Theologizing Fidel Castro

I have a real-life, flesh-and-blood question for my conservative evangelical friends who believe that it is a Christian’s duty to “honor authority.”

In 1956, Fulgencia Batista was Cuba’s head of state and Fidel Castro was a revolutionary. Castro and Che Guevara and their gangs would show up in villages, say to the people, “Do as we say or we’ll kill you,” and do as they pleased.

Castro was, we would agree, a rebel against God, a murderer, and a thief.

Three years later, Batista was history and Castro was the head of state. Before long, he had a representative at the United Nations. And he was still sending his agents—now they had official uniforms and a chain of command that ran all the way to the UN—to the villages to tell the people, “Do as we say or we’ll kill you,” and to do as they pleased.

Same people, same actions, same victims. Same rebel against God. But now Castro is the power that be, ordained of God, right?

As such, according to Romans 13, Castro “hold[s] no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. … He is God’s servant to do [Cuban Christians] good. … He does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. … [He is God’s servant], who give[s his] full time to governing.” Not “would be if he followed God’s law”: is.

Let’s leave aside his closing of churches and otherwise stifling of dissent and concentrate only on the issue of taxation as defined in Romans 13. (Yes, I’m being snarky. Neither “taxes” nor “revenue” is defined, so they can include anything.)

If he can take away whatever tangible property he chooses, to say nothing of liberty and life, in 1959 as God’s ordained agent, why could he not do it in 1956 as God’s future ordained agent?

Why would his victory over Batista not have vindicated any prediction (prophecy?) he might have made that he would become leader?

Would it have been wrong for a Christian who realized that God was going to give Cuba into Castro’s hands—to ordain him as his servant—to have joined up with him before the march into Havana?

If it was wrong to join him before the march on Havana, why is it OK to take a job in his government now?

If it was right to forcibly oppose Castro when he was a revolutionary, why is it wrong to forcibly oppose him now?

And if it was wrong for Castro to do as he chose with people’s property in 1956, why is it OK in 1959?

If it’s not OK for Castro to have free rein over people’s property in 1959, why not?

I would suggest that anyone who gives Romans 13 precedence over the prohibition against stealing in Exodus 20:15 and the statement in Psalm 2 that the kings of the earth are unalterably opposed to the Lord and his Messiah is morally paralyzed in the face of the Castros (and Maos—Mao’s story differs from Castro’s only in the details) of this world. Only when Christians refuse to carry out the immoral decrees of the powers that be, however ordained of God they might be, will the church be able to wage war “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).

Proper Respect for Authority

Last night I was watching the movie Courageous and took away from it a lesson I don’t think the producers intended.

The movie is about a bunch of police officers who risk their lives hassling people about such things as burned out tail lights and drug dealing, but apart from that it does impart important lessons about integrity and parenthood.

In one scene Javier, a friend of the policemen, a low-skill but really high-integrity worker who has recently fallen victim to downsizing, has just shown a factory owner that he is “faithful over little” at the bottom rung of the ladder, so the owner offers him a job higher up at a pay level that would enable Javier to pay the bills for what sounds like the first time in a long time.

At this point in the story, the factory owner is assumed to be my idea of duly constituted authority. He has acquired the capital needed to start his business by living below his means to save his own resources and by earning the trust of others to get loans for the rest, and he has remained in business by meeting the desires of his customers at a price they are willing to pay.

Unfortunately, that all goes out the window before he finishes offering the new job: one requirement of the job is that Javier be willing to fudge records when the owner instructs him to.

By this time in the movie the perceptive viewer knows what Javier is made of, so it’s no real surprise when he says (something to the effect of), “I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity you have given me to work in your factory, but I cannot take this new job because I would have to lie. That would bring disgrace to me and to my God.”

Bingo.

He expresses gratitude for the things the owner has done right, he refuses to go along with the evil that the owner asks him to do, and he lets the result be whatever God allows.

In that sense, he did better than either Jeremiah or Micaiah did in their respective situations. I see nothing in either biblical account of Micaiah’s confrontation with Ahab that indicates that Micaiah thanked Ahab for what social order did exist at the time in Samaria. For that matter, I know of no instance in which Elijah thanked him, unless his prophecy that Ahab would die because he had allowed Jezebel to have Naboth killed counts as thanks. Nor do I see Jeremiah giving thanks to Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, or Zedekiah.

If a factory owner, someone who for all we know has come by and maintains his position of authority honorably, has no right to ask us to do evil, by what logic does a king, who acquires his status by virtue of victory in war and his operating budget by extortion, become the voice of God?

What Javier said to the factory owner—not “I don’t make the policies, I only carry them out”—is what all government employees should say (mutatis mutandi) when asked to violate their neighbors’ rights. There would soon be no Christian soldiers or policemen or bureaucrats, but that’s as it should be. They can practice their purported trade of peacekeeping as private employees and do so for the glory of God, not some godless political entity.

“In Christ alone my hope is found. He is my hope, my strength, my song.”