Good Neighbors in Armed Service

For K.R.

Those who uphold the legitimacy of the state tell us that Christians should obey the state in every matter that does not involve disobedience to God. What that means in practice, however, can be difficult to determine, and as one who often finds simple things, especially simple things that involve obedience to God’s inconvenient demands, almost impossible, I would have to posit that once one has come up with a reasonably certain answer to these difficult moral questions, obedience is difficult at best.

So I offer the following study questions about a fairly straightforward passage of Scripture to show that questioning the legitimacy of the state is at best no more problematical than attempting to obey its dictates. The passage is taken from Acts 12:1-19.

King Herod Agrippa began to persecute some believers in the church. He had the apostle James (John's brother) killed with a sword. When Herod saw how much this pleased the Jewish leaders, he arrested Peter during the Passover celebration and imprisoned him, placing him under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each. Herod's intention was to bring Peter out for public trial after the Passover.

We can assume that Herod did not personally go out and arrest Peter. He gave a command to an officer, who dispatched some underlings to find Peter and arrest him. Keep in mind that Peter had not been convicted of any crime or even brought to trial. He was, even officially, innocent of any wrongdoing, and certainly of any violence against people or their property, yet here was a command given, at the very least, to deprive him of his liberty.

1. Should a Christian officer have obeyed Herod’s command and ordered his subordinates to arrest Peter?

2. Should Christian subordinates have obeyed the order?

3. Was Peter being persecuted for the offense of the cross?

But while Peter was in prison, the church prayed very earnestly for him. The night before Peter was to be placed on trial, he was asleep, chained between two soldiers, with others standing guard at the prison gate.

4. Should Christians have taken the assignment as guards in the inner chamber with Peter? At the prison gate?

Suddenly, there was a bright light in the cell, and an angel of the Lord stood before Peter. The angel tapped him on the side to awaken him and said, "Quick! Get up!" And the chains fell off his wrists. Then the angel told him, "Get dressed and put on your sandals." And he did. "Now put on your coat and follow me," the angel ordered. So Peter left the cell, following the angel. But all the time he thought it was a vision. He didn't realize it was really happening.

5. If Peter had known that he was really leaving the prison and not having a vision, should he have left the prison? In what way was he obeying duly constituted authority by leaving?

At dawn, there was a great commotion among the soldiers about what had happened to Peter. Herod Agrippa ordered a thorough search for him. When he couldn't be found, Herod interrogated the guards and sentenced them to death.

6. If the guards were sentenced to death, what can we guess Peter’s sentence would have been had he been found guilty? Should a Christian have volunteered or consented to be on the detail that executed him, or on the chain of command that passed on the order to have him executed?

7. Romans 13:3 says, “The authorities do not frighten people who are doing right, but they frighten those who do wrong.” If “just following [the] orders” to guard Peter was “doing right,” in what sense did the guards have no reason to be frightened of the authorities?

8. Should a Christian have been part of the detail that executed the guards, or on the chain of command that passed on the order to have them executed?

9. What indication does the text give that the state’s treatment of Peter was unusual? If this was not unusual treatment, what biblical wisdom would a Christian be following to enlist or submit to conscription to join the armed forces of that state?

10. If Peter had been acquitted, would depriving him of his liberty have been a sin? If so, who would have been guilty? What consequences would that sin have merited? If it was no sin, why not?

11. Compare the similar treatment given Paul and Silas in Acts 16. Were Paul and Silas duly convicted of a crime meriting violent retribution? Were they being persecuted for the offense of the cross?

12. How should a Christian in the chain of command, from the authorities in the marketplace, to the gendarmes who beat them, to the guards who guarded them, reacted to orders to inflict the violence that took place?

13. How does the severity with which Paul and Silas were treated affect the legitimacy of their detention? Had they been treated as peaceably as Peter seems to have been, would an otherwise illegitimate detention have been legitimate? If Peter had been treated as roughly as Paul and Silas were, would an otherwise legitimate detention have been illegitimate?

14. What consequences would those in the chain of command in Acts 12 have faced if they refused to obey the orders they were given? In Acts 16? Given the consequences for insubordination, what biblical wisdom would a Christian be following to enlist or submit to conscription to join the armed forces of that state?

The arrests of Peter and of Paul and Silas raise a slew of questions for which there are no good answers if one assumes the legitimacy of the state; if nothing else, if all those who share the guilt for its injustices were to receive the just (earthly) consequences for their crimes (not to be confused with the eternal consequences for their sins), very few workers would be left at liberty.

Compare the chaotic situations brought about by the state in these two passages to the order of anarchy. Under anarchy, if you, either as an individual or as part of a voluntary organization, own the Temple or any other property and you don’t want Peter there claiming that a man you hate has come back to life, you tell him to leave, if necessary get your bouncers to throw him off the property, and that’s that. (I infer from 1 Peter 4:15 that Peter wouldn’t consider preaching the gospel a justification for trespassing.) If Paul and Silas chase away the demon who gives your employee supernatural powers, then you and the two of them find a mutually agreed-upon arbitrator to decide whether doing so was a proper response for her telling the truth at inconvenient times. And, of course, if you want to impress people, you’ll have to find a better way to do it than killing innocent people.

If we Christians are to be good neighbors to our unsaved friends, we can do much better than being part of the state's armed forces.

Hard Words for the Oppressed

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: "The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me." For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. (Rom 14:1-7) 

Your land has been invaded. Your spouse and one of your children are dead, various cousins and friends are dead or maimed, your house is rubble, your employer has shuttered his business, and every day the struggle to find food, drinkable water, and shelter from the weather is made more difficult by an astonishing number and variety of rules put in place by the invaders, rules that seem to be put in place not because they improve the lot of anyone, even the invaders, but simply for spite.

As time goes on, you notice that the invaders, who are now occupiers, boast less of their military superiority than of their moral superiority. While as far as you can tell, life is worse now than it was before the invasion—it certainly is for you—the occupiers seem sincerely convinced that you should be grateful for their presence and consider the death and destruction they have wrought and continue to wreak as the price of progress.

