“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14

People regularly email me with questions about how to communicate with other Christians about liberty and peace. The greatest conundrum the Christian libertarian has, it seems, is persuading other Christians to stop supporting the immoral wars that governments perpetrate across the globe. It is particularly difficult in the United States, where “supporting the troops” is essentially part of the new orthodoxy in most evangelical Protestant churches. You can publicly criticize a minister that he preaches too long and someone will support you, but say one word criticizing the military (or even the police) and you become anathema.

It is not as though we cannot defend our position adequately; the truth is on our side. We can easily bring forth historical data, ethics, and solid theology to make our case that war is wrong. This is good and right! We must never cease reasoning with those who disagree with us, and we should do so with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). However, we must admit that a large part of the problem is not merely failure to reason, but also a failure to show Christian compassion toward others. Churches all over forget that war really is hell, and neglect the suffering war causes. This is especially reflected in our public prayers.

In the past, even the Southern Baptists took the Word of God seriously and prayed for those affected by war. But when was the last time you heard a church pray for anyone in the Middle East, for instance, other than soldiers? When was the last time you heard a church pray for an end to war?

Recently, I was moved to step out and try something I have never heard of done before: ask the leaders of my congregation to take the lead in praying for those suffering in war. (In the Church of Christ tradition, the elders are the spiritual leaders of the congregation.) After consulting with some of my close friends, I attended the June 2010 elders’ meeting and presented the following letter to them to address the “Prayer for the Church” that we offer every Sunday morning worship service.

*********************

To the Elders of the University Avenue Church of Christ,

We have noticed an unusual trend over the past few months during our prayers for the church in Sunday morning worship. On multiple occasions, we have heard people pray for men and women in the military, that they receive “special measures of protection” as they fight to “protect our freedoms” and “serve our country.” While we understand the concerns of church members who have friends and family in the armed forces, and while we sincerely hope for their safe return immediately, we find that these kinds of prayers are neglectful of another group – those victims who suffer wrongfully from this war, to whom we are indeed responsible in part for their suffering. Regardless of one’s opinion of these wars, we think that all can agree upon inspection that this practice can and should change to be more inclusive.

For instance, we never hear prayers for our fellow Christians who live in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the US invasion in 2003, Christians who were tolerated in the past have been repeatedly persecuted and frequently even killed by indiscriminate warfare or surging extremist groups, and nearly half of the Christian population of 800,000 in Iraq has either fled the country or died. In March 2010 alone, over 4,000 Christians were displaced from their homes following unrest in the northern city of Mosul. Many more have confined themselves to their homes for their own safety.

Moreover, we rarely, if ever, hear prayers for the innocent people in Iraq that die on a daily basis, either from indiscriminate killing by our own military or civil unrest that results from a country torn apart by war. The lowest estimates of non-combatant deaths in Iraq number greater than 100,000. Unfortunately, over time our sensibilities and attitudes toward this war – which is now the longest prolonged conflict in American history – have become desensitized and lackadaisical, and thus we often forget these innocent people.

We appeal to the elders to lead the way toward recognizing this issue with two simple proposals. First, we propose to include in the bulletin prayer requests under “Family Members in the Military” a mention of the innocent and oppressed in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially our Iraqi and Afghan brothers and sisters in Christ, and for an end to these wars. Second, we propose that the elders take the lead in consistently mentioning the same in prayer with the congregation on Sunday mornings. If the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective, then surely instituting this practice will do good both for these victims and for our own spirits.

We support this appeal with Scripture in two ways. First, if you consider these people as we do, that they are innocent victims and have been wronged by their own leaders, by extremists, and by our own military, then may we pray to God as Jesus taught his disciples: to be “delivered from evil.” If we can pray this for ourselves, surely we can do so for others. But second, if you still consider these people our enemies, then may we do as Jesus said in Matthew 5: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” May this be the beginning of understanding what Jesus said moments before, “Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Changing our practice to include praying for the oppressed is not a political statement. In fact, this is not a political issue in the least; on the contrary it is a moral and theological issue. If we are to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” then we should take seriously that Jesus came and died to proclaim peace on earth and to liberate the oppressed. We may expect that “wars and rumors of wars” will always exist, but this does not require a condoning or defeatist attitude of such events. Rather, this understanding should make us more sensitive and more compassionate toward those who suffer.

