(Serializing here the draft of my book, Biblical Law: Divine Justice.)
6. Far Away
Let’s have just a moment of historical review here. So far as anybody can tell, among the current populations of Europe, the oldest occupants were Celts, Jutes, Frisians, Gauls and the like. Some few centuries after the time of Christ a horde of Germanic tribes invaded from farther east. Those tribes went by names like Franks, Burgundians, Vandals, Goths and so forth. They brought with them a mythology and culture that overwhelmed everything. They crashed head-on into the last vestiges of the old Greco-Roman Civilization and eventually absorbed what was left. That includes compromises with the existing church hierarchy that had long since paganized, more Greco-Roman than biblical. The result is that “European” means essentially Germanic with their ancient mythology and morals. But they were pagan morals, utterly contrary to those in the Bible.
Here in the US, our social mythology and morals are essentially Anglo-Saxon. Our religious mythology is somehow more like Norse, in the sense that we tend to view the God of the Bible like some grouchy Norse deity. How we got in this mess is a long story in another book (see my A Course in Biblical Mysticism for details). But it leaves us holding the system sacred, with the polar tendencies to either slavishly obey authorities under the system or use that reverence as an excuse to revolt and kill them all because we imagine the authorities violated it. Of course they have, but we aren’t supposed to notice.
We cynically reject the whole thing, but by no means would a follower of Christ with an active sensory heart prepare to resist our unjust Western governments. We’ve already covered the basic principle that God is no longer involved directly in politics. He uses human political entities for His inscrutable purposes, but our mission of walking in the truth has nothing to do with that. For the most part, we attempt to ignore human politics as much as possible.
So what do we make of Romans 13? It would help if folks read the whole chapter. Paul enunciates the basic guideline that you avoid provoking government officials. Do what they say — though no one in their right mind imagines Paul suggests slavish obedience to unconscionable demands. Instead, Paul eventually tells his readers in that same chapter (starting in verse 8) that the twin principles of divine sacrificial love for God and neighbor fulfills your obligations as far as God is concerned. Thus, we are right back where we started: Let your sensory heart rule, not your head. A conscience led by the heart trumps all human law.
If you pretend to evaluate government demands on the grounds of our Anglo-Saxon heritage, you cannot please God. If you make the effort to shift over to biblical justice, you begin to understand how flexible you must be within the context. There are precious few rules, but a massive load of personal accountability to a very Personal God.
Thus, any talk of objective human rights does not come from the Bible. It becomes blasphemous to suggest that there are rights granted by God; it wasn’t the God of the Bible. Rather, it’s yet another scheme dreamed up by pagan philosophers along with silly notions of popular consent for government. Political power does not arise justly from the popular will. In Scripture, government arises from the family relationship and the necessity for someone to stand before God accountable for His justice. Since no government anywhere in the world does it God’s way, it’s simple enough to note with holy cynicism that all power is from violence and deception. The language of human rights is simply another tool of deception and an excuse for oppression.
There is no such thing as fairness in the Bible. No two of us are alike and no two of us have the same need or capability in glorifying Him. He alone decides what each living soul must return to Him. The notion that any of this can be objectified with blanket rules or precepts is blasphemous, an open rejection of the God who made us. It requires denying that God can make a sensory heart by which we each find our own path to His favor. It requires denying the substance of His revelation.
Whatever it is we do in our daily lives under various modern secular states, we dare not embrace the language and concepts of those who flatly rejected the revelation of God.