About the time you are able to convince yourself that God wants you to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you, you walk into church on Sunday morning and see an occupier, proudly decked out in new battle fatigues, obviously there for the same reason you are—to praise God for forgiveness in Christ.

What do you do? What does Jesus want you to do?

These questions have been faced by our brothers and sisters throughout church history. I expect that the first Jewish Christians to host Cornelius and his family had to overcome gut-level revulsion, not only at his being a Gentile, but also at his association with Roman oppression.¹ The same can be said for those who hosted Zacchaeus and the centurion of Matthew 8, assuming both remained in the faith after Pentecost.

More recently, I would guess more than one Christian Turkish soldier wanted to worship with his Armenian brethren during the genocide, and it’s even more likely that German Christians would have wanted to join their voices with their Dutch brethren after the Blitzkrieg. Biafran Christians have had to put aside the memories of the megadeath inflicted on them by their Nigerian brethren and Palestinian Christians have been called on to worship with Israeli Christians for quite some time. Today there are so many Christian US soldiers in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan that some have surely expected to be welcomed by local churches. (There have been Christian churches in Iraq for two thousand years and in Pakistan for almost a century; I understand they are not unknown in Afghanistan.)

And, of course, as one who believes that what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine, I consider myself in territory occupied by people who believe that what’s theirs is theirs and what’s mine is negotiable, so not only that they are perfectly justified in taking my money through taxation to fund activities I find morally repugnant, that they are commanded to do so by Jesus.

How are we to act when the enemies we are called to love are part of the household of faith?

Does Jesus allow me to consider them my enemies? Or am I to accept them as “weaker brothers” and strive for “a spirit of unity” above all? (Or am I the “weaker brother” here?) The parable of the unforgiving servant leaves no doubt that I am to love them and forgive them whether they repent or not—have I truly repented of all my sins?—but am I to be silent in the face of ongoing injustice about which my oppressors feel no pangs of conscience? At what point do I have to shut up in the face of their complaints that I’m trying to do the Holy Spirit’s job? (Were Jeremiah and John the Baptist, neither known for their warm fuzzies, “trying to do the Holy Spirit’s job”?) Is there no point at which I, a non-ordained layman, can say I’ve had enough and it’s time to dissociate myself from what I can see as nothing short of apostasy?

As our society goes into moral and legal freefall, I have spent probably too much time thinking about what the future holds, specifically in the area of personal liberty. I have concluded, as here, that those who take over the reins from the current band of thieves and murderers will be more oppressive, not less. I’m also guessing that it will be harder to love heathen invaders than I can imagine—I’m not doing a stellar job with the conservatives and liberals whose boot I feel, however lightly, on my neck—but I have reason to believe that God will bless me for doing so in ways I cannot understand, just as God blesses me through my enemies today.

If an invading foreign army has a noticeable number of Christians in it, however, my conservative and liberal brethren are going to have to ask the same questions I’m currently asking, so I’m raising the issues here now: if it’s OK for US Christians to inflict collateral damage on Afghans, it’s certainly OK for Chinese Christians to do the same here. And when—not if—they do, we will all be called on to welcome them in our churches, to please them, to build them up, so that with one heart and mouth we can glorify our God and father, and to love them as Jesus has loved us so that all men may know that we are his disciples. Will you do a better job then than I’m doing now?

The perceptive reader will note that the Chinese probably will not get here until after the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the National Guard, the US Army’s NORTHCOM, and the local militarized police forces have gotten us accustomed to being occupied by Christians. They are already practicing maneuvers in urban areas, and the safe money says that the military will behave here just as it has overseas, which means we can look forward to shock and awe and collateral damage. “Give, and it will be given back to you.”

If you think I’m crazy, think back to the war against the Confederacy. The Union soldiers considered the Southerners their fellow citizens, but they also considered them Untermenschand treated them accordingly, as Sherman’s march through Georgia and Sheridan’s march through the Shenandoah are irrefutable proof. Equip that same attitude with twenty-first century weapons and the misery to be inflicted on anyone who resists the government of Roe v. Wade, OSHA, FEMA, and ObamaCare can scarcely be imagined. And the perpetrators are coming to a church near you.

I’m nowhere near ready for that day. How about you?

1The Roman invasion was in some measure at the invitation of the Jews to settle a civil war, so this last sentence is true inversely to the degree that Jewish Christians welcomed the Romans.

Billy

I knew that Andy, a guy in my Boy Scout troop whose basic decency was lost on the “cool” crowd and us wannabes, had one younger brother. But it was the brother I didn’t know he had who, like the eighth son of Jesse of Bethlehem, has been the member of that family I most remember now. He’s the first person I think of when I need to be reminded that God rewards those who “do not follow the crowd in doing wrong” (Ex 23:2).

Mercer Island, a suburb of Seattle, used to host a day of bicycle races every summer for every category from kids on trikes to adults on expensive imported racing machines. Perhaps the years have collapsed together as my memory ages, but it seems to me that the adult race was won that year by Bruce Gustafson, whose name is enshrined on the wall of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial.

Billy was perhaps a rising third grader that day. If he wasn’t the smallest kid who lined up for the race in his age category, the story is better if he was. At any rate, I heard the guy with the starter’s pistol point up Island Crest Way tell them at least twice, “The race is to the first traffic cone and back,” before firing the gun. I don’t know who rode the fastest that day, but I do know (again, subject to memory modifications) who was slowest: Billy.

You can guess the rest. The hotshots went frantically past the first traffic cone to the second. Meantime, Billy turned around at the first cone and came back, finishing while the pack was making the turn at the second cone. He braked just after crossing the line and looked at the judges as if to say, “Well, here I am. I did what you told me. Now what?”

Now what, indeed. I’m glad I wasn’t one of the judges who had to decide what to do then, especially since Billy’s father was the mayor. What would you do? Would you give Billy the blue ribbon and tell the other kids, “It’s a hard lesson for you, but you should have followed instructions”? Would you rerun the race, or redefine the course as what the faster racers raced and give Billy a special prize?