To conclude, war is arguably the most destructive human activity ever devised, and it is an intensely serious moral and theological issue because of its finality for those involved either directly as soldiers or indirectly as innocents. It is right to earnestly pray for our family members participating in war, but let us not become callous to the suffering of others, especially those to whom we are indirectly responsible for their suffering. Therefore, we should let our congregational prayers reflect our concern for them.

In Christ,

Norman Horn [Others at my church signed this letter as well, names withheld for privacy.]

Sources:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,587345,00.html
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33940&Cr=iraq&Cr1
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

*********************

The response of the elders was, to my surprise, extraordinarily positive. We discussed some of the ramifications of them taking this position. Only one had any concern for it being “too political.” In response, I emphasized that the effects of war are apolitical and intensely real, and therefore to ignore what’s going on is potentially even more political than standing up for what is right.

The next Sunday morning service, during the “Prayer for the Church,” the elder assigned to the task prayed for peace and for the innocent affected by war. This has continued for many weeks on end, with both elders and non-elders doing the same. It isn’t a perfect record at this point, but something is changing.

Amen!

Now, I have to admit that I have the ear of the eldership already. I am a part-time minister in this congregation, and thus they could have been generally more receptive of my proposal because it came from me. It could be that if you tried the exact course of action I did, it might not work out so well. But I still contend that anyone could work with their church in an analogous manner to change it even a little toward peace. Here are some ideas that might help you:

1) Start by setting the example yourself. When you are asked to pray in public for the congregation and its concerns, include those oppressed by war with any prayer offered for family and friends in the military. Furthermore, make sure that you are praying for peace in your private life.

2) If and when you engage your congregation more directly, initiate it by making a request that requires no justification at all. Don’t be afraid to just ask! Send one of your church leaders a very simple request, something like this: “When we pray for soldiers in Iraq, could we also pray for the Iraqis who are suffering, especially our Christian brothers and sisters there, and that God would bless our enemies and bring them peace.” You don’t even have to justify such a request. That’s straight out of Scripture, right?

3) Find others to make the same request together. Talk to some of your elders/leaders together. Again, keep it simple, but up the ante a little bit each time.

4) Keep it apolitical. You are not trying to “make people into libertarians” or anything of the sort. This message is first and foremost about the people affected by conflict. Our concern is for them, not for our egos or political views.

5) If at first you don’t succeed, try again. You may not get a good hearing initially, but be patient. Gently keep pushing back. If it becomes necessary, use the letter above as a model to give to your church leaders. Keep in mind, I really think this should be a “letter of last resort” to be used if your leaders refuse to listen to simpler reason. I carefully constructed this with feedback from multiple sources, so that it could easily show the self-evident principles involved. It gives no quarter and I don’t apologize for that, but know your audience and appeal to their sensibilities.

Of course, some in your church will respond negatively to this kind of request. They may ask how you can ask a church to pray for this war, for instance, when there are millions of other things for which we could pray. What about apartheid in South Africa, earthquakes in Haiti, or persecuted Christians in China? Could not the list go on forever if we wanted?

Those critics have a point, but our response should be that there is a fundamental difference between, say, praying for apartheid in South Africa – where we are aware of no national influence (and in my church’s case, have none of our church members as missionaries there) – and these wars. The difference is that this country, the United States, claims responsibility for their country now, and hence we are already involved. It is not “our fault” that Haiti had an earthquake or that Christians in China are being persecuted (though we may pray for them anyway), but it is in part our fault that the United States has torn apart the Middle East. Moreover, churches continue to condone and support such aggression with little thought either to the consequences for the Arab peoples or the internal subconscious changes that this has on our own churches. And what better way to change our own hearts than through the power of prayer? And what better way to start that process than through the leadership of the church?

Imagine what would happen if churches across the United States (and internationally!) were to stop praying for the military alone and to begin including those oppressed by war in their public prayers as well. Don’t you think that God will help make our hearts ever more attuned to the oppressed?

If the Bible says that the prayers of the righteous are effective, and if we believe that prayer affects us as much or more than prayer affects God, then let us never cease to pray for and support those who suffer from the horror of war and let us encourage others to do the same.

Think about some ways that you can be a peaceful voice for peace in your church. Maybe emulating the story above is one way you can make a difference. I truly believe this simple idea can change hearts and minds across the world if, with God’s help, we are brave enough to try.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”
Matthew 5:9.

