Christians to do the right thing (here, showing honor and respect) even if it is to our detriment, just as Christ "did the right[eous] thing" by taking on and paying the debt for sinners who did not and could never deserve it. In fact, he explicitly says that the oppressed Christians of his day were to "honor the emperor" (I Peter 2:17) who was actively trying to wipe every one of them out. As terribly as the authorities may use our tax money, we do not sin by "pay[ing] to all what is owed them" (Romans 13:7).

Me: I don't see how a government mandate to fund murder is much less repugnant than a government mandate to burn incense in front of a statue.

I should be clear that I'm not so much saying that we sin when we pay our taxes as I am saying this: that the payment for an unwarranted abortion is a payment for murder, that informed payment for murder is participation in it, that an enforced mandate to pay for an unwarranted abortion is coercion to participate in murder, that no lover of life would pretend that we have some *moral* obligation to participate in murder, and that the only obligation we have to participate is duty "only for wrath," and not "for conscience sake". Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying it's all your fault if someone forced you to do it or pay for it. But I am saying that it's totally incoherrent to say that it's wrong to do it and then say that we have a God-given duty to pay for it. If it's a sin to do it, then there can't be a moral duty to pay for it.

So no, refusing to pay up to someone who you know is going to spend your money on murder is not disrespectful. I also don't see what's so disrespectful about refusing to answer a list of intrusive questions.

I might update this post if C.C. responds to my last comment, but judging on the way these things go, I think this conversation is pretty much - shall we say - completed.

Fundamentalists vs. the Emerging Church

In the June 12 issue of the Sword of the Lord Newspaper, David Cloud published his heated warning about the newest hottest heresy. "The emerging church is a magnet for those who have rejected the old-fashioned New Testament faith and who despise traditional Bible-believing churches, dogmatic biblical preaching and biblical 'judgmentalism' in regard to lifestyle choices."

Cloud portrays the emerging church as being lax, not just about morals, but also and especially about the source or basis of morals. He gives the example of Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, who felt like he had to either "reduce enormous theological absurdities [i.e., Garden of Eden, universal Flood] into children's stories or ignore them" if he wanted to embrace Christianity. "In other words, he wanted to pick and choose what parts of the Bible he would believe. He despised dogmatic Bible preaching and hated it when preachers 'said we had to follow Jesus,' because 'sometimes they would make Him sound angry'".

Cloud also mentions the infamous Brian McLaren. McLaren's book, A New Kind of Christian, "recounts the man's journey from a fairly solid faith in the Bible as the absolute standard for truth in which doctrine is either right or wrong, scriptural or unscriptural, to a pliable, philosophical position in which 'faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally right'".

To top it all off, Cloud gives a quote from David Foster's A Renegade's Guide to God: "We won't be 'told' what to do or 'commanded' how to believe". Cloud seems so aghast at this proclamation, you'd think it was the first time any self-proclaimed Christian insisted on forming and following his own interpretation of the Bible.

Cloud closes by revealing McLaren's conspiracy to "infiltrate biblicist churches from without through 'resources' such as books, videos and websites" that offer emerging church perspectives. "It is more imperative than ever that pastors train their people to discern the error of these heresies and that they exhort them to avoid the writings of false teachers." But no matter how diligently his advice is followed, Cloud might find it ineffective.

Young evangelicals don't need influence "from without" to be drawn to a "shopping cart" religiosity. Movements like the emerging church are just natural byproducts of Christian fundamentalism. The moral absolutism and rigorous dedication to consistency that fundamentalists pound into their children's heads give birth to that thorny distraction I call "a screaming conscience". Young fundamentalists who actually start reading and thinking about the Bible can't help but notice a violent conflict between the Bible and conventional morality. If killing babies is wrong, they reason, then it's always wrong. If they want to keep this moral absolutism they were raised in then they have to take the scissors to the "Word of God". To not would be to succumb to relativism. Don't blame the sandal-wearing yuppies who take coffee-stained volumes of "St. Jacques" Derrida to cafe Bible studies. It was the fundamentalist church where the kids learned to criticize Catholic superstition, and where they learned that stealing is always wrong even if your mother's starving. And it's the fundamentalist church where they'll turn critical thought and moral absolutism onto fundamentalism.