I don’t remember what they did. But I’ll never forget the expression on Billy’s face when he braked at the finish line: “Here I am. I did what you told me. Now what?”

Billy got it right that day, and I expect he’s made a lifestyle of getting it right, whatever his “it” is. But I’m no Billy, though we share the distinction of going against the crowd. And just as the other boys in that race could ride circles around Billy, the Christians I’m trying to take on in this blog run circles around me when it comes to spiritual disciplines. If I need to see a lost cause apart from God’s grace in Christ, I can always look in the mirror.

But one place I’m willing to take the risk of going it alone is in the area of neighborliness: if God calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do for others what we would have them do for us, then politics—some people extorting others’ wealth and using it for purposes the producers consider repugnant—is wrong, and Christians have no business being part of the process, if for no other reason than that it makes us unwelcome when we go to share the good news of Christ with our political opponents.

So if you want to talk about my sins, that’s fine. I’ve got plenty to keep the discussion going long into the night. But eventually we need to talk about why the church that was so influential and did so much good in the early days of the European settlement of this continent has become irrelevant at best today. I would suggest that the answer is her replacement of biblical neighborliness with Progressive politics.

Bruce Gustafson was a hero to me during my short bicycle racing career. I wish he had pulled a Billy when his contemporaries, to no one’s benefit, followed Uncle Sam to their deaths in Vietnam. I doubly wish today’s evangelicals were not so eager to have their children follow the pack to the second traffic cone in Afghanistan and the war on liberty that is the War on Drugs.

Connecting Some Dots

There’s a rumor on the blogosphere that President Obama has a litmus test for military officers. He’s supposedly asking them if they would be willing to fire on US citizens and dismissing those who would not. Rumor has it that Snopes.com considers this just another tinfoil hat conspiracy theory—I can’t find it on Snopes—and they might be right. It could be that the President has not issued such an order and even that the question is not being asked in an official capacity. So, as Romans 13 says, if we’ve done nothing wrong, we have nothing to fear from the government, correct?

Ummm, not so fast.

Was God watching when President Obama took the oath of office last month? Did he care what went on? Specifically, did he notice that the Bible used in the swearing-in had belonged to Abraham Lincoln?

What is Mr. Obama’s relationship to God? Does he believe that he is a sinner who deserves eternal separation from God because of his sins and that the only way for him to escape that condemnation is to surrender his life to Jesus? Or is it more likely that to him (as to his predecessor) “God says: ‘What right have you to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips?’” (Ps 50:16)?

If the evangelical church in the US is going to offer its children to the military service of a man who misuses the Bible, can they not expect him to treat them as Abraham Lincoln treated his enemies? Mr. Lincoln was best known, and is indeed celebrated, for sending the military to fire on those he considered his fellow citizens. In the name of the Constitution, he violated the Constitution, suspending habeas corpus and jailing journalists and magistrates in the Union who expressed their putative First Amendment rights by disagreeing with him. Can we, the church of Jesus Christ, expect anything else from a man who openly and proudly follows in his footsteps?

Does Mr. Obama consider the Constitution the law of the land in anything other than name? (For that matter, do evangelicals who support the War on Drugs or Social Security or the extrajudicial killing of US citizens consider the Constitution the law of the land in anything other than name?) If the funds extorted from those who oppose abortion to pay for abortion through the Affordable Health Care Act are a “tax” (according to Bush appointee John Roberts) and taxes are necessary to fund the government that is essential to human life, what right do we have to protest having to pay it? Ah, silly me—we don’t have the right to protest, except in the free speech zones invented by Mr. Bush.

What reason do we have to fear that those free speech zones will be moved to the FEMA camps that are now being used to pasture goats? Can we expect that the guards being recruited and trained to staff those camps would actually get to put their training to use? And can’t those billion and a half hollow-point bullets have been procured for some other purpose than providing those who don’t want to go to camp with an alternative?

You reap what you sow. Mr. Bush declared that the invasion of Iraq was designed to provide Iraqis with the same freedoms Americans have at home. He gave them those freedoms courtesy of “shock and awe” and “collateral damage,” to the cheers of the evangelical church in the US. Though the mission was accomplished, at least according to the fanfare and photo op, I would certainly forgive Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian, Libyan, and Palestinian Christians (to say nothing of Muslims) for praying that US evangelicals have the privilege of living under the conditions they bless the rest of the world with.

So even if Snopes is right, I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon have the opportunity to enjoy the freedom the Iraqis and Afghans had under occupation by the US military.

How Does the Bible View the Military and Police?

 Part 1, Genesis and Exodus: An Honorable Profession?

While most evangelicals consider Barack Obama little short of the antichrist, they also consider military personnel, who these days find themselves at his literal beck and call, heroes. Politicians may be rotten, the thinking goes, but soldiers and policemen are always, or practically always, worthy of praise. Examples from Scripture are enlisted for the verbal battle, notably Romans 13, John the Baptist’s statement to soldiers that to show their repentance they need only be content with their pay, and the examples of Cornelius (“He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly,” Acts 10:2) and the anonymous centurions of Matthew 8 (“I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith”) and Luke 7 (“He loves our nation and has built our synagogue”). These last were agents of an occupying army known for its cruelty (Dan 2:40), yet these three men are praised for their godliness. Certainly there is room for the godly in even the most godless of armies!

Before putting these men in context through a chronological skim through the Bible, let me suggest that though Jews were living throughout the Roman empire before the events described in these passages, these three men were less likely to have been believers in the one true God, converts to Judaism, who then joined the army and were out to enforce his will on Judean rebels by conquest, as was the case with the armies of Israel in the conquest of Canaan, than they were to have come to Judah as pagans and turned to the God of the Jews after their arrival, and from there to Christ.

But even if we assume that they knew the one true God before arriving in Judah, they are exceptions, and as we shall see in a later post, one can reasonably expect that their careers in the military were anything but smooth after their conversions to Christ.

The military being a government institution, the biblical history of the military closely parallels the history of government, which I discuss here.