A modified version of this text will become a permanent page at LCC as an open letter to all American churches.

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How to Promote Peace in Your Church

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Tags: Afghanistan, church, ethics, iran, iraq, peace, prayer, theology, violence, war, war on terror

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Don’t let your ends justify your means.

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In memoriam

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Tags: ethics, history, war

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Now, before someone objects to the revelation of this “classified” information, you need to know that none of this stuff puts soldiers immediately at risk in their current operations. Wikileaks made sure of this. All of it is history, records of the past actions of the military. That is to say, in this case everything kept “classified” is simply stuff they don’t want you to know, and why might they not want you to know? Because the government knows you won’t like it. Because it reveals the side of the war they don’t want you to see. Because it might cause you to change your mind and stop romanticizing a senseless, barbaric, immoral war. Hence, the Pentagon and the White House immediately condemned this revelation as criminal and threatening to the security of the US and its allies.” Well yeah, it does threaten them. If your already unpopular gets even more unpopular, then your power is threatened. Good. Following suit, the mainstream media seems more interested in debating whether or not the information should have been leaked rather than the content of the leak itself. Typical.

Wikileaks has published all of this in what they are calling the Afghan War Diary. Even before going public, they released all the documents to three prominent newspapers: Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and the New York Times, on the condition that all three waited until July 25th, 2010 to write about them.

These war logs provide the most revealing inside look at the war that we mere citizens have been able to see, showing the true nature of this war. They tell of hundreds of civilian deaths, shadowy special forces operations, and even information about how Pakistan’s spy service, which receives over $1 billion from Washington to help combat militants, was assisting the Afghan insurgents. Talk about blowback…

From the BBC:

After being asked repeatedly by reporters whether he believed some of the incidents described in the documents constituted war crimes, Mr Assange said: "It is up to a court to decide, clearly, whether something is, in the end, a crime."

"That said, prima facie, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material," he added.

He cited as an example an attack in June 2007 by a secret US special forces unit, Task Force 373, which used a Himars (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) to begin a raid on a compound where a senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu-Laith al-Libi, was thought to be hiding. Seven children died.

Wikileaks front man Julian Assange is now a target for the US Federal Government. He has been advised by his friends not to enter the US after another prominent Wikileaker, Jacob Applebaum, was detained by US customs and had his computer and phones seized. It’s possible that Wikileaks is concerned for Julian’s life, considering they have now published an encrypted file on the War Diary page labeled simply “Insurance.”

Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com said it well:

Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world.  Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret.  But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively:  it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing.  WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall, enabling modest glimpses into what The Washington Post spent last week describing as Top Secret America.  The war on WikiLeaks — which was already in full swing, including, strangely, from some who claim a commitment to transparency — will only intensify now.  Anyone who believes that the Government abuses its secrecy powers in order to keep the citizenry in the dark and manipulate public opinion — and who, at this point, doesn’t believe that? — should be squarely on the side of the greater transparency which Wikileaks and its sources, sometimes single-handedly, are providing.

And as Julian aptly noted in his recent interview with Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio, the real heroes here aren’t even the people at Wikileaks but rather the brave sources who, by leaking this information, put their livelihood and perhaps even their lives at risk. God bless you, wherever you are.

I entitled this post “everything you need to know…” but in truth my own words could never be enough to capture the awfulness of the war nor the importance of the Wikileaks contribution to peace. However, perhaps with all the links I have provided you can become ever more educated about these important world events.

But here’s what you really need to know: This revelation is an incredible moment in the history of journalism and of the wars of the last decade, and hopefully will persuade many that interventions in the Middle East must be stopped. We continue to need Wikileaks more than ever.

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Everything you need to know about the Wikileaks Afghanistan Leak

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What Happened to the Southern Baptists?

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Tags: audiobook, baptists, Christianity, podcast, southern baptist convention, theology, war, war on terror

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In the world of literature on liberty, books fall into three distinct categories. First are the books for experts scholars, deeper works that address high level concepts, social or economic theory, and philosophical ideas. Next are the books for the informed reader, those that have a working knowledge of libertarian ideas and seek to improve one’s understanding of the philosophy of liberty. Finally, there are books for those just starting their journey in liberty, those who have little knowledge of economics or libertarian theory. Jason Rink’s Disciple of Liberty falls into the latter category, and it fills a particularly useful void in libertarian literature: an easily accessible explication of liberty to the Christian newcomer, from the Tea Party proponent to the disillusioned conservative or liberal.

