DISCERNING OUR POLITICAL RESPONSIBILITY

[HKHaugan]

by Ted Schroder, July 3, 2011

 

David McCullough recently lamented the lack of sense of our history today after a student from a prestigious college remarked that she did not realize that all the original thirteen colonies were on the east coast! Last August, Antoinette and I drove to Maryland to explore some family history. Her mother’s ancestors had come to Florida from there and we were interested in finding the family properties and graves. In Easton we discovered her great-great-grandmother’s marker in the 1684 Third Haven Meeting House graveyard, which is the oldest surviving Society of Friends, or Quaker, meeting house in the USA. We visited her 1780 Daffin family home, and then drove to Dover, Delaware to visit the 1750 plantation home of the Dickinson family, Poplar Hall, into which she had married. Outside the Dover AF base is the Dickinson mansion, which is maintained by the state of Delaware, because of its association with one of America’s founding fathers, John Dickinson, half-brother to Antoinette’s relative. We drove onto Wilmington to find John and his wife’s markers in the historic Friends Meeting House graveyard, where an historic plaque proclaimed that it was the final resting place of “The Penman of the Constitution”. He received that title because of his many writings during the revolutionary period. He wrote a pamphlet on the Stamp and Sugar Acts and was appointed by the Pennsylvania legislature to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765 and there drafted the resolutions of grievances. In 1767-1768 he published a series called Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania which won him wide popularity. He drafted a number of petitions to the king on behalf of the Pennsylvania legislature and the first and second Continental Congresses. He was largely responsible for the “Declaration…Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their Taking Up Arms” issued by the second Continental Congress in 1775. He aided in the drafting of the Articles of Confederation and during the war served in the militia. He was President of the Supreme Executive of both Delaware and Pennsylvania and supported the ratification of the Constitution. He was a fine Christian gentleman who was opposed to violence, freed his slaves, and was devout in his spiritual exercises of Bible reading, family prayers and worship. Last May, Antoinette managed to find and research the family Bible in the Philadelphia Historical Society archives.

            The generation of the founding families struggled with discerning their Christian responsibility to the questions of the day: the issues of tyranny and liberty, of taxation and representation, of justice and injustice. They asked - what attitude should they have to their government? How much respect should they give it? How much power should politicians have? What were their expectations of those who held positions of public trust? Each generation has to continue to ask those questions. The founders would expect us to continue to be vigilant and not to take their labors for granted, or waste them.

There is a great deal in the New Testament about these questions. In Matthew 22:21, Jesus said to those who were questioning whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar or not: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Jesus makes a clear distinction between what is Caesar’s to command, and what is God’s. Caesar has a limited sphere of responsibility. Caesar is not God. Governments get into trouble when they assume the prerogatives of God, when they try to regulate every aspect of the lives of their citizens, when they require ultimate allegiance to their ideology or religion. When politicians or government agencies try to determine what companies can do or not do, or even where they can do business, or try to provide excessive benefits to buy votes at the cost of fiscal responsibility, they become idolatrous. They think that they can do no wrong – which is a dangerous fallacy.

            Jesus asked those who were trying to trap him by their question to produce the coin used to pay the tax. When they produced a denarius he asked them “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” The coin bore the legend ‘Tiberius Caesar, Augustus, son of the deified Augustus, chief priest.’ The use of Caesar’s coinage acknowledges his authority and, with it, the obligation to pay taxes. They could not benefit from Roman roads, education, law and order, and freedom from invasion without making their contribution. Jesus was saying that those who enjoyed the government’s benefits should pay their taxes. But how much? When are they excessive?

            But, Jesus was also rejecting the excessive claims of Caesar to divinity. He made a distinction between Caesar and God. Caesar could claim taxes for public works, but he could not claim them for worship. Jesus rejected Caesar as high priest of the state religion. The coin bore Caesar’s image, so use it to give back to him legitimate taxes. But you are made in God’s image, so give yourselves back to God what is legitimately his – your reasonable worship. The followers of Jesus never saw themselves as worshipping the Roman government. They refused to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods, or to the spirit of Caesar. They suffered for their resistance. They were persecuted to their deaths for their refusal to give Caesar what they considered should be reserved for God. They did not see the Roman authorities as meeting all their needs.

            This distinction between God and Caesar, God and government, freedom of worship and loyalty to the nation, allowed for our democratic tradition to develop in the West, culminating in the principles of civil and religious liberty in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Our value system in the USA is derived from a biblical point of view. Belief in inherent human dignity and equality based upon our common origins as created in the image of God, or liberty as a fundamental right, springs from our understanding of the world continually being ordered, directed, renewed and redeemed by God.

This is not true everywhere in the world. In many Islamic countries, where there is no distinction between God and Caesar, there are no guarantees of liberty, especially to women and Christians. There is no freedom of religion to change your belief. There is no equality for all before the law. There is no securing of the blessings of liberty for Christians in Iraq. Because there is no guarantee of safety they are fleeing the country in large numbers.  In Pakistan, Christians continue to suffer from legal discrimination. The blasphemy law punishes people for their freedom to change their religion. While the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan has improved, this is not true for Christians. There is no freedom of belief and expression for Christians because sharia law trumps any constitutional guarantees. In Iran persecution has escalated to an unprecedented level. The government is concerned because more and more Iranian Muslims are converting to Christianity. The house church movement is booming, with converts estimated in the hundreds of thousands. If you are not Muslim in Iran or Saudi Arabia, you are regarded as an enemy of your country. Islam is losing its credibility because of its cruelty. The people don’t trust the government and the Muslim clergy anymore because of double standards and hypocrisy.

            The situation in China is similar. Material prosperity has not brought happiness. The house churches are growing there too despite crackdowns by the authorities and the arrest of Christian leaders.       

            The third temptation in the wilderness consisted of the devil showing Jesus all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” (Matthew 4:8,9) Militant Islam and Communism seeks first the kingdoms of this world. In contrast, Jesus did not want political power. He rejected the political interpretation of the Messiah promoted by the Zealots of his day. He told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world…my kingdom is from another place.” (John 19:36) But the time will come when “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15) But that time is of God’s choosing, not ours.

We, in our day, are tempted to worship the government and what it can do for us. Instead, Jesus calls us to worship the Lord our God, and serve him only. That calls for vigilance and courage in discerning when to support and when to oppose those in power. That is our national heritage, and our Christian responsibility.