What’s it to you?
I’ve written before there is a thread in the Covenant of Noah which permits some armed response to oppression. The point is not so much self-defense, but removing a threat to the community. That assumes you have first already done all you can to build the sense of community which calls for protection. You cannot arbitrarily decide this or that person is a thug from which the community should be protected when you hardly know your neighbor’s name. My point was there is no real difference between the official government and any unofficial de facto government. All humans and organizations stand on trial before God and have to justify what they do. To the degree folks observe the Covenant of Laws, the rightness or wrongness of violent action becomes obvious.
The Liberty Movement is a very broad and diverse bunch. They range between the respectful but honest all the way down to anarchists plotting mischief and mayhem. Most of them assume varying degrees of legitimacy in the US Constitution, or at the very least, the presumed theories behind it. I admit no such thing; the whole thing starts on the wrong foot, coming out of the Enlightenment. By the same token, I have no interest in presuming to correct those who transgress such Enlightenment ideals. When some malignant, odious arrogant law officer is way out of bounds, I suffer no compulsion to help him find a better understanding by seeking an opportunity to put him in his place. This puts me at odds with virtually the entire Liberty Movement.
My service in the Realm of the Spirit (AKA Kingdom of God) puts that mission above all other concerns. There is neither a presumption of obsequious bowing nor truculent resistance, nor anything in between. All my responses are opportunistic for Christ. Whatever best matches the needs of the mission at hand is what I’ll do. I’ve already discussed how that could result in summary slaughter of some official, in the case of protecting a child from the soul-twisting exercise of government “protection,” however unlikely that may be. At other times it would appear I bow the servile knee to some walking doughnut bag wearing a badge.
Much as I would like to ensure first their relationship with Christ, it’s not always an option. Indeed, I am often compelled to remind many American Christians we are not gospel automatons, and the notion we have to preach a sermon to every warm body we pass is a fleshly delusion of Satan designed to destroy the gospel. God is not a stone statue who always wants precisely the same thing in every encounter, but lives and breathes and sometimes moves in our spirits to simply act the gospel wordlessly. In such circumstances, all the other issues really don’t matter. My life and honor also don’t count for much.
What matters is the calling and mission of God, and we can’t pretend a nickle-bag of Christ is all the understanding we need. This is all or nothing, and no one of us, nor all of us together, can hope to predict with any degree of certainty what God will demand of us in the next few minutes. As surely as we understand God does not use cookie cutters in mass producing an army of soul-clones with all one mission and method for shining His light of revelation, so we are not all called to share the gospel with every human we meet. Sometimes you have to defend whatever your mission is. While I find the notion of having to use force repulsive, my conscience is clear when I consider the possibility of it. That said, the likelihood is tiny, since God tends to protect His mission Himself. That’s the whole point of Noah: If you live right, God is pleased to prevent most trouble and allow only selected trials as your primary witness of His power in you.
So when responding to some dink, who probably really needs and deserves to have his teeth kicked down his throat, his problem is not my problem. If he wants to be an ass, what’s it to me? I have more important things to worry about. The primary victory is not in fixing his problem, but by coming away unaffected.
