We Deserve to Lose

We are accountable for commands from God as found in the Bible. It helps if you have some grasp of the context in which that Bible was written. Jumping into the narrative with Western philosophical assumptions will simply get you lost. You will likely understand the most basic need to repent and make Jesus your Lord, but you will have a very tough time understanding His teachings if you reject the fundamental assumptions about the world Jesus made as a Hebrew man. If your education, even by the very best and most rigorous intellectual standards, is entirely Western, you will by default reject the very mind of Christ.

One of the basic assumptions in the Bible is there are two levels of human existence. God has two sets of commands. One applies to purely spiritual concerns. The other applies to practical concerns of living in this fallen world. The first is embodied in clinging to the Cross, offering your entire being for God’s purpose. The second is embodied in the Covenant of Noah, but specifically exemplified in the Covenant of the Law (Moses). The Apostle Paul said quite bluntly, nothing about the Law was intended to work spiritual salvation. It was only intended to make life sane so we could point to things spiritual. To mix the two is madness. It is also the most common form of American Evangelical Christian religion.

Evangelicals stand in God’s wrath for one thing in particular: Believing a human organization under fallen human rule is somehow sacred. Sacred to the point we must violate every known moral standard to protect the prerogatives of that organization. That organization is the United States. They somehow fail to notice the government and the governed have never once been the same set of people, but because the former has made it their official mantra, these Evangelicals have swallowed it. It sounds good, but was never actually possible. But let’s assume for the moment they are genuine in their concern for putting first the people of these United States, and not the State. Facetious on the face of it, yes, but let’s play that game for a moment. These American Evangelical Christians claim it is good and right to torture “terrorists” to extract from them information which would protect us from their dire intentions.

It has been demonstrated endlessly torture does not work. It only appears to work, and in just a precious few anecdotes at that. So much for the objective facts. It’s also a violation of every known standard of Scripture. However, if you confuse the Kingdom of Heaven with the United States, you won’t notice that. I wonder what they do with Arabic Christians who actually serve Jesus, and want to serve in defense of their nations, too? Oh, wait — you can’t claim to love Jesus if you don’t love the US government. Right?

Wrong. It’s bad enough they reject the Jesus who died for His enemies, and try to crucify their enemies instead. You see, crucifixion was partly torture. Don’t forget the beating Jesus took before that, a Roman lictor lashed Him not quite to death. Such a lictor had to face his victim for this job. What kind of man could do that? And don’t forget the humiliating abuse by the Roman soldiers and the Temple guards, slapping Him around. What kind of people must they have been? Would that be any different from the sort of CIA, military and other sorts of US government agents who torture folks? Or would they be any different from such agents who deliver prisoners to even more brutal torture? Just doing their job, all of them, never mind how much fun they thought it was.

Can a man claiming to follow Christ have any part of this? I mean, can a follower of Jesus perform water-boarding? Can he beat a prisoner? Can he turn prisoners over to those who would do far worse? Would Jesus do it? Okay, but I’ve said there was a lower standard for human governments under Noah/Moses. Would Moses do it? No. Read the Law. Yes, King David did it, but he also had Uriah killed. Not every deed recorded was given a note of approval; you were supposed to read that while understanding the Law and know David failed as often as he succeeded. He was also a spiritual man, as well, and the confused jumble of what sort of man he was cannot easily be answered by simply citing his actions. Context matters. Today, the US is not in any way equivalent with Ancient Israel, because Christ has come since then to set the record straight. “Do good to your enemies.”

If, on the purely pragmatic grounds of Noah/Moses, we have to torture to win, then we deserve to lose. We make ourselves odious in the sight of God, and fully deserve His wrath, fully deserve to have this land spew us out and we become vagabonds on the earth. The United States is not the Kingdom of Heaven, and this political entity is not somehow sacred and exempt from those things binding on all humanity. About the only way we can save our nation is to stop this madness immediately, and execute those who carried out this hideous work. Yeah, we really need such odious people on our side. American Evangelical Christians who don’t call for these same measures are serving Satan.

We are doomed.