Cloud's advice to teach congregations to recognize and reject emerging church heresies might actually push young people out of the fundamentalist churches and into the emerging church camp. Young people would need to know the proper doctrine to contrast the heresies against. But if you want someone to accept fundamentalism, the LAST thing you wanna do is teach them what fundamentalism actually is.

A youth pastor was giving his youth group an overview of the Bible, and he was covering the story of Achan, when one girl murmered "Why the kids?" The youth pastor shook his head, and with his eyebrows raised and his eyes half-closed said "Well there's sin, and sin has consequences, and Achan sinned, and this was the consequence of his sin," as if the outcome of wrongdoing is just by default of being the outcome of wrongdoing. How many kids would want to stay in a fundamentalist church after hearing THAT kind of explanation? When pastors teach their churches how they should read the Bible, how they should think about God, and just how irrelevant their own intuitions are, some people will get the idea that the church they're in isn't where they want to be.

The emerging church is the way Christians in my generation rub their eyes, shake their heads, and say "Wait, wait, WHAT?!" Given the typical fundamentalist response (which is to call them heretical, backslidden, or hell-bound), Christian seekers can choose one of two things: they can find a body where they're encouraged to draw up, share, and piece together their own ideas of "the Divine", or they can forget God alltogether. The less creative they were programmed to be, the more likely they are to choose the second option. Of course, the second option isn't all that likely, because Christian spirituality is all about being creative.

Grateful for Everything?

It’s difficult to describe how liberated I felt parking my car the other Sunday morning and walking to a church door with no Bible in my hand. The white clapboards and four windows on the Friends Meeting House in San Jose can remind any viewer of an old country church with no steeple. There were wooden chairs inside, and wooden benches along the walls with embroidered pillows and cushions. If I remember right, each of the four windows had a little potted plant in its sill. I spent most of my time looking at the shapes the sun cast through the trees and windows onto the floor in front of me. The people there, who all looked like – well – Quakers in the San Francisco Bay area, didn’t do remarkably better than me at sitting still for an hour on end.

They don’t call it “silent worship” for no reason. I’ve been through a meeting in St Andrews where the whole hour passed without a word (not that that’s a bad thing). In this meeting, though, someone did stand and say something. A short-haired white lady about a decade older than me talked about gratitude. She mentioned that Faith and Practice describes the feeling and expression of gratitude as something that can add value and perspective to one’s life. She went on to say that there are two ways to be grateful. One way is to pick out the bright shiny happy things in life and give thanks for those blessings. The other way, which she learned from her yoga partner, is to be thankful for the whole of one’s life, even and especially the end of it. Her recent experience of losing a loved one gave her the opportunity to think about death and be grateful for it. Now that she is at peace with death, she can be at peace with herself in a way that she wasn’t before. She can even find comfort in the belief that here and now isn’t everything there is for us, that there is something “beyond this” that we can value.

I spent the remainder of the hour still looking at the light on the floor as before, but now with questions blazing through my head. Isn’t this what religion does in general? Doesn’t it tend to make us embrace all the world’s shortcomings? An infamous man once called religion the “opiate of the masses”, and for good reason. Not only does it tend to justify presently-existing power structures and property relations, it tends to justify anything and everything that makes a sentient being flinch. Religion, ideology, and philosophy make us view the killing of innocent beings not as murder, but as God’s will, or as the greatest good for the greatest number, or as Nature’s course. They discourage believers from following those very normal gut reactions that offer moral direction and say these reactions get in the way of a “bigger picture” understanding.

What good is Conscience, if everything under the sun and stars should be embraced?*

Now, hardly anyone in the Friends Meeting would say that this woman’s words are official Quaker thought. There is very little that Quakers call official Quaker thought. The Quakers’ liberalism is very conservative. When a woman feels moved to stand and speak, her words are understood as the words she felt moved to say, and no one immediately jumps onto the bandwagon of “God must’ve said so!”ism.
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*Our revulsion at death shows us that we intuitively hold life dear; and were we to think honestly about it, we would be compelled to accept that life’s value comes in the opportunity it brings – the opportunity to enjoy. Different people seek to enjoy different things, but we all seek to enjoy. And when a man’s life ends, so does his opportunity to do what makes his life precious to him. He no longer has that opportunity to do what he as a breathing, touching, tasting, gazing, listening, lounging, soft-bodied being finds value in. Death is when the sacred is snuffed out. It is the avowed enemy of the sacred, and so – except for when a man’s death is his value in life – it is evil, whether brought on by intent or by accident.