If we understand that God’s Laws predict a general non-compliance by humanity, if not open hostility, then our efforts to live His Laws begin to make more sense. We are not the Truth Police and there is no human on earth appointed to enforce God’s Laws on other humans, only on our individual selves.
We surely expect with great cynicism that human governments will always arise, always be held accountable to the Covenant of Noah, and always fail. There may be periods of partial compliance, but the general run of human government is more a matter of God’s inscrutable plans for fallen humanity as little more than smart animals. Further, while we can gain an understanding of God’s preferred intellectual culture, we can rest assured it is wholly unlikely to ever return to earth in the sense of restoring what once was. The ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) epistemology of Scripture will ever remain the open secret of those few believers who try to understand the Bible from its own viewpoint.
It’s not hard to find in Scripture places where Christ and His Apostles warned us to stay out of attempts to govern, to steer government, or to rebuild the intellectual foundations of the Bible outside of the church fellowship. We are most certainly required to implement those things inside the church as a key issue, a central function of what churches do. Right now this would be a monumental task, since it would mean starting from scratch with our own congregations, because I cannot imagine a single established religious institution making room for what we believe. That’s because we must understand we cannot enforce God’s Laws outside our own calling and the domain God grants to us.
The revealed pattern for understanding that domain is the family household, either blood kin or spiritual kin. The latter is by covenant restricted to those who voluntarily remain within the covenant. If God grants us by some miracle a wider influence in the secular society, they still must submit to the covenant in order to receive the blessings of His Laws through us. There is plenty of room for ANE feudal fealty to grant provisional coverage to those unwilling or unable to accept full covenant membership, too, but it remains a matter of recognizing that you and I cannot exercise dominion in any other fashion. ANE feudalism is fundamental to human nature, and spiritual birth does not change what is required of your flesh.
We live these ancient precepts because that is how Creation is wired. ANE feudal organization is the fundamental organizing principle of the universe. It is an expression of how God Himself operates throughout His entire Creation. When fallen men seek every other possible means of organizing, it is the natural fallen response to flee the Garden entrance and the Flaming Sword of Truth. As time passes under the hand of God, mankind will wander farther and farther away.
With each succeeding generation of believers, our part in the task of revelation gets more difficult from the human side of things. We will of necessity rely ever more on the miraculous power of God to change hearts and minds. Insofar as we implement any human authority at all, it must rest on the divine model of ANE feudalism. That model presumes a tension between human volition and the move of the Spirit of God. Yes, there is a time and place when God requires of His servants to use plain old physical force, but it always answers to God’s Spirit and Law. It does not ignore how such might conflict with secular governing force, but pays it little heed.
When conflict between divine command and secular authority is certain, we generally expect to hide, flee or submit as required by God for His glory. Actual armed resistance is highly unlikely, though not entirely forbidden. You as an individual believer will have to decide in the context. Chances are, actually taking up arms will have little to do with direct conflict between the rule of God and that of human government, and more to do with simple contextual necessity. God does not forbid us joining armed revolt or suppression of revolt, but we are forbidden investing it with any sort of religious significance. It’s never a question of which side God is on because human warfare since the Cross has never been a matter of holiness. The Covenant of Moses was closed by Christ, and God announced He was no longer offering anything similar again. Thus, the individual believer engages such political warfare only as a matter of individual response that is not subject to the approval of any other believer.
Christ does not sponsor politics on any other level than within the church, and only in churches organized under ANE feudalism. Anything else in that direction is simply your personal mission and calling. Again, no flag or uniform on this earth represents Christ. Keep that divine cynicism foremost in your mind. Yes, the Christian Mystic can serve in uniform under any flag that seems appropriate at the time, but only a fool sees God waving any flags. Such a believer will never offer quite the level of loyalty the leadership imagines they should have, but will serve more as an alien who could never belong to any human nation. Professional competence is a virtue of itself, and only indirectly a reflection of personal holiness.