The first military personnel we read about we do so by implication in Genesis 12: Sarai “was taken into [Pharaoh’s] palace.” Who took her there? Would Abraham have dropped her off so she could tour the place? Or would the original readers have assumed that the agents were Pharaoh’s “officials,” specifically his armed forces? What kind of person accosts a stranger, a sojourner, and abducts his “sister”? An honorable man would leave the woman with her “brother” until the marriage negotiations had taken place, but Pharaoh was not an honorable man; neither, then, were his soldiers. It was only after “the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai” (Gen 12:17) that Pharaoh returned her to him. Had Pharaoh known that Abram was Sarai’s husband, he would have killed him—more specifically, his soldiers would have been ordered to kill him. Can we not assume that a soldier who would abduct a woman for his ruler’s harem would have no qualms about killing her husband? What honorable man would have obeyed either order?

The next chapter in the story of government is in Genesis 14, where the four kings of the east are collecting tribute from the people of the Jordan Valley. What benefit, one asks, were those kings conferring on those they taxed? We don’t know, but we do know that when the residents of the valley, probably believing that “when any government becomes hostile to [the rights to life, liberty, and property], it is the right and the duty of the people to alter or abolish it,” stopped paying tribute, these kings led their armies out to pillage.

While one could argue—as does James Jordan—that on the basis of Noah’s curse of Canaan (Gen 9:26) the people of the valley, being Canaanites, owed tribute to the easterners, who were Japhethites, I leave it to the reader to extrapolate from that the right of any and all armies of “Christian” nations to conquer and levy tribute. More reasonable is to consider the easterners’ actions a violation of the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do for them what we would have them do for us: they were simply “a band of thieves writ large.”

Either way, after they conquered Sodom, the soldiers from the east were overtaken by Abraham and his servants. We now have a battle between the “friend of God” and his cohort on the one hand and the kings’ armies on the other. While those who fought against Abraham had no way of knowing that he had a unique relationship with the creator and owner of the universe, on what basis do we impute honor to them? And if they were “just doing their job,” how is a job that puts the worker in mortal conflict with God’s people honorable?

Note also that Abraham’s troops were not professional soldiers. They were well trained and equipped, no doubt, but I see no evidence that their primary function was military; they were more likely his hired shepherds and herdsmen. We learn from David’s description of his early life that the shepherd’s life was hard and dangerous, so such men would have had ample opportunity to hone skills needed for combat (1 Sam 17:34–36), but a professional soldier is a different person entirely, and the army from the east would have been comprised of professional soldiers. Whatever honor God ascribed to those men’s profession did them no good in that battle.

After the battle, Abraham’s sojourn in Gerar involves a repetition of the threat he underwent in Egypt, though we are given more detail; again the military is complicit in abduction: those “sent” by Abimelech (Gen 20:2) are surely armed agents. And we find from Abraham’s explanation of his strategy that he had always been telling the truth to those who threatened him: Sarai was indeed his sister. Again, an honorable man would have dealt with his prospective bride’s brother, not abducted her before the terms of the marriage had been agreed on, and no honorable man would have been the agent of such an abduction.

Soon thereafter Abraham complains to Abimelech that the latter’s “servants” had seized the wells he had dug (Gen 21:26). While I cannot rule out the possibility that these were household servants, bureaucrats, or the like, I find it much more likely that these were professional soldiers—people who didn’t otherwise need to earn a living—acting out of peacetime idleness or boredom, or the “who’s gonna stop us?” bravery that comes easily to those with superior firepower.

We don’t see soldiers again until Jacob returns to Canaan from Paddan Aram. Though it is not stated, the king of Shechem undoubtedly had a paid royal guard. Yet after the rape of Dinah, two men armed with only a sword apiece were able to kill every male in the town, including the king himself (Gen 34:25–26). The Bible judges this slaughter reprehensible (Gen 49:5ff), yet the royal armed force was unable to stop it. This tells me that a standing army is no sure defense against malefactors: if it is likely to fail when needed most, why bother paying for it when it’s not needed? And what honorable man draws a tax-based salary for doing nothing?

During Joseph’s reign in Egypt, the military was presumably active, making sure people paid their 20% tax during the good years and keeping order after the famine began. The good news, as we all hear in Sunday school, is that life was preserved (Gen 45:5) and Joseph’s family lived well in the land of Goshen; meanwhile, the military was, depending on the translation, reducing the Egyptians to slavery (NIV) or relocating them (NASB; Gen 47:21), both activities beneficial more to those enacting them than to those on the receiving end.

The downside to this situation not often mentioned is that even though things were tough in Canaan during the famine (Gen 47:13), the Canaanites survived it—and so, presumably, would Jacob, had he not gone to Egypt. More importantly, once a Pharaoh arose who “knew not Joseph,” the Israelites were slaves. And guess whose job it was to make sure life was miserable for them: we hear about the “taskmasters”—government employees—but as the Israelites, who were “exceedingly numerous,” would likely have been able to overpower the taskmasters had they been of a mind to rebel, one can reasonably posit that behind the taskmasters stood what can best be thought of as armed law enforcement officers, decent guys who loved their wives and dandled their children, just doing their jobs.

Slavery was as much a part of life in the ancient world as dirt, so we can’t be too hard on the Pharaoh’s army for their part in the oppression of the Israelites. After all, they too might have been slaves: conscripts or children of the poor sold to Pharaoh by their parents. Then again, to the degree that they are not blameworthy for the evil they participated in they are not praiseworthy either.

Either way, theirs was not an honorable profession, and after the plagues, whatever honor they were worthy of went entirely out the window.

Everyone in Egypt knew that it was the God of Israel who was behind the misery of those plagues, and every household in Egypt with a firstborn son who had been killed was still grieving the loss when the Israelites up and left. “Many other people went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds” (Exod 12:38). The choice was plain: stay with the losers in Egypt or leave and take one’s chances with a God who was powerful, if nothing else. I suggest that those whom God would honor left, and those he would dishonor stayed.

