11 May 2006

Ron Sider today takes up an objection to nonviolence against powers in "Christ and Violence."

(The objection) "Neither Jesus nor the apostolic church engaged in economic boycotts of civil disobedience to challenge and correct social injustice in the Roman Empire. And neither should we." What can be said to this important objection?
...one response. The political situation in first-century Palestine was vastly different from the political situation in North America, Europe, and many other parts of the world today. Roman emperors were dictators. There was no place for a friendly opposition or for the expression of political dissent. Subject populations like the Jews could collaborate...or they could rebel... Jesus, as we have seen, rightly rejected all these political options. After He had rejected all the unfaithful modes of political activity in His particular historical context, there was no other viable political stance tolerated by the ruling dictatorship other than that of building a new community based on different values. That is exactly what He did.

There in that last sentence we see a bit of who we are to be as the followers of Jesus - we go ahead and begin to live as part of the new community. Yes, it may be alien in its life and values...but we go ahead and live there. We do not try to turn the world into us. Rather we live within a whole new realm and, if need be, take on the consequences of such living. I I have said previously, this is what is so different from the biblical model of being Church and the one we see in some of the prevailing religious attitudes of our day. Some segments of the Church want the government to become like their model of church and when their vision of the Church is not followed, they complain and scream persecution. Theocracy is not the vision of the Church in the scriptures. Just recently I saw a quote in which someone wrote that the God blessed the United States and that we were chosen to be a Christian nation. Where does that come from?!? I would suggest it comes from what I would call an anti-Christ vision that has nothing to do with the Jesus who was crucified....except to use the emotional pull of that horrible event to win people to this perverted notion of power.

Connection: How do we each begin to go about building what Sider calls this new community that was the way of Jesus and therefore, our way also? There are ways and as is always the case, it takes more than one to walk along that path.

When you make us a bold people, O God, it is that we will forever remember to live as though your beloved, Jesus, leads us into this day. We need to be inspired to walk with Him and to become a part of the radical way in which He loved the world. Amen.