Deconstructing "War Churches"

I hope my readers felt stimulated by yesterday's provocative, complicated article on Christians and nonviolence. In many ways it was a counterpoint/companion piece to my paper, "The Lord is a Man of War: A Theological Rationale for Pacifism," which uses sounder methodology and comes closer to explaining my true views of what the Bible seems to be saying about human violence.

"War Churches" was intended as a complex piece of literature dealing with both ethics and hermeneutics through the instructive use of satire, exaggerated polemics and questionable scripture application.

Some of my regular readers noticed that this post was quite different from my usual tone and style. My rhetoric-o-meter was set on "polemical" and my exegete-o-tron was set on "proof text."

As I noted in my paper, the NT's instructions to the first-century churches on peacemaking are notoriously difficult to apply to secular governments and modern geopolitics. In what way is my relationship to the United States analogous to Paul's relationship to Rome? Or Christ's to the Jewish establishment? Who is my neighbor in a world at war?

By simply taking passages on Christian attitudes and ethics and trying to extrapolate them onto secular institutions, we run the risk of mis-interpretation and mis-application. That's not to say that mis-application is definitely taking place. My call for a "high view" of the authority of Christ (i.e., that governments are obliged to follow his teachings, just as individual Christians do) is a concept ripe for additional deliberation. The Bible knows no separation between the religious and secular realms, between public and private life.

By adopting a polemical, proof-texting style, I was (in my own way) lampooning the style of religious journalism which I grew up reading. In the right-wing heretic hunter magazines, the message is just as vitriolic, if not more so. And most doctrinal or ethical statements are backed up by a brief quote followed by a scripture quotation which might or might not truly support what is being asserted in the article.

Growing up as an aspiring teacher, I taught myself this method of rhetorical one-two punch (scripture quotation -- verse citation -- WHAM!). If you want church people to listen to what you say, just follow it up with a scripture that sounds superficially to be saying the same thing. It's the lazy man's way of sermonizing, and it's a method which false teachers can so easily use to make their teachings sound orthodox. Remember, the Devil's pretty good at quoting scripture himself.

So, by mastering the use of proof-texts, I simultaneously learned how to egregiously misuse and misapply the Scriptures. The proof-text method makes the Bible into a tool, a weapon, something you use to support what you want to say. It places you above the biblical text, asking, "how can I use this Word to prove my point?"

This has things backward. The way to read the Bible is to come in submission and subjection, eager to be rebuffed and rebuked by its soul-searching mysteries. The Bible is not a tool with which I prove my point, but a mirror by which I critique myself.

We Christians must not settle for scripture citations thrown around like exclamation points. Doctrinal and ethical assertions must be built humbly and delicately from the text. We must allow Scripture's deep truths to arise from the stories the Bible tells and the laws which flow from those stories, ever watchful for the divine movement of truth flowing from the Torah all the way to Revelation.

I cringe whenever I hear people gush over a preacher because of the sheer volume of scriptures he cites or the quantity of texts he can spout from memory. To paraphrase Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, this is all just a parlor trick. Anybody with the skills to prepare a lesson, commit it to memory, and present it effectively can take an extra hour and memorize the scriptures he plans to cite. When I first started preaching, I made it a habit to always memorize my texts and recite them when I was standing away from the pulpit and my Bible. But I eased away from this practice when I realized I was just showing off.

Those who read my work carefully will notice that I'm constantly quoting and alluding to Scripture, yet I don't feel the need to stamp it with a parenthetical notation every time. I expect my readers to know a scriptural allusion when they see it, to be able to use a concordance, and to grow to trust that my mind is full of the Word and my heart is full of God's Spirit.

This is not to say that my use of scripture in "War Churches" was completely invalid. It is instructive to note just how much material in the New Testament seems to preclude Christian involvement in warfare. It is not the case that one could round up an equal number of texts that disprove my argument and support Christians in combat. Well, I guess one could cite hundreds of texts from the OT, but I doubt that many pro-war COC'ers would go that route (I reckon most of them are pretty dispensational).

What do I believe, then? To sum up my paper, the warrior God of the OT is the same loving God who is the Father of Jesus Christ. The disconnect between the blood-soaked Old Covenant and the nonviolent New Covenant is bridged by the presence of the "kingdom" prophecies in the OT. The coming of Christ signaled the (proleptic, incipient) inauguration of the Kingdom of God -- a new spiritual reality in which violence (the ubiquitous lot of the fallen cosmos) is obsolete. Christians have been transferred from the kingdom of death and decay into the kingdom of life and peace. Our "new wine" in Christ cannot coexist with the blood-diluted old wine of the fallen world and the temporary Mosaic system. Read my paper in full to see this theme developed through a narrative, canonical approach.

In praxis, this means that we kingdom people remain aloof from the demon-incited conflicts of this world which is passing away. Our time allotted to do God's bidding here on earth is too short to be wasted on something which might very well be the antithesis of Christian teaching (i.e. reliance upon human governments, rather than God's providence, to solve human problems).

I do think that Christians need to re-think their practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. In his On the Crown, Tertullian (the first Latin church father) argued against Christian participation in the military, but not primarily on the basis of Christian nonviolence. He argued that all soldiers betray Christ when they swear their allegiance to Caesar.

I also pray that we in the churches of Christ will not continue to be left behind when the Spirit is stirring up positive changes in the world, such as abolition, the civil rights movement, the war on world hunger, and the struggle for equality of the sexes. I'm afraid these were some "weightier matters of the Law" that passed us by while we were busy straining gnats.

I could continue on this topic all day, but there's no need to drone on and on. I often question myself as to whether I could be off-base on this whole subject. But from childhood I perceived that Jesus was a pacifist, and I've been unable ever since to prove things differently. I do often read new literature on both sides of the issue, and find strong arguments on both sides (take, for example, this post on Contratimes).

What I want is to live in God's Kingdom now. And when the world looks at the church, I want them to see a body of people who truly think, feel, and act like Jesus.

Grace and peace. God bless you all. Maranatha.