Yet while Pharaoh’s people—and he himself, one would think—were still mourning and the memory of the other nine plagues was still fresh in their minds, he ordered his army to follow the Israelites into the desert and bring them back. Did nobody wonder if by bringing them back they would be putting themselves in line for more plagues? Did nobody ask whether bringing them back was the morally right thing to do? It would appear not.

And as if that weren’t enough, once the Egyptian military caught up with the Israelites, a pillar of fire and cloud separated the Egyptians from the Israelites for an entire night, giving anyone who chose to do so the time to examine his alternatives carefully. One doesn’t have to be particularly honorable to weigh the evidence and conclude that the penalty for unsuccessful desertion or mutiny would be no worse than the future awaiting those who followed orders to pursue the Israelites once the sun came up. So then, how honorable were the soldiers who were drowned that day?

I see nothing in the first two books of the Bible, which lay the foundation for the rest of Scripture, to indicate that the military is a particularly honorable profession or that those who join it are particularly honorable people.

Sexual Slavery

I had assumed that prostitution was something women were reduced to, like Fantine in Les Misérables, and that "happy hookers" like Xaviera Hollander were rare exceptions to that rule. C. S. Lewis once wrote something to the effect that what most people consider one of life's great pleasures a prostitute endures to obtain money rings true, and I can almost empathize with Fantine's whimpered "Don't they know they're 'making love' to one already dead?"

Imagine my surprise, then, when I edited the paper of a client who is going to teach English in the rural areas of northern Thailand and read that young girls there actually aspire to be prostitutes. If I read correctly, no one needs to abduct them: they look at prostitutes' standard of living, compare it to their other alternatives, and conclude that the best career choice open to them is prostitution. They think no more of selling their bodies than I would think of editing papers. They know that puberty equips them with the toys most men value most, and given a choice between a husband who will likely treat her violently in a house with a dirt floor and a pimp who will protect her and provide her with fine food and clothing, she'll take the pimp.

I was shaken again in Sunday school when a friend said that "there are more slaves today than in any time in history," by which he meant sex slaves. I didn't press for details, but I gather from other things I've read that we are talking not about those who enter the trade willingly, like the girls in Thailand, nor about those reduced to it like Fantine—not that these situations aren't reprehensible enough—but about those abducted and forced either to engage in sexual activity against their will for the profit of their captors or to risk being punished or even killed if they try to escape.

How important is this situation to the Christian community at large? Obviously not very, since this statement was news to us, yet it has been true for some time. How important is it likely to be to us as we go forward?

One of the first lessons I learned as a new Christian is that we can tell what our priorities are by looking at how we spend our time and how we spend our money. Our budgets and our calendars are the truest indicators of our priorities. "They may not believe what you say, but they'll always believe what you do."

Since most people would look first to government, specifically the police, to solve the problem of sexual slavery, let's look at police priorities. How important is ending sexual slavery to the police?

My first mental picture of a policeman is a guy sitting in a cruiser waiting for someone to exceed the posted speed limit or roll through a stop sign. Why is he not out looking for sex slaves? Because it's more important to issue tickets for activities that have not harmed anyone than for activities that are intrinsically harmful.

Closer to the sex trade, of course, is the work of the vice squad. But again, instead of going after those who abduct and enslave their victims, they concentrate on the voluntary sex trade, even to the point of dressing as prostitutes in sting operations. So stopping voluntary sexual activity is more important than stopping sexual slavery.

All of this pales, of course, in comparison to the war on drugs. A friend and his co-workers were on break from their job painting center stripes on highways when a police cruiser drove up, stopped, and asked them if they were connected with the land they were sitting on. The cops were working with a helicopter that had spied marijuana growing in a nearby field. Now I happen to know that it costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars an hour to fly helicopters. Need I point out that money spent looking for marijuana gardens cannot be spent freeing sexual slaves?

Add to these the wars overseas, and the bread and circuses of government "health" programs, Medicare, Social Security, and "income security", and you can see that our government considers sex slavery pretty small potatoes.

Slavery cannot exist without government consent. For evidence, look no further than the Fugitive Slave Law signed by none other than the Father of Our Country soon after he took office. Without that law, Harriet Tubman would have been, I don't know, a nuclear physicist, but certainly not the CEO of the Underground Railroad. And if nothing else, note that we consider her a hero because she worked against, not with, "the powers that be ... ordained of God."

Sexual slavery exists today because of, and certainly despite, government. Government, which necessarily entails the transfer of wealth from those who produce it to those who don't and the restriction of productive activity, for that reason alone causes the poverty that reduces the Fantines of the world to prostitution and gives the girls of northern Thailand (not to mention poorer nations) no better choice. No surprise is it, then,that government has done little and will likely do little, to end sexual slavery. Sexual slaves need neighbors who will work outside the system to bring them to freedom. One important first step is for those who would be those good neighbors to stop looking to the problem for the solution.

How's It Working for You?

So, Mr. Quill Pig, how’s it working for you?

After all these years of bloviating, how many minds have you changed?

How many of your non-believing libertarian and anarchist friends have you attracted to Jesus?

How many Christians have you persuaded to reconsider their devotion to Uncle Sam?

How many of the people who friended you on Facebook will unfriend you before you decide you’re a menace to what you say you stand for?

What does it mean when your family members, every one of them, leaves the room when the conversation turns to issues of right and wrong and you get the floor?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m simply incurably dense. Or apostate.

I started this post because I wanted to ask Mr. God Bless America how it’s working for him. And I still think the question is worth asking.

After 9/11 we (I was all for it) were going to have a minor-league police operation in Afghanistan to catch Osama and bring him to justice.

Then we were going to send what Rush Limbaugh called “150,000 weapons inspectors” to Iraq to make sure Saddam wasn’t going to nuke us. Fifty billion bucks and we’d be greeted as liberators.

Well, eleven years later we’re still in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as God knows how many other countries, and not only is the bill rising, the amount of money being spent day by day is also rising.

How’s it working for you? If we were safer now, wouldn’t the bill be going down?

We’ve had three years of Barack Obama. How’s this for a sign of God’s blessing?