Rink’s key point, made very early in the book, is that Christians do not need to wonder if it is appropriate or biblical to get involved in politics to defend liberty. On the contrary, it is good and right to become informed and take a stand for what is just, good, and right, we ought to get involved in some way. One cannot simply look at Romans 13 and say that “obeying the powers that be” is all we should do. For those “on the fence,” Rink says to get on board.

But Rink does not simply tell us “just do something, anything!” without a care for what we stand for. “Just get out and vote!” is not a compelling message at all. Rather, he takes the minarchist, constitutionalist position, and defends it wholeheartedly. Rink identifies seven priority areas to which Christians should pay special attention:

• Define the limits of authority – The government cannot, and should not, have unlimited power. Limits must be clear and precise.
• Demand fidelity to the Constitution – The limits of authority for the United States Federal Government are found in the Constitution, period. We should continually demand that representatives follow it.
• Defend liberty for all people – If we expect to have liberty, we need to defend liberty even for people with whom we disagree with their choices. This is a difficult, yet absolutely essential element part of our way of life. Rink quotes Thomas Paine:

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

• Despise debt – We know that individually we cannot spend more than we make; it is unsustainable and irresponsible. The same should be true of the government. No more can they be allowed to spend like a drunken sailor. And this isn’t even about welfare programs either, which account for a small fraction of total government spending. Rather, we must oppose spending on everything that is unconstitutional, from the FCC to the military-industrial complex.
• Demand honest money – The US Federal Reserve and it’s fiat monetary system is fraudulent, backed by nothing but empty promises. A return to the gold standard should be at the top of our priorities, for it is the ultimate check against runaway spending by the State.
• Desire peace with all nations – A Christian is called to love his enemies, not bomb them. We need to understand the history of our current wars in the Middle East and demand that the government cease interventionism.
• Disciple others in liberty – It is time to get involved in the fight for freedom, and we all can play an important role.

Disciple of Liberty has many commendable strengths. The book’s length, about 100 pages long plus reprints of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, is very appropriate for a reader who is not ready to tackle a tome about libertarianism quite yet. It is fast paced and lively, yet gently brings the reader to see from a different point of view. The seven principles he outlines are really good, all are worth understanding in detail. Striking a balance between length and depth of material is quite a challenge. Overall, Jason Rink has put together an interesting and useful book that can help Christian newcomers to libertarian thinking grasp some fundamental ideas about liberty.

However, there are a few things in the book (or not in the book) that I don’t like. For one thing, the sources and bibliography are surprisingly short. A bit more along the lines of what to read next would have been nice. If I may be so bold, I’d recommend Rothbard’s For a New Liberty and Ron Paul’s Revolution: A Manifesto (which, I should note, was mentioned in the Bibliography).

Another minor point of contention I have with the book is its interpretation of Romans 13, but it is an admittedly debatable topic. Of course, Rink easily disproves the “you just have to obey the government” line that so many evangelicals take. He take’s Chuck Baldwin’s approach, which emphasizes that our contemporary “powers that be” are the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, whereas my own approach is quite a bit different. Detailed exegesis, though, is difficult to distill when you are trying to reign in the length of a book, so it is understandable. But following on this point, overall I have certain doubts about making Constitutionalism our prime directive. Personally, I see the Constitution as a bludgeon or mirror, something we can use to say the Federal Government is so terrible that it does not even follow its own rules and never has. We need to remind people that government is aggression, and that our “resistance” against aggression is to expose such truth without apology. Now, Jason does mention each of these things in the book, so this is just the hard-core anarcho-capitalist in me talking. In no way am I downplaying Jason’s work.

As a personal friend of Jason now, I can honestly say that I am very proud of what he’s done despite my reservations on a few points. This is a great book for liberals, conservatives, or Tea Party supporters, who are all in need of some perspective about what liberty should mean to us. I think that it would be great to give to your Christian parents, relatives, or friends who are fed up with the Federal Government and are looking for an alternative. I encourage you to use Disciple of Liberty to strengthen your own resolve and plant new seeds of liberty in Christian hearts.

Visit Jason Rink at www.jasonrink.com. Buy his book here.

