Spheres of Authority

This post is mainly a response to Jason's email in the post "War on Terror Dialogue (7)".

While perhaps the concept of government is one which was set in place by God for the good of humanity, like everything God established, humans have taken government to an extreme ideology which cannot be reconciled with God's optimal plan for humankind. I agree with Jason's statement that the church and government should be fundamentally non-overlapping, inasmuch as the church ought not make or enforce laws, and the government should not impose or restrict religion.

Where I begin to disagree with Jason is that he seems to assert that God has granted some power to governing authorities which transcends the directives He gave to each individual believer. Certainly, in the Old Testament, God provided certain nations with permission to annihilate certain other nations, but it cannot be claimed (or more correctly, it is very dangerous to claim) that He still does this today. How can it possibly be conceivable that To quote Adin Ballou (vicariously through Leo Tolstoy):

"One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do so, they, too, are murderers. But a government or a nation may kill as many men as it chooses, and that will not be murder, but a great and noble action. Only gather the people together on a large scale, and a battle of ten thousand men becomes an innocent action. But precisely how many people must there be to make it so? --that is the question. One man cannot plunder and pillage, but a whole nation can. But precisely how many are needed to make it permissible? Why is it that one man, ten, a hundred, may not break the law of God, but a great number may?"

To me, the absurdity revealed by Ballou is clearly visible. In fact, it is one of my chief beliefs that God does not hold groups of people to different standards than he holds individuals. The laws that God set in place for us are absolute, not alterable because of any human justification or majority judgment. This sets the stage for my final point, which is a fundamental idea behind the very beliefs that inspired this blog.

Jason is entirely correct when he writes that "As individual citizens or Christians, or as communities of faith, we have no right to bear the sword or repay evil for evil." Therefore, Christians on no scale have the right to judge, condemn, or punish others for their deeds, regardless of how evil. ("Let he without sin...") This means that Christians cannot participate in government, because the government supposedly does possess the authority to do this. (Recall that God's authority is above any human authority.) But as Christians, many want to still ascribe this power to the government. The only possible reconciliation, then, is that the Christian must necessarily desire the government to consist only of non-Christians; else they must will that their Christian brothers sin by taking part in a government that utilizes force. (Think about it before you disagree...) This means that a Christian who desires government must will for some people to be non-Christians, so that they could serve in government. However, as Christians, ABOVE ALL we must desire truly that every person be saved, becoming our brother or sister in Christ. Were this to take place, the government could not possibly exist in the capacity it currently does, and could not possess the authority to act outside the law of God. We, as Christians, would only be accountable to one Judge and one King, negating the requirement of government.

Therefore, the true Christian must be, ideologically, an anarchist.