>> Now this is interesting - the latest research from Barna on tithing: “Not surprisingly, some population groups were more likely than others to have given away at least ten percent of their income. Among the most generous segments were evangelicals (24% of whom tithed); conservatives (12%); people who had prayed, read the Bible and attended a church service during the past week (12%); charismatic or Pentecostal Christians (11%); and registered Republicans (10%). Several groups also stood out as highly unlikely to tithe: people under the age of 25, atheists and agnostics, single adults who have never been married, liberals, and downscale adults. One percent or less of the people in each of those segments tithed in 2007.”

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have been drenched by many storms. We have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense… Are we still of any use?

One of the little things about Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s story that I had somehow forgotten over the years was the fact that he took a second teaching position in New York prior to the outbreak of World War II. As Bonhoeffer walked around the streets of the city, he became convinced that, like Jonah fleeing from Ninevah, he had refused the call of God to fight the Nazis from within Germany. And he knew what that call meant — after all, he once wrote: “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

Convinced that he must return to his homeland, Bonhoeffer boarded a ship in America and sailed back toward Germany. It was the last ship to sail for Europe before the outbreak of the war.

I’ve always been intrigued by Bonhoeffer’s inner confliction about his role as a Christian caught in the horror of Nazi Germany. The state had engulfed and bent the church, as an entity, to its will. The church leadership was all compromised, helpless, or willing participants. And those church leaders who spoke out against the villainy pre- and post-Kristallnacht were either brutally murdered or sent to concentration camps.

Bonhoeffer and his allies made the decision to act, as members of a faith-based resistance, to do whatever they could in this horrible situation. They committed themselves to jamming a spoke in the wheel of the state:

“[T]here are three possible ways in which the church can act toward the state: the first place, as has been said, it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and accordance with its character as state; i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibility. Second, it can aid the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to Christian community - “Do good to all people.” In both these courses of action, the church serves the free state in its free way, and at times when laws are changed the church may in no way withdraw itself from these two tasks. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.”

Bonhoeffer was still, at root, an avowed Pacifist. But while he worked in peaceful ways as a double agent of the Nazis, helping 14 Jews escape from Germany, he knew that work was insufficient. He refused to be a silent witness — so he began to aid the efforts of the resistance to assassinate Hitler.

One day he asked his pupils an ethical question: whether the murderer of a tyrant could receive absolution. Could it be right for a Christian to kill an evil man in the defense of others?

Bonhoeffer could not reconcile his non-violent beliefs and the calling of the church to worship God and minister to mankind on this earth with his desire to end another’s life — even if it was the life of a vile murdering dictator. But he did know that God calls us to work His will, not ours. So Bonhoeffer labored seeking the death of another man, the ending of the Holocaust.

It is in that labor that he was caught, jailed, and eventually executed — in April, 1945, one last casualty of a dying Reich stabbing from hell’s heart.

Yet Bonhoeffer’s question remains a valid one today. Can a believer act in violence against his fellow man consistent with his faith? Not in one’s self defense (there is a wealth of Biblical justification for self-defense), but in the defense of others – of your neighbor.

I think the way to find an answer is to look at Christ’s own teachings – in Matthew 10, He explicitly tells us:

“Think not that I came to bring peace on the earth, for I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Christ is the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the sins of the world. But He is also the Lion of Judah, who sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, and who will come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead. He is not a non-divisive figure – He turns men against each other, and brings the conflict between good and evil to its zenith. C.S. Lewis’s dictum still holds: the Christ is not a tame lion.

Ultimately, Bonhoeffer recognized this truth. As a double agent, he was familiar with Hitler’s works – he knew the true degree of Nazi atrocities long before the rest of the world did. And he knew that the only way of stopping the Reich was by undertaking a mission that would require him to shed the blood of another man – a man who, while consumed with evil, was just as much his neighbor.

Yet I firmly believe that Bonhoeffer’s decision, as emotionally wracked as it was, to be a fundamentally righteous position. There will always be evil men, and there will always be good men. For both, it is up to God to judge their salvation or damnation. But do not allow yourself to believe that He stands neutral between them.

As it is written in John 3:

“For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”

Bonhoeffer made the right choice. He took the last ship. Had he taken it to the success he imagined, we might remember him today as a hero, a man of God who averted the greatest tragedy in the history of modern man. He took the last ship instead to martyrdom, to the concentration camp, to the grave – but he was no less a hero, and no less a man of God.

(Originally posted by Ben at July 21, 2003 06:02 PM)

One thing that I’ve learned over the past few years is the importance of the choices we make — not just in terms of career, of our life goals, of our partner. But the decisions we make about The Choice in life can ultimately make the difference in the way we act in all contexts and situations. The Choice about what we believe — whether we are all alone, whether there is no one to count on but ourselves — or whether there truly is one who watches over us — does more to determine your reaction to the world around you than any other factor or belief. Our faith, in God or in man, ultimately defines us to the world and to ourselves.

There is an apochryphal story that tells us of Pontius Pilate’s actions after he made the most fateful decision of his life. Pilate was a good politician, but he had never been a very wise man. Ever the apotheosis of existensialism, Pilate had in jest thrown out a philosophical question to an accused blasphemer that still lingers through time: “What is truth?” He had not stayed for the implicit answer from the accused Christ: “I am.”

Pilate had washed his hands — in a purposefully ritualistic manner, the symbolic cleansing of guilt and blood, of verdict and responsibility. He had ordered a mocking sign bolted over the cross. He had done his job.