Now we’ve got the worst drought in fifty years. How’s this for a sign of God’s blessing?

If God were out to destroy this nation, what would he do differently? Corrupt leadership, tyranny, endless war, drought—what’s missing? Oh yes, disease. I don’t suppose autism and obesity, not to mention increased government spending to combat cancer, count, so we seem to have dodged that bullet, at least so far.

I’ve been buying silver coins to try to protect myself from the devaluation of the currency, but if the drought is killing the food supply, a piece of bread will eventually buy a bag of gold. What then?

What can the Quill Pig do to change the future? Why talk if no one is listening? What would change if they listened?

If I just shut up, I can stop alienating my family and friends and brethren in Christ. These are the people I’ll be depending on after the fertilizer hits the ventilator, so maybe it’s time to go along to get along.

Or is there a battle going on that’s worth fighting even if there’s no chance of winning it?

I hear a voice calling from the past:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

So, Mr. God Bless America, you’re right. It’s not working for me. I don’t think it’s working for you either, but you’re obviously happier with your lot than I am with mine. So go for it, buddy.

I’ve been told that if I won’t stand behind the troops I’m welcome to stand in front of them. If—maybe I should say when—that day comes, may God in his mercy put me in the sights of a sniper who can hit my aorta the first time. Then we’ll both be happy.

The Battle of Aphek

My better half needed a break from her duties as organist at our church, and we both wanted to take a look at how other churches “do church,” so we’ve visited five other churches in the last five weeks. Assuming they were preaching the gospel, we were looking primarily at how they did music, but we also wanted to see, in no particular order, how missions minded they were, how closely the congregation reflected the ethnic diversity of their area, and what they were doing to bring about numerical growth. We were pleased with what we saw everywhere, but our favorite was—and I would never have predicted this—inside the Beltway, just outside Washington, DC, Mordor on the Potomac: Wallace Presbyterian Church of College Park, Maryland.

The music ranged from contemporary to golden (i.e., theologically meaty) oldies, the musicians were professional grade, and all major ages, body shapes, and skin colors were represented. The good news was preached, including the bad news of our transgression of the law and our resulting helplessness and hopelessness. The Bible readings took at least five minutes and included a handful of Scripture passages. We confessed our sins both as a body and individually. The service was well over an hour in length, but the time went quickly.

Special mention: I have never, in any church I have attended, heard missionaries prayed for so thoroughly. I spoke with a member of the congregation afterwards, and he seemed to think that the emphasis on missions was connected to the ethnic makeup of the church. (OK, I’m cheating here. It seems that most of the non-honkies were foreigners who had been touched by missionaries from our denomination before immigrating.)

And, so dear to my own heart, I did not see a Yankee flag anywhere in the building. Nor was there any so-called Christian flag. What I observed there would lead me to say that Jesus reigned in that fellowship unrivaled.

So a light shines in the darkness of Mordor. May God continue to bless his sheep there.

One topic addressed during the morning was the account of the battle of Aphek in 1 Samuel 4. As you know, Israel’s rejection of God as king was almost complete by then, and their national security was being threatened by the Philistines. Knowing that they were God’s chosen people, they merrily trotted out to do battle, and four thousand soldiers died as they lost. Note that four thousand is a third more people than died on 9/11 and about the same number as that of US troops who have died in the entire War on Terror. In contrast, though, while our population of three hundred million hardly notices four thousand dead soldiers, this would have been a noticeable chunk of Israel’s population, to say nothing of its army, gone in a day.

Our preacher’s point was that Israel’s next move was a clear violation of the commandment against “taking God’s name in vain”: they brought the Ark of the Covenant out to their camp in an attempt to, as he put it, conscript God to fight for them when he had apparently withdrawn his favor and thus his protection from them because of their rebellion. And, of course, the stratagem didn’t work: the next day, Israel was routed, and this time thirty thousand soldiers, the equivalent of ten 9/11s, died.

I found myself asking, what were those thirty thousand thinking when they marched off to battle? What were their parents thinking when they put those “Proud parent of an Israeli infantryman” bumper stickers on their ox carts? Was there, as the Bible seems to indicate, no Ron Paul or Quill Pig to say, “What we need here is repentance, not patriotism”? Did no Bradley Manning say, “Heaven no, we won’t go”? Did no one understand that it was literally suicide to go out that day?

Apparently Samuel had started his ministry: “The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. And Samuel's word came to all Israel. Now the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines” (1 Sam 3:21–4:1). But either he never addressed the subject of war or no one was listening. His name does not appear again in Scripture until the Ark returns twenty years later (1 Sam 7). Meantime the fall into the statism that scourges us today had become complete.

Is God really on the same side as the nation of Roe v. Wade, American Idol, the jailing of Amish raw milk sellers, “enhanced interrogation,” and “collateral damage”? Or has Uncle Sam’s inability to call the shots in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq and Afghanistan not provided some evidence that the problems besetting our society are deeper than we’d like to think?^* And that, just as Satan used Israel’s status as God’s chosen people to fool them into thinking God would rescue them despite their rebellion, he could use the glory days of the church in the US to fool even the elect into confusing the Yankee flag with the cross of Christ?

Either Jesus is Lord of all or he is not lord at all. He will not share his glory with another, not even “the greatest nation on God’s green earth.” We are to love our neighbors and do all we can to convince them that they have violated God’s law and so deserve his eternal wrath; this message is the same for al-Qaeda as for US Special Forces as for drug dealers as for policemen as for entrepreneurs as for little old ladies in retirement homes. And, of course, the offer of the water of life is the same for all. God will call whom he will, but our job is to be winsome so that he can win some through us.

I would rather preach to al-Qaeda than US Republicans, but that’s not where God has placed me, and frankly, my failure to be winsome has been spectacular. But after yesterday’s time at Wallace, I feel less alone than I have in a long time.

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*This assumes the conventional narrative, that the military could have won. If, as I maintain, prolonging wars is more profitable, and hence more important, to the politically connected than winning them, then paying for, let alone fighting in, such wars is the paragon of biblical folly.