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Disciple of Liberty by Jason Rink

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Tags: christian libertarian, Christianity, conservatism, constitution, liberalism, libertarianism, Tea Party, theology, war

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“Some persons maintain that freedom from violence, or at least a great diminution of it may be gained by the oppressed forcibly overturning the oppressive government and replacing it by a new one under which such violence and oppression will be unnecessary, but they deceive themselves and others, and their efforts do not better the position of the oppressed, but only make it worse. Their conduct only tends to increase the despotism of government. Their efforts only afford a plausible pretext for government to strengthen their power.

“Even if we admit that under a combination of circumstances specially unfavorable for the government, as in France in 1870, any government might be forcibly overturned and the power transferred to other hands, the new authority would rarely be less oppressive than the old one; on the contrary, always having to defend itself against its dispossessed and exasperated enemies, it would be more despotic and cruel, as has always been the rule in all revolutions.

“While socialists and communists regard the individualistic, capitalistic organization or society as an evil, and the anarchists regard as an evil all government whatever, there are royalists, conservatives, and capitalists who consider any socialistic or communistic organization or anarchy as an evil, and all these parties have no means other than violence to bring own to agreement. Whichever of these parties were successful in bringing their schemes to pass, must resort to support its authority to all the existing methods of violence, and even invent new ones.

“The oppressed would be another set of people, and coercion would take some new form: but the violence and oppression would be unchanged or even more cruel, since hatred would be intensified by the struggle, and new forms or oppression would have been devised. So it has always been after all revolutions and all attempts at revolution, all conspiracies, and all violent changes of government. Every conflict only strengthens the means of oppression in the hands of those who happen at a given moment to be in power.”

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Tolstoy On Violent Revolution

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Tags: government, leo tolstoy, non-resistance, pacifism, revolution, The State, violence, war

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Russian writer Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. War and Peace and Anna Karenina have inspired millions over the last century. Less well-known about Tolstoy, though, is that his interpretation of Christian ethics has had a profound effect upon the world, especially regarding non-resistance and pacifism. In this paper, I will examine the development of these themes in Tolstoy’s philosophy as they appear in The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1838 into an aristocratic family. He was the son of Count Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy and Princess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonsky, whose marriage was one of negotiation and convenience. Social class meant everything in eighteenth-century Russia, and the Tolstoys were part of the upper echelon of power. Leo’s ancestry included generals, diplomats, and ministers of the Tsarist rulers. Thus, Tolstoy enjoyed the privileges of the high class, such as the ability to attend university. As a young man, he lived a profligate and wild life while attending the University of Kazan, struggling to find a purpose in his life. He decided to join the military and went to war. Seeing the grim reality of war motivated him to write, and he achieved some early success in his publications while on the front. He finally married at age 34 and settled down to begin the major portion of his literary career. He also began to re-explore religion and came to a realization about God, the church, the state, and self. It was during this time that he reflected upon the writings of anarchists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and saw that non-resistance was the only means of lasting change to be found.

In 1884, Tolstoy expounded upon his beliefs in What I Believe, and this work was promptly banned in Russia for its negative imagery of the state and the Russian church. However, it was read widely outside of Russia and garnered much attention, especially by those advocating non-violence in other countries, such as the Quakers in America. Despite the ban, Russian secular and religious intellectuals circulated copies and began attacking Tolstoy’s ideas. In 1894, Tolstoy published The Kingdom of God is Within You, which is a further explanation of his beliefs and a response to his opponents. He writes in Kingdom of the newfound criticism: “These [criticisms of What I Believe] the government tolerated, and even encouraged. So that the refutation of a book which no one was supposed to know anything about was even chosen as the subject for theological dissertations in the academies.” (30) Of course, any work that criticizes the status quo tends to stir such desperate measures.

Tolstoy’s Russia was a country dominated by an elite class of aristocrats, government bureaucrats, military “heroes,” and religious officials. The peasant class was bitterly oppressed through legal maneuvering, taxation, conscription, and a church that legitimized the oppression. An unholy alliance of church and state provided the pretense to keep the peasants from improving their condition. I believe this led Tolstoy away from a traditional creedal Christianity, which to him emphasized conformity, status quo, and doctrines that few people actually believed. Tolstoy viewed the church-state alliance as a complete aberration and perversion of true Christianity for the purpose of keeping the elite in power and the poor supplying their material well-being. He even rejected (though not consistently) the notion of private property, at least as it existed enforced by the state at that time. In contrast, Tolstoy’s conception of Christianity took the words of Jesus with utmost seriousness, elevating the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount as the supreme good.

