Render and Persecution

I have prayed for the freedom of believers around the world; prayed that Mao and the KGB and the Stasi and Castro would fall. That there would be free elections and new liberty of speech, the reporting of news and freedom for religious worship. Political Parties have told the American Church that it needed to support their policies to guard religious freedom abroad, and at home. Voices from the Right bring panic when they portray the Christian Church as powerless facing the challenge of Muslims, as their ideology runs unfettered across apostate Europe towards our shores. Military Islam is bad enough, but spiritual Islam?

In light of this, what do American Christians want from our government? Surely there are economic benefits to living in this country; physical protection; possibly personal status; infrastructure; a place in world order. I don’t know how much of that Jesus was buying when He offered the coin to Caesar, but I’m sure it was the minimum amount. The Romans, unfortunately, wanted the maximum, and ruled remote regions directly, with Roman rulers supported by Roman troops. And they killed people who agitated against them. In this light, Jesus said give to God that which belongs to Him. But your heart isn’t given to Caesar - your heart belongs to God. In the end, millions of believers died because they rendered their hearts to God.

For this is the real hatred Caesar has of Christ: he cannot have the heart of Christians. The Church is not to love Rome, or Washington, or Moscow or Canberra; it’s to love God, and the value of the State rests in its ability to facilitate that reality. We have a misplaced love issue in America, and it impacts all of our missions and thinking about God’s relationship to the world.

The State can feed the Church with peace and prosperity, or with persecution. Our attraction to the politics of this world seems driven to maintain personal peace and affluence, and avoid any trouble or persecution. But compromise of the values of the faith is often the bi-product of pursuing peace and safety. The Civil Rights Movement brought together faith, a desire for justice and civil disobedience. The violence that ensued protected the peace and prosperity of many Southern Christians, who watched fire hoses and attack dogs cut down their brothers and sisters. They justified their positions by saying that they were required to remain obedience to the laws of Caesar, but I wonder how much a fear of the persecution they could see on their TVs every night motivated their silence (and sometimes shrill cursing).

The American Church has made an alliance with the American political system to keep it safe from God’s attempt to change and refine it. It acquiesces to injustice and wars that have no moral rationale. It overlooks torture to get the names of terrorists and detention replacing due process.

I have no desire to spend my time fighting on ever moral issue that is confronting the country, nor do I believe that proper rendering requires that. Rendering that requires political interaction is just another form of manipulation: ignore injustice to preserve personal peace and affluence; embrace resistance to injustice as a political club against the state.

It may be that resistance is the appropriate response to unearthed injustice, but I want my marching orders to come from the place Jesus wants us to be, in the world of the spiritual, in the place where most things are rendered to.

If we don’t render properly, we face a very real possibility.

We become the Amish.