Own the Woes

how to worship the Beast while sounding churchy

A good rule of thumb for interpreting Holy Writ is this: God’s commandments are not schizophrenic. Example:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

Paul does not mean that God disapproves any disobedience under the sun, or even any dissolving of tyrannical government and replacement of the authority. Biblical proofs are too numerous to mention here, so I’ll keep the list brief.

· Abraham resisting the authority instituted by God; king Kedorlaomer, opposing him militarily to rescue Lot

· Ehud resisting the authority instituted by God; king Eglon, assassinating him

· The Hebrew midwives resisting the authority instituted by God; king Pharoah, disobeying his decree to kill the male babies

· Jeroboam resisting the authority instituted by God; king Rehoboam, rebelling and seceding from the nation because of the wicked forced labor imposed upon brothers

· Paul resisting the authority instituted by God; king Aretas, by escaping the city over the wall rather than submit to arrest warrant

Jeroboam’s case is interesting as he is actually instructed by God to rebel, where the other cases, God’s approval of the resistance is implied rather than baldly stated.

But that’s not all. Here’s my favorite example to demonstrate that Paul isn’t teaching blind submission:

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The Cleansing of the Temple; Christ driving the money-changers from the temple and raising a scourge over his left shoulder, as if to strike a man on the floor, after Dürer, print, Marcantonio Raimondi, after Albrecht Dürer

So, Jesus incites a civil disturbance. He frightens peaceable civilians doing business. He threatens bodily harm (you don’t use the whips on the tables). The providers of sacrificial animals had the complete approval of the government to operate as they were doing. It was not a black market; it was official in every way. Jesus wasn’t exercising civilian arrest on behalf of the Sanhedrin; he was actively opposing the civil order which the Sanhedrin approved. And Herod and Pilate had no quarrel with this market activity either. It was completely legal.¹

And the temple wasn’t a place outside the legal jurisdiction of the civil government. Roman authorities avoided breaking the gentile codes there as a matter of pragmatic power projection and pacification, but they would not have hesitated to impose their rule there if needed, and did on several occasions in Palestine’s history. There was no separation of church and state. Collusion, by definition, is not separation. Jesus wasn’t being “churchy” by his act. He wasn’t doing something that the civil authorities could afford to ignore because it “happened in church”. False dichotomies between religion and civil authority are an invention of our age, not theirs. No, there is no way under the sun to characterize the Lord’s behavior as other than resisting the authorities. In any decent, law-abiding, peace-loving society, such behavior would be criminal. It would be riotous.

Well, did Jesus shame Paul? Is the bible schizophrenic? Is the scripture a mishmash of conflicting ethical teachings? Here’s Paul again:

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.

If the rulers of Israel were a terror to bad conduct, why did Jesus walk in and add his own terror to the bad conduct of the money changers? The rulers of Israel were happy with the money changers. If a government is happy with you, it must mean it smiles on your conduct. But no, Jesus became a vigilante, terrorizing their bad conduct, and incurring further judgment upon himself by doing so. He had already made himself a stink in the eyes of God’s ordained authorities on several occasions in Jerusalem; this just added fuel to the fire.

Paul was executed by the sword by God’s instituted authorities not for his bad conduct, but for his good conduct: for his preaching the news of the Kingdom. Did Paul approve of his own execution? When he said “if I have harmed them, or if I have done anything deserving of death, I do not object to dying”, he was not playing coy or using rhetoric. He knew very well that his new mission was guiltless.

But the authorities were wicked. They called evil good, and good evil. Paul’s teaching on civil authority does not re-define good conduct and bad conduct. It offers no succor or excuse to authorities who cast down God’s statues and erect their own. Paul doesn’t switch sides. He doesn’t exchange the tablets of Moses for the casuistry of the Senate.

It is true that Paul leveraged Roman law to strategic advantage, and he appealed to it when he appeared before authorities who were supposed to uphold it. This is not because Paul believed Roman law was just, or something better than Hebrew law. It’s simply because he became all things to all people, that he might save some. He was shrewd, he wasn’t a sellout.