Tolstoy abhorred violence of any kind. In particular, he viewed the state and its wars as the chief enemies of peace. While normal men interact on a peaceful level the overwhelming majority of the time, war very quickly brings peace and prosperity to ruin:

“Warriors are the scourge of the world. We struggle against nature and ignorance and obstacles of all kinds to make our wretched life less hard. Learned men – benefactors of all – spend their lives in working, in seeking what can aid, what be of use, what can alleviate the lot of their fellows. They devote themselves unsparingly to their task of usefulness, making one discovery after another, enlarging the sphere of human intelligence, extending the bounds of science, adding each day some new store to the sum of knowledge, gaining each day prosperity, ease, strength for their country. War breaks out. In six months the generals have destroyed the work of twenty years of effort, of patience, and of genius. That is what is meant by not falling into the most hideous materialism.” (152)

Tolstoy saw through the veneer of goodness the state wears, with its promises of protection, order, and justice, for what the state really is: organized, institutionalized violence. By its very nature, government cannot reduce violence whatsoever. Tolstoy writes, “Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence, always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence, which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the duration and strength of the government.” (170) Government appears on its face to have some semblance of voluntary nature, but this is a façade since everything a government is capable of doing is only possible because of coercion. “All state obligations, payment of taxes, fulfillment of state duties, and submission to punishments, exiles, fines, etc., to which people appear to submit voluntarily, are always based on bodily violence or the threat of it.” (166)

Yet people accept statism as inevitable, even as right and good, despite the oppression and murder the state perpetrates. In Tolstoy’s words, men know that murder is wrong but are assured by their supposed betters in state offices that what they do is moral, just, and good. They see this inconsistency but believe it is their ignorance that prevents them from understanding the contradiction. “The very grossness and obviousness of the inconsistency confirms them in this conviction.” (304)

Thus, men have become deluded by the state into submission, especially with regards to the use of force. Everyone is under “the condition of the hypnotized,” and like a hypnotized person they will feel and act as they are commanded. The state influences the people such that they lose the power of criticizing state actions, and therefore they follow wherever the state leads them either by example, precept, or suggestion.

How shall mankind overcome the leviathan state? Tolstoy’s answer was Christianity, the absolute dependence upon and practice of the teachings of Christ. Tolstoy derived his ethical principles primarily from the Sermon on the Mount. To him, Christianity was not a mystic religion but a “new theory of life” (hence the subtitle of The Kingdom of God is Within You). Jesus ushered in the new divine theory of life, which “recognizes life not in his own individuality, and not in societies of individualities, but in the eternal undying source of life – in God; and to fulfill the will of God he is ready to sacrifice his individual and family and social welfare.”

The state uses force to push its agenda forward, but must a Christian respond in kind to improve his own situation or bring Christianity to others? Tolstoy appeals to Matthew 5:39, “Resist not an evil person,” as the pinnacle of Jesus’ teachings and as the ultimate means of opposing violence. He treats Jesus’ words not as a theoretical proposition to be pondered and somewhat assented to, but as a realistic, actionable command. Indeed, every person must decide how to respond when he is attacked: “People often think the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer from every thinking man.” (186)

The Christian life, to him, was a progression toward divine perfection, and is characterized by a life of loving others. This love drives us not only to love those that love us, but to love our enemies even to the point of practicing pacifism towards aggression, especially that of the state. He reasons there is no other way of interpreting Jesus and acting otherwise is contrary to the Gospel message. Thus, the Christian cannot use the tools of the state at all. To Tolstoy, the statist theory of life, emphasizing aggression for the purpose of order, was irreconcilable with the Christian life. The state never has been and never could be the Kingdom of God, in fact the Kingdom of God makes government irrelevant. “No honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true Christianity – the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love – with government, with its pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars.” (237)

Tolstoy would say Christianity is the only rational option for peace, and always has been so. In the present age, Jesus’ teaching has become self-evident even in practice, since all efforts of returning violence for violence with the state has progressively made the world worse. The state theory of life requires violence to persist, and only results in the escalation of violence. He even preemptively answers the “mutually assured destruction” strategy to maintain peace in the presence of weapons of mass destruction:

“It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace.” (206)