The Eternal Legacy of a German Soldier

Two greying empty-nesters named Henry, St. Louis Cardinals fans since childhood (however intermittently in my case), sat across the picnic table on Saturday. The other Henry had been charged with telling me about his father, yet another Henry. So, it being Memorial Day weekend, Henry père's war story came to mind.

"Dad was on a B-24 on a bombing run over Germany when the plane was shot down. The plane turned over on its back, one of the wings fell off, and then it exploded. Dad was blown out of the plane. He was the only survivor.

"When he landed, he was captured by a bunch of German civilians. They got a length of rope and were taking him to a tree to string him up when a German soldier came by and stopped them. My dad spent the rest of the war as a POW.

"After the war, ... I don't know whether it was guilt from being the only survivor of the shootdown or what, but he was never the happy-go-lucky guy he'd been growing up. He went through shock therapy and other things, but he was never happy again. He became an alcoholic and died when he was forty."

So much food for thought in so few words.

Isn't it interesting that it is to one of the soldiers whom he and so many others had gone overseas to kill that Henry père ended up owing his continued life and Henry fils owed his very existence? That German soldier is remembered on this Memorial Day because he did the exact opposite of what he and Henry père were trained and paid to do: preserve the life of the enemy.

Why were the civilians so ready to kill? Was it simply because Germans were barbarians, as we were taught growing up? Or could it be that they had lost loved ones to the carpet bombings and felt justified in killing one of the bombers? Or that they were still angry about the misery they had gone through in the 1920s and 1930s caused by the Treaty of Versailles and its resultant near starvation, and that on top of being dragged into the first war, one that was originally no business of France, Britain, and certainly the United States and entered by those last for opportunistic imperialist reasons?

How did those civilians feel about being robbed of their prey by a man they were paying to defend them from the likes of this US soldier? Was this rescuer in danger from those who were paying him?

For the last few years of the war in Ir-Af-Pak, US military deaths by suicide have exceeded deaths from hostile fire. Was Henry père's alcoholism simply a somewhat socially acceptable form of suicide?

Most importantly, was there no way this war could have been avoided? Was the US government, which by this time had eschewed the liberty mindedness of Jefferson for Progressivism, without blame for bringing it about? Or could those who ended up profiting from it have had some interest in seeing it begin?

Whatever the answers to those questions, some things are certain.

God's ways are beyond our knowing. Certainly the average US Christian would not credit the courage of a paid armed agent of Adolph Hitler with his own eternal life in Christ, yet that is the testimony of Henry fils (as I connstrue it, anyway), and that in a way harder to swallow than that of Corrie Ten Boom. (Sister Corrie's testimony is that the Nazis were the horrible death dealers we US Christians love to hate, yet it was through that horror she saw God work in her own life, eventually even to the point where she was able to forgive those who had tormented her and killed her sister.)

Yet because of the interposition of a kraut, Henry père returned home, married, and fathered children, including Henry fils, who, for reasons of his own, soon followed his father into alcoholism.

Yet today he is the loving husband of a joyful wife and father of two children he has every right to be proud of. Most importantly, he is a citizen of heaven who testifies, "I'd have gone the same way my father did. It's only because of Christ that I didn't" and takes an active role in his church.

Part of what God used to bring that man to Christ and make him a channel of blessing to so many was the noble action of an anonymous German soldier almost seventy years ago. May the soul of that Nazi soldier rest in peace.

Happy Memorial Day.

How Christians Can Deal with Child Molestation Without the State

I consider myself blessed to have received the following thoughtful response to my earlier post about the suicide of Tom White, head of Voice of the Martyrs. The e-mail I received was too long to post as a comment, so I have included it here in grey, with my responses.

Concerning your first question, ‘was Tom White most likely a Christian or not”, my first thought is we cannot know another’s heart, we can only know our own. We can never be sure of another’s. My second thought is based on why I guess someone would commit suicide. Two reasons come to mind: the first is when the future looks in general too painful to live, so the easy way out is to not live it. The second reason is to pay for the cause of the embarrassment and shame. If Tom felt like he was a Christian, he probably felt he had besmirched the reputation of his Lord. The kicker comes when he decides to execute the punishment himself for the crime. He is either not trusting God to do what is right and has to do it himself, or he is trying to earn points by self-punishment. God never asked anyone to pay for their own sin. That Tom would do this would suggest he did not understand or accept the gospel. To do it to save the victim further pain just doesn’t ring true to me.

It is possible that he did not understand the gospel or that he forgot what he had learned. Sinful humans do that. But one would think that a man who spent years building a ministry that clearly reflects the heart of God, not to mention 17 months in a Communist prison because of his efforts (effective or otherwise) to spread the gospel, would have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, and shared in the Holy Spirit—in short, he’s no flake like me—in such a way that his first reaction when he knew the jig was up would have been to seek reconciliation with the girl and her family.

And, as a better mind than mine has pointed out in private, this assumes that events were what the government says they were.

First, we don’t know the identity of Brother Tom’s accuser, and it could be that there is no girl at all. One would think that a system interested in justice would publish the names of either both parties or neither. That only the defendant’s name is published creates a moral hazard for the prosecution (including the plaintiff) in that it suffers nothing if it loses—and the prosecutor himself, of course, is paid handsomely for his efforts—while the defendant loses freedom, time, and money in the process. It’s win-win for the prosecution and lose-lose for the defendant.

Second, people don’t usually commit suicide at work. They do it at home or in isolated places. Conclusive evidence that the state was after him for something else? No. Strange? Yes.

The above is from a human perspective. You ask also about God’s perspective. We can be assured that God is both good and just, and allows only that which ultimately brings Him glory. One could argue that either suicide or not committing suicide could meet those ends. In this case perhaps the lesson is ‘the punishment for sin is death’, either one’s own death, or the death of our Savior on the cross.

Concerning the setup for the second question, let me respond to some of your statements. [My original statements are in italics; his response is in bold.—QP]

1. Every rape complaint means more work for government agents. For some I am sure this is true. To say it is true for all is oversimplification and unfair to many truly helpful, caring, and loving social workers.