The story goes that, after Christ had shown that the tomb is conquered through Him and by Him, Pilate took to wandering the beach near Caesarea, where he was stationed until 36 AD. He walked in the sand dunes, his robes snagging on the grass and the Mediterranean wind, his eyes turned toward the ocean. The sand was warm against his sandals.

No one knows what Pilate thought while he walked along the beach — if he walked. Perhaps the crashing waves reminded him of the Passover crowds in Jerusalem, roaring in his ears. But I think that as he gazed out at the waves, he must have wondered. Wondered whether the waves were enough to wash away his guilt — whether the whole ocean was enough to wash the blood that sticks to his hands.

We don’t know if Pilate chose baptism. But we do know the decision before us today, and we cannot underestimate its ramifications. This decision, more than any other, will change the way you live your life. Don’t ignore it.

Like Pilate, we stand on the shore, wondering whether our sin can be forgiven, whether a whole ocean can cover our spiritual imperfections. You can wade in, admit your complicity, acknowledge the fact that there was a sacrifice made for you — or stand on the shore, looking out, seeing nothing but gray skies and crashing waves.

The choice is yours to make.

Williams: But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. King Henry: So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation.But this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can carry it out with all unspotted soldiers… if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.

 

Henry V Act IV, Scene 1

This brief debate, held on the muddy ground of France the night before Agincourt between a disguised King Harry and a British soldier, strikes me as a good summation of the two distinct philosophical positions about death and the conscience of a nation. Let’s leave out the intradenominational issues surrounding the process salvation, and focus on the issue of responsibility for a moment.

The soldier’s position grants that there is a judgment made by God concerning the responsibility for death, whether in battle, or in any other context. The soldier points to the King (or the Nation) as the responsible party, and argues that, on the day of judgment, the ghosts of perished soldiers and bereaved wives will point their bloody hands toward the leader who urged them on.

King Harry’s position, on the other hand, states that the ultimate judgment is not made in a corporate manner, but based on the state of the individual. Therefore the King — the Nation — is no more guilty of the sin of causing these deaths in battle than he is of the sins perpetrated off of the battlefield by his fellow citizens. There are only the individual consciences to worry about — no national one.

There are several important questions here, ones that I think can particularly be drawn to bear in the case of our current national dilemma. This is about more than just, can the United States be held responsible for the death of its soldiers in battle — it strikes at the very heart of our attitude toward our public policy.

In the latest interview published by Bob Woodward, the President repeated his articulate defense of a foreign policy based not just on strategic interests, but on humanitarianism. He clearly views the encouragement of new democratic regimes around the globe not just as a shield against terrorism or being in our economic interest, but as an agent of change in favor of increased human rights.

The moral argument that stopping human suffering around the world is one of our reponsibilities as a world power is familiar as an anti-protectionist position favored by neoconservatives. And to some extent, it relies on the broad-based theological teaching of love for our neighbors, defending and supporting widows and orphans, feeding and healing the sick, etc.

I personally have a problem with interpreting Biblical teaching based on individual action as a mandate for corporate (or, in this case, national) action — “Thou shalt not murder” as an individual command appears a few verses away from a command to communally stone to death just about anyone judged to be guilty of adultery, murder, or bestiality. There’s a distinction to be made between God’s personal commands for how we each live our lives and the rule of law in a nation; while we are told to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, Christ does not devote very much time to discussing the proper role of public and foreign policy. But there are also clear indications that, as a nation and a community, we do have moral responsibilities:

“If my people will humbly pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear them. Freely then will I forgive them, and I will heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14

Ultimately, I understand and agree with the idea that theology does have a role to play in the debate over foreign policy, and I believe that America should encourage and support governments that protect human rights for their people. “The Evil Empire” and the “Axis of Evil” both make for good copy and controversy, but they also send the very real and true message that these national governments were acting in a tyrannical way that prohibits religious practice, makes slaves of its citizens, and, in some countries, even restricts the number of children a mother can legally bear.

I would go further than this, though. A foreign policy that is based at least in part on morality makes sense to me — but so does a domestic policy based on morality. And I would argue that the latter is a far larger problem than the former for our nation at this point in time.

I’m not advocating in any way a joining of church and state, but I am saying that our leaders should rely heavily on moral judgment when considering these issues. The conscience of our nation doesn’t just react to whether we protect and promote the human rights of those suffering under communism in North Korea, Cuba, and China, or under the yoke of despots in Iraq and Iran. It also reacts to our internal actions — to crime, to widows and orphans, and especially to abortion and euthanasia.

There are two bumper stickers I used to have on my desk at college. One just said “Pro-Life.” The other said “Free Tibet.” I believe that both of these political statements originate from the same philosophical belief. The basic issue of recognizing and respecting the sanctity of all human life holds true in all cases, whether we are battling tyranny abroad or the culture of death fostered here at home.

“And Joshua said to all the people, “The LORD gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them; you are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant. Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua 24

I believe King Harry was right in his argument with his fellow soldier, but wrong in his theological interpretation of responsibility. While it’s true that we stand before God as individuals when He judges the quick and the dead, this does not mean that we have no responsibilities as a nation to advocate and support moral right. It does matter whether a soldier dies on a battlefield fighting a just or unjust war, a war seeking freedom or seeking genocide. It does matter to our national conscience whether we legalize the murder that goes by the names of euthanasia and abortion. It does matter whether we decide to place our economic interests above the interests of freedom and human rights.

In the end, we must choose who we will serve, as individuals, as families, as communities — and as nations.

(Originally posted by Ben on November 26, 2002)