I strive after shalom. That’s peace with God; it’s living consistently with His revelation. This world nailed Christ to the Cross; peace with God means enmity with the world. There’s no avoiding that. The Holy Spirit makes me desire peace with God more than peace with my neighbors.
Drawing a boundary against sin is provocative. I’m not trying to provoke them, but I can’t avoid having a witness that tends to raise conviction of sin. People living outside Biblical Law are under demonic influences, so they rarely react honorably when conviction rises. That means my presence in a community does have certain soothing tendencies on the surface, but sooner or later it’s going to explode. The trend is always to push people down to their bottom; that’s how God works.
But this looks a little different when we scale it up. When groups of people draw shared boundaries against sin, the surrounding worldly community will call them “a cult.” Spite rises rather quickly when people start operating in groups. They feel a desperate need to defend their group choices; it feels to them like their tribe has been assaulted, and they take it personally. As long as they aren’t alone with their convictions, it’s easier to stay entrenched in sin. That’s how it works when the demons build a community of deception. It is a divine principle that communities will always be more truculent than individuals.
Scale it upward farther and we have whole coalitions of countries taking umbrage that anyone would dare to depart from their socio-political orthodoxy. They are convinced that material progress is all the proof they need that materialism is right. It’s a circular logic.
On the one hand, I know that my Father has promised to supply the needs of the mission. He supports what He calls us to do. On the other hand, we have been warned a thousand different ways that materialism is evil. God’s abundant supply isn’t according to our reasoning, but according to His. It’s too easy to forget that our lives in this fallen realm are forfeit when we follow Christ. The whole point of the gospel message is that you aren’t stuck here, that this life isn’t all there is.
This is what that fancy word “otherworldly” is all about.
So I cannot avoid provoking my neighbors sooner or later. And all the more so with faith communities provoking the society around them. And could there actually be an otherworldly country, every other country in the world would do all in their power to crush them. The political excuse is always material progress, as if that somehow justifies anything and everything. Every political sales pitch comes with that inherent message somewhere in the package. If not dreams of prosperity for the people, there’s an inherent aim to make some elite leadership wealthy.
Isn’t it crazy that US law and jurisprudence presumes that the State has an unquestionable claim on your productivity, as if you were merely an economic resource? Nothing else matters. Everything enthroned as “rights” is just a cover for that. All other considerations fall away quickly when it comes to material prospects for the State. Think about it: The only reason the State senses any obligation to provide some kind of civil order and preserving your property is so the State doesn’t lose the prerogative of taxing or taking that property for itself. That’s what it boils down to.
A critical element in my calling and mission is to point out such things. I make myself an enemy of the State by daring to help people see this. It’s not that I call for resistance, and sometimes violence, but that this is all the State leaves us. It is the State that has chosen to provoke God so that people have no choice but to resist with some measure of violence. The State is founded on a rejection of the terms by which God says social stability is possible. The State is lying about human nature, to itself and to those it claims to govern.
My mission is to declare what God has said, and to expose the lies of those who have tried to hijack His revelation for their own ends. I’ve said before that the real battle in our future is information; it’s the warfare of revealing God’s truth. What I say should provoke violence, even though there is nearly zero probability that I will be violent in the flesh. I’m constrained by the gospel calling to reveal that violence is not good and right, but that it is unavoidable. I have to point out the terms under which God Himself commanded His people to violent action against sinners who threatened shalom. The violence is the choice of the sinners. I can assure you that God’s people have always been pretty lazy about violence, unwilling to get their hands dirty that way, even when the command from God was unmistakable.
It cannot be reduced to a formula of human logic. It can only come from a heart-led commitment to truth. God alone can tell you when violence is part of your mission. What I do is point out what God said about such things in the past, and testify if/when it’s my obligation today. I walk my wife to the car every morning when she goes to work. When she feels the need, she’ll send a text message so I can meet her when she returns. If I testify in meat-space that violence is possible under certain conditions, I should have the same testimony online. Yeah, I’ll get my hands dirty when the time comes, but not necessarily when it makes sense to people with a worldly orientation.
It’s not merely the State that is wrong, but society itself has no interest in what God says about the situation in our world. And in most cases, the churches are wrong, too. I cannot be silent about any of that. Maybe I’m no more threat than a gadfly, but I refuse to go away. I’ll stop buzzing and biting when there is peace on God’s terms.
