On Government and The Bible

Almost all the troubles in the Bible were caused by bad kings, rulers, and authorities. The way God instructed his people to deal with this differed depending on the situation.

Abraham pleaded with God to save the city if he could find enough righteous people, and eventually he had to take his family and leave.

Same deal with Moses, after much negotiations (i.e., he got in the government’s face first).

Joshua also was commanded to march and yell (literally protesting) and then God tore down the city.

Jonah preached, alone, ridiculed, at a whole city for them to repent. Eventually, through a whole lot of drama, his message changed the culture of Nineveh. But he really had to stick his neck out there first.

David was hailed as a hero for how many he killed in battle. He was called to actually fight. But then, he spared King Saul's life when he had the chance to take him down.

Daniel was thrown into a lions den because although he "could" have changed the way he worshipped and prayed to God when it was illegal, he could have hidden, he didn't. He kept praying in his window, and made the Bible as God's faithful servant because of it.

The Egyptian midwives were told to kill the babies they delivered. But they lied to their government, saving the babies, saying "we couldn't! These Israelite women are too strong and by the time we got there the baby was already out so there was nothing we could do!" Obviously, they're heroes. (Exodus 1)

Jesus told us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s - The tax system belongs to the government. But we bear the image of God on our faces. My children are not Ceasar’s.

We now have to fight to even remind our "Caesar" what they put into their very own Charter of Rights and Freedoms (freedom of movement, assembly, belief, expression, the press - those have ALL been ignored to a crazy extent, all very quickly). Everything we thought was too crazy to happen - has happened.

Jesus said that following him would cause friction with family and friends, but that persecution is to be expected and often means we’re on the right track. That doesn’t just mean getting in trouble for believing in Jesus, it means getting in trouble for following him. The rights they put into the documents that founded North America were put there by God-fearing men who knew the traps of human nature and its addiction to power and ability to manipulate. They put those guards in there for us to protect us but also as a warning that times will come in the future when various regimes will try and take them away, just as they did in the past. Yes, we’re still in one of the safest times in history, we’ve had it good. But it’s foolish to think the horrors of history can’t happen again in some form.

Paul, Silas, the apostles, refused to back down when they were told to stop preaching, eventually most of them wound up in prison or killed for it.

The Good Samaritan saw the suffering his country was causing in a fellow human and had to REALLY go against the crowd, the grain, the expectations of everyone around him, the requirements of the authorities, to help the guy.

Mary herself became a complete reject from the way her family and her country’s laws wanted her to do things. I can’t imagine how lonely her journey must have been at times and how much criticism she must have received from people who didn’t believe the Holy Spirit could POSSIBLY impregnate anybody.

Esther should have been killed for what she did. It was audacious and unheard of at the time, a bit crazy. But she saved her people.

All over the bible, connection, community, not conforming to the world, serving God vs. serving the King, meeting together, spying/going under the radar of the enemy (Joshua and Caleb), civil disobedience to corrupt authority (Rahab, Obadiah), tearing down the doings of evil kings and changing culture for God - these are all biblical things done by the biblical heroes because they knew their mission of spreading the Gospel and fulfilling their callings, walking in integrity, was greater than the rules of the time.

Like Romans 12 says, a body, and the church body, has many members and each has its own role. We aren’t to criticize the ears if we are a nose, etc.

Fake news isn’t new; censorship isn’t new. Governments have always enjoyed hiding the truth from their people and only giving them enough to keep the “peace”, ensure obedience, and make money. Big business has been bought out to help fascists for a very long time; it’s a very effective tactic. These things were written and preserved in history books so we could learn from them, change directions when we find ourselves caught in the preludes, and prevent them from happening again. None of this is specific to OUR prime minister, premier, head doctors. These are themes in history that repeat themselves over and over and over again.

We hail the underground church in other places as heroes, the martyrs who stood up and were ridiculed as heroes, but we criticize the pastors here who are willing to go against the grain and allow their people to keep meeting? We can’t see the end yet, whether this will all calm down on its own - but neither could the disciples, but they knew they had to stand up for exactly what they believed and what they were told to do. They just had to walk in faith and do what they were told to do by God each step of the way.

We’ve been lucky to have it so easy up to this point, and maybe it’ll go back to a land of freedom, maybe it won’t. But I don’t see pacifism in the Bible. I see God changing nations through people willing to stand and take flak, do some really interesting and bizarre and courageous and weird things, to do what’s right.

When my husband and I first started really delving into this stuff to figure out what to do and how to think about it, it was EXCESSIVE how many Bible verses confirming “standing up,” kept coming to us. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a period of time in our life when SO MUCH SCRIPTURE was coming to mind showing us what was going on and what we needed to do. I’ll compile them at some point.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them.” James 4:17

(That also seems to indicate that it’s entirely possible for one person to be called to something that someone else isn’t, and if they ignore the calling, they’ve sinned. But many others don’t have the same calling.)

Freedom has never been free. The soldiers warned us about this after WWI rather beautifully:

“Take up our quarrel with the foe, to you from failing hands we throw, the torch be yours to hold it high, if ye break faith with those who die, we shall not sleep though poppies blow in Flander’s Fields…..”

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord. Also, God hates lukewarmness.

We can either have the “stress” of living outside of our calling, knowing we should be doing something and feeling unsettled all the time, or we can have the “stress” of engaging, doing things, fighting (even if that’s just in the form of being a place people can gather for a birthday party, and thus putting a target on our back in our neighbourhood). Jesus guaranteed trials, suffering, “stress.” We don’t get to escape it, but we do get to choose what type of stress we get. The stress from obedience to righteousness, and with it, peace of mind, or the stress from obedience to corruption and the haunting feeling we are avoiding our true mandate.

Mother Theresa: “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”

Interestingly, in order to go and love our families nowadays, it requires breaking a whole lot of rules, and navigating internal and external pulls and emotions and decisions and sometimes having friction with people over it, but always making new and amazing connections in those we meet along the way. These days, to love our kids and give them what they need, we have to take a pretty intense stance against the “new normal,” and that requires a solidity of conviction. Just imagine if we ACTUALLY followed the rules in Alberta right now. Our kids and us would be SO depressed and lonely and bored and isolated. It actually blows my mind to think about what life would be like if we did everything “they” wanted us to right now.

(That said, if I thought I was protecting anyone by obeying, I’d happily do it. I LOVE rules when they keep the peace and keep people safe. But I’ve read the studies. I KNOW these rules are causing harm, not protection.)

As my mom always said, God doesn’t show you the entire way at once. When you set out on a road trip to Toronto, you can’t expect all the traffic lights to be green the entire way when you leave your house. You just focus on doing the right thing regarding the one right in front of you.