Government workers are paid whether they do their jobs or not. Yes, some are scrupulous. Others are not. The question then becomes, do the scruples of the scrupulous justify a system that also pays the unscrupulous (using money that is, don’t forget, extorted from those who earn it)? Or do the scruples of the scrupulous actually allow the extortion–sinecure system to expand by lending it the perception of legitimacy?

2.  I assume you consider soldiers exemplary government agents. Not true. We are all aware of unjust, hateful, cruel and mean acts conducted by soldiers through all of history. They are sinners under severe mental strain given inordinate power, which is a recipe for problems.

The church attended by the letter’s addressees prays regularly and specifically for the US military and until recently—and then primarily because of yeoman efforts by a lay woman—sporadically and generally for missionaries the church supports. While there have been occasional prayers that Christian soldiers will act in a manner that befits their claim to be Christians, the assumption that the mission they are on is truly to defend our freedoms, to execute God’s wrath on evildoers, and to be of no threat to those who do what is right has never been questioned.

3. the same soldier who told me, "I don't make the policies. My job is to carry them out." Yes, lower ranking soldiers in general are paid to follow orders, not to make decisions.

Is this not also a moral hazard? Will God not judge the soldier who ordered female prisoners at Auschwitz to disrobe and enter the gas chamber and then turned on the gas, as well as the officer who commanded him to do it, as well as the politicians who set the policies? To acknowledge the legitimacy of the state is to legitimize the whole process: the guy at the top gets a pass because he didn’t turn the switch, and the soldier gets a pass because he didn’t give the order.

4. government agents in charge of investigating sexual assault are less interested in the welfare of the victim than in doing their job... No- not every government agent is a soldier. Other people are paid to investigate justice and make moral decisions- not to just follow orders. You are grossly oversimplifying.

This was a blog post, not a doctoral dissertation, so yes, I was oversimplifying. But again, it is the scruples of the agent, not the incentives built into the system, that results in justice. And no less an authority than Chuck Colson has gone on record as saying that victims feel exploited by the “justice” system.

5. The welfare of the victim is secondary at best. I agree that it seems that way sometimes. This contradicts, however, a quote in the second article you cited. “Bartlesville Police Capt. Jay Hastings … noted that the department's next step is to ensure the girl receives proper treatment or counseling.”

If I read Colson correctly, his point was that the welfare of the victim is secondary most of the time. When Bernie Madoff went to jail, how much of the money he stole went back to his victims? Or are they rather now not taxed to provide him room, board, and whatever else he consumes as a prisoner? And if the government were not to see that the girl gets counseling, what recourse would her family have?

Also, what kind of counseling would the girl receive? Would a government that fastidiously avoids mixing church and state pay for her to receive Christian counseling? Or is it more likely that she’ll be counseled by a radical feminist to blame her situation on the patriarchalism inherent to Christianity? And who will pay the bill? The putative offender is dead. Will his family have to foot the bill? Or will the already-overburdened taxpayer be hit up once again?

6. the prosecutor, another government agent, is not likely to be as concerned with the victim's welfare as with advancing the interests of the state or his own career.  Yes, this is likely, however his job is to uphold justice, which is a higher calling than the interests of an individual. Otherwise the legal system would be nothing but retribution and blood feuds. That’s the value of the rule of law.

Again, he is paid whether he upholds justice or not. If the position requires an election, the only thing that keeps him employed is getting the votes, and only his scruples dictate how honestly he pursues those votes.

I disagree that his job is to uphold justice. His job is to further the ends of the state, whatever they be. “Law enforcement” is not the same as upholding justice: the agents who enforced the fugitive slave laws in the US and who rounded up the prisoners for Auschwitz were enforcing the law, but I don’t think they were upholding justice.

God never calls us to “the rule of law.” He calls us to submit to him as a person. This is what we as his ambassadors are to be calling our neighbors to. There are rules, but they are God’s rules. Most of the laws our law enforcement people enforce—prohibitions against peaceful activities like growing hemp and selling raw milk come to mind—are unbiblical.

…

So, I think your second question is “How is this [judgement by the church] a worse situation than what … would have [happened] had Mr. White taken his medicine like a man [and lived to be investigated and prosecuted by the law]?” My answer is I don’t think it would have been worse, but may have been considerably better by being tempered with love, compassion for both, a deep God-given understanding of human nature, and willingness to invest counseling and time in restoration. I think conflicts between believers should be resolved in the church—God is quite clear about this.

Thank you. That was my point exactly.

It would have been considerably better had the situation been handled through non-state means, specifically the church in this case. First Corinthians 6:7 says, “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?”

Child molestation is certainly more serious than the financial matters Paul appears to be talking about, but then the question arises, when is a matter too serious for God’s people to handle alone? When do they need the assistance of the godless state?

Here the victim’s family apparently chose state terrorism—“the state is supposed to be a terror for evildoers,” some would say—rather than the path of fraternal confrontation, repentance, restitution, and reconciliation, a path I have never heard of a state even offering. Perhaps the family tried non-state means first and that was never reported. But even so, then, we’re back to the question of when God wants us to hang our dirty laundry out for the world to see.

I have seen signs in churches declaring that the state will be called in to deal with any cases of child molestation on church property. Now I’ve had four daughters go through church youth programs, and had I had any doubts about the moral fortitude of our church’s staff—no such doubts ever crossed my mind— I would have taken comfort in knowing that the matter would have been taken seriously. But the last thing I would have wanted to see would have been those men and women whose names I knew and whose children were my children’s friends put in jail, their names in the papers, their futures ruined, their spouses alone and impoverished, and their children publicly shamed—not to mention the church's name in the papers and thousands of tongues wagging that Christ not only doesn't save his people from sin, they can't deal with it without help from unbelievers.

I hope the girl’s father is happy. If it was a dead child molester he wanted, he got it. I suspect the only fly he sees in the ointment is that either he didn’t get to do the deed himself or the process wasn’t made more torturous by some sadist in prison.

Call me what you will, but the sooner I no longer share the planet with people who share his happiness, the better.