Unfortunately, we are surrounded by Romans 13 zealots who have sold out. Unlike Paul, they have exchanged the tablets of Moses for the laws of <insert name of your Beast here>. So here’s my challenge to you, if you’re a Romans 13 zealot:

You need to own, proudly, the logical consequences of your zeal: admit that it was bad conduct for a Jew in the Reich to try to resist his murder in any way, shape, form or fashion, because those murders were decreed by the authority which God had put in place. The authorities wrote the laws to say the murders were good and necessary for the survival of Germany.

And own the insane application of your zeal: when the Reich bore the sword against the Jews, it was not bearing the sword in vain; it was bearing the sword in righteous wrath. The righteous wrath of God, who had appointed the Reich as the authority to not be resisted.

In 1933, when Hitler came to power, nearly all of Germany's population of approximately 60 million people were Christian. This included roughly 40 million Protestants and 20 million Catholics. By 1945, 6 million German Jews had been murdered. Their blood lies squarely on the shoulders of those 60 million Christians who did nothing.

I’ll not even invoke the 25.5 million allied combatants who were forced to do something because the German Christians did nothing. Adding their blood to the heads of the German Christians might make the justice a bit harsh, so I’ll temper it with some mercy. Instead of 31.5 million victims, let’s just say the German church only murdered 6 million. That’s a reduction in guilt of 500%. I’m feeling generous today.

The irony is that those 60 million German Christians failed spectacularly in their attempt to save their own skins by obeying the authorities which God had placed over them. 5 million German combatants died, and 3 million German civilians. So, by attempting to save their own skins, the German Christians actually lost more of their number than the Jews they refused to save. Pretty piss poor self-preservation calculus, if you ask me. They should have taken the resistance to authority route; things would have probably turned out better for them.

Well, I guess the 60 million German Christians could sleep well at night knowing that they obeyed Paul, who said “do not resist the authorities God has placed over you.”

“But this does not mean that faithful Christians couldn't hide Jews”, the Romans 13 zealot protests. Um, yes it does. Hiding Jews was illegal. If you hid a Jew, you were resisting the authority God had placed over you. You were breaking the law. You were an illegal.

“But this does not mean that faithful Christians couldn't flee”, the zealot protests. Um, yes it does. Hitler made emigration illegal, eventually. So if you left the country, you were resisting the authority which God had placed over you. You were breaking the law. You were an illegal.

And so on, and so on. Own it, zealots. Own your worship of the Beast. The scripture says “woe unto them who call good evil and evil good”. Are you prepared to own that woe by not only re-defining good and bad behavior, but taking it one step further and accusing Paul of doing that? The inspired writer of the epistle to Rome? Which is canon in the holy scriptures which cannot be broken?

Or, alternately, you could repent. That would be much better. Then we could be brothers. Just do that, and don’t argue. I promise it won’t hurt much.

1. It was absolutely allowed by Torah to sell animals for sacrificial purpose; God never intended every single one of his people to be farmers and raise their own animals. Many Jews were cosmopolitan and had urban vocations. So, Christ’s ire was not at the commercial activity itself. Christ wasn’t an anticapitalistic. His anger was at the crony capitalist racket which the Sanhedrin had built up around the sales. They had instituted a special temple coin, which was evaluated different than standard money, and were taking obscene profits from this debasement. It’s a bit analogous to an amusement park where the food booths won’t take your money; only goofydollars, which you have to exchange at the turnstile for a value difference of 200%. And the profit, as principle, was also not what drew Christ’s ire; it’s the fact that the practice made the sacrifice even more painful than God intended it to be. It was tying heavy burdens on the backs of Israel, without lifting a finger to help them. This practice had full government approval; it was legal. Literally, they were using false weights and measures (Deuteronomy 25). Details are in Jerry Bowyer’s book, “The Maker and the Takers”. Read it. Application: yes, your congregation is allowed to have a bookstore on the premises, as long as you’re not extorting your customers. Charge market rates for the books and you’re fine.