We all know the story of the boy who is harshly reprimanded to sit down and then sits down with the announcement: I’m sitting now but inside I am standing. This is a classic example of resistance with a good shot of rebellion mixed in.

These sound like serious emotions for now and then with major upheavals in our circumstances, whether personal or public. Yet it is precisely the inner storms that blow over us daily, gripping us and provoking us to anger or frustration. Just a few headlines, a few words from a hostile attitude in our daily dealings or even an unexpected misunderstanding between friends, have the potential to whip up resentment and rage in our inner beings.

We all know the feeling that world politics conjures in us – great frustration and powerless anger. Today it is so easy to express it, not only privately, but publicly on various social media platforms. It feels as if so many parties, institutions and media are pursuing an agenda to dismantle and replace with chaos, the community of good values and high ideals that has been built and preserved over years with great bloodshed. After all, we aspire to inhabit this earth as civilized people.

Civilized? What exactly is a civilization? It is defined as complex power over people and nature with the development of cities, social stratification, a government, agriculture, record-keeping, grand architecture, and specialized labour. 

I would define it as an order of society that unlocks to every human being the opportunity to live out his or her full potential. This is truly the ideal that should build a political and social structure. However, that is not what happens and attempts to achieve it are flawed at best.

It is almost impossible to reconcile the great divisions in Western societies while treasuring freedom as an esteemed common value. It is very easy to rule with violence and fear as we see in many parts of the world. It is also often the people from such oppression who turn to the West, desiring to live in the freedom of speech and association that we take for granted.

What are they getting in the West these days? Not at all what they expected and I’m not even talking about those who come with an agenda of resistance and destruction.

One of the outstanding features of the laws and regulations surrounding the religious festivals of ancient Israel was the inclusive nature of the precepts.  

You must rejoice before the Lord your God — you, your sons and daughters, your slaves and handmaidens, the Levites in your villages, the strangers and the fatherless and widows with you — in the place that the Lord your God will choose to establish his name there.(Deuteronomy 16:11 – precepts about the Passover) This was often repeated for application in the seven feasts over the year.

Slaves and handmaidens, strangers, orphans and widows – just let that settle in your mind. When I read this Scripture, my heart breaks over the loveless church, Christian communities that have more to say about dogma and liturgy than the burning anguish around them. What do the “strangers” get in the West? We are overwhelmed by them and just as Israel has been overwhelmed by their “strangers” with idolatry, false worship, immorality and violent institutions of old, the West is in danger of a dismantling of the good morals in the age-old tradition of evil that wants to destroy all that is good.  

Today’s immigrants get pretend Christians who have never made a decision to follow Jesus, and yet present themselves under the name of Christianity. They are so far from God and his heart that burns for man, his Creation, that everything they say about God can be dismissed as gossip. They do not know him. It is a watering down of the truth that Jesus came to teach and live. The message, as lived in the lie of name-Christian, is without power and substance.

It’s just as well someone talks about me, how I keep my home and how I entertain people, but they have never been to my house and have never met me, although I have invited them. In the same way, the greatest, most inclusive invitation of all ages prevails and continues over every human being and all that the oppressed from other parts of the world see in us is pretense, pride and greed. People go by the name of Christian and live a lie with great ease, without even missing the substance of the life-changing power of repentance, rebirth and a subjugated life. They perish from a lack of knowledge of the truth and then wonder why their community is threatened.

We, who are called by the Name of God and have responded to become desert dwellers, citizens of the invisible Kingdom of Jesus on earth, are charged with the task of prayer.  One of the miraculous promises of political and social peace is contained in our attitude toward our government and secular authorities.

There is one principle that applies here and everything else depends on it, just as Jesus told the highly educated people of the religious community in the first century.

“Master, what is the most important commandment in the Law?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the most important and the first commandment. (Matthew 22:36-38)

It’s very easy to read these words fast and superficially. We know them so well. We know it from childhood – God is first, it’s written in stone from the earliest days. The question is the difference between knowing and living.  

Do I live with God first in my mind, where emotions are aroused, where my own opinion has the fast pass to the throne of my thoughts? Surely I know very well what must happen, which people must go, who must govern and what they must do. The idol of self-conceit sits comfortably and exalted.

It was in the bloody and chaotic politics of the day that Paul wrote the first six verses of Romans 13:1-6 (AMPC)

Let every person be loyally subject to the governing (civil) authorities. For there is no authority except from God [by His permission, His sanction], and those that exist do so by God’s appointment.

² Therefore he who resists and sets himself up against the authorities resists what God has appointed and arranged [in divine order]. And those who resist will bring down judgment upon themselves [receiving the penalty due them].

³ For civil authorities are not a terror to [people of] good conduct, but to [those of] bad behavior. Would you have no dread of him who is in authority? Then do what is right and you will receive his approval and commendation.

⁴ For he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, [you should dread him and] be afraid, for he does not bear and wear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant to execute His wrath (punishment, vengeance) on the wrongdoer.

⁵ Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath and escape punishment, but also as a matter of principle and for the sake of conscience.

⁶ For this same reason you pay taxes, for [the civil authorities] are official servants under God, devoting themselves to attending to this very service.

The precepts from this passage came at a time of intense persecution of The Way, as the young Christian movement was known in the first century. When the Romans realized that these people were not truly part of the Jewish community, the persecution intensified with the help of the Jews who wanted to eradicate it.  

The government was certainly not considered friendly. There were always Jewish factions that wanted to fight the oppression by force. At times, rebellion became violent with heartbreaking bloodshed only to bow again under the iron foot of Rome. [According to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and interpreted by Daniel, Rome was the feet of iron and clay.]

Since returning from exile, Israel has never again been free from a world empire that dominated them. At best, they were allowed to maintain their way of life and practice their religion as a province of Persia, the Greeks, Alexander the Great’s generals who ruled his conquered territories after his death and then the Romans.

The overwhelming opposition and violence against the Christians is precisely one of the enduring testimonies of the eternal value of the truth as taught and lived by Jesus. Here we are today, privileged to live and preach the astonishing survival of the Christian message within the principles of freedom of speech and association established on the basis of Christian ethics and beliefs based upon the value of each individual.

Especially in our age, with all the freedoms that would have been unthinkable for the Christians of the first century, Paul’s precepts are pertinently applicable. Do we also walk around with daggers to bring down the Roman Empire soldier by soldier? We know life and death are in the power of the tongue. The daggers of old have been replaced with words.  

We break down and destroy with what we speak… to our own detriment. We know the Word of God is alive and powerful, so we can expect the blessing of submission. Will we submit the authorities to God in prayer so that that same authority is exercised for our good? With God, nothing is impossible. He uses the “wrong” government to rule in our favour. 

God strikes a straight blow with a crooked stick. (FP Moller)

Just think of the peace and miracles we miss because our eye is on earthly governments. As if their actions determine our future! We are united in the powerful hope (the proof of things unseen) that the content of our future is the promises of God.

We can experience and live out the miracle blessing of submission if we change our own attitude.

Blessed (happy, fortunate, prosperous, and enviable) is the man who walks and lives notin the counsel of the ungodly [following their advice, their plans and purposes], nor stands[submissive and inactive] in the path where sinners walk, nor sits down [to relax and rest] where the scornful [and the mockers] gather. 

But his delight and desire are in the law of the Lord, and on His law (the precepts, the instructions, the teachings of God) he habitually meditates (ponders and studies) by day and by night. (Psalm 1:1-2)

Where do you walk, where do you stand and where do you find your seat? Read carefully and make it your own.

Next time: How do you make peace with submission to a government that undermines and betrays all Christian values?