But how could someone possibly adopt this teaching, when living in an age of the totalitarian state? Tolstoy would answer simply: give up one’s previous way of life, one’s previous way of thinking, one’s allegiance to all but the source of life, and live free of hypocrisy. “A man need only make this theory of life his own, for the fetters which seemed so indissolubly forged upon him to drop off of themselves, and for him to feel himself absolutely free, just as a bird would feel itself free in a fenced-in place [if] directly it took to its wings.” (210) The understanding Christian is no longer under “the condition of the hypnotized.” But these Christians transcend those who simply want a different government; they will act in freedom right now, despite state oppression, and eventually the state must fall. “Revolutionary enemies attack the government from without. Christianity does not attack it at all, but, from within, it destroys all the foundations on which government rests.” (231)

Why has this remarkable teaching not already spread throughout the world? Actually, it has. There always have been Christians willing to live consistently with the teachings of Jesus, but they are not always visible to us. Moreover, Tolstoy would say the church as an institution has perverted the message of non-resistance, sometimes deliberately hiding this message of Jesus from Christians. Even though he painted the Russian church of his day in an especially negative light, he showed that churches throughout history had suppressed this ethic. Why has the church done this? Because of the love of power. The state church always held a privileged position, and church officials always preferred to keep their status rather than tell the truth. The ramifications of this practice were clear to Tolstoy; he understood the wars and oppression by the state as a direct result of the church’s refusal to practice the message of Jesus as a new way of life. Though perhaps an overly harsh assessment of the church as an institution through millennia, one cannot deny that churches have indeed been complicit in legitimizing aggression against others. The rhetoric of evangelical churches today glorifying the war in Iraq and Afghanistan confirm that this behavior continues (even if there is no “state church”). The only solution is to return to Jesus’ teaching, believe in it wholeheartedly, and practice it consistently with no reservation. Tolstoy may not have accepted traditional creedal Christianity, nor held traditional dogmas, but his faithfulness to the teachings of Jesus is truly admirable.

Tolstoy believed Jesus’ peaceful message would persist through “the foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21), but it is remarkable to see the effects Tolstoy’s own words had upon the twentieth century. The Kingdom of God is Within You was immediately banned in Russia upon publication, but had far reaching influence elsewhere. Mahatma Gandhi read the book and was “overwhelmed” by its message, and it greatly influenced his non-violent revolution in India. Martin Green writes, “In Gandhi the book certainly ignited an explosion, and its impact on others around him spread like the bombardment of particles in an atomic pile, so that before the chain reaction was over, the British Empire was blown open and India was a free country, under the aegis of non-violence.” (v) Through Gandhi, Tolstoy influenced Martin Luther King and the non-violent progression of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Contrast these men of non-violence with the history of Russia, where The Kingdom of God is Within You was banned. Seven years following Tolstoy’s death, violent revolutionaries seized control of the Russian government and instituted communism – the Red Revolution. The result was the death of untold millions under one of the most horrible political regimes ever to exist. In fact, the twentieth-century could be described as a century of war. Despite massive advances in science, engineering, medicine, and business, statism is a primary cause of untold millions of deaths from world wars, countless military interventions, and totalitarian regimes. If only Tolstoy had been heeded, such unnecessary death might have been prevented.

Tolstoy writes with clarity and a passion for logic that penetrates deep into the soul. He challenges the contemporary Christian to reconsider the use of force at every turn, to accept Jesus’ teaching as the authority for life, and to reject the state. Far worse than a necessary evil, the state is an unnecessary parasite. Finally, Tolstoy levels a damning charge of complacency and inconsistency against the church today, serving as a reminder to obey God rather than men.

Please consider buying The Kingdom of God is Within You at Amazon.com and LCC will then get a small kick-back from the sale. Remember, LCC receives a small percentage of any shopping you do at Amazon when you go through an LCC link. Help keep LCC growing and growing; your support is much appreciated!

References:

Leo Tolstoy. The Kingdom of God is Within You: Christianity Not as a Mystic Religion but as a New Theory of Life. Trans: Constance Garnett. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

Leo Tolstoy: The Centennial Anniversary. www.tolstoycentennial.com.

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Leo Tolstoy Against the State

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Tags: Book Reviews, Gandhi, government, leo tolstoy, Martin Luther King, non-resistance, pacifism, recommended books, The State, theology, violence, war

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Hey Jon, didn’t I promise you Bush 3.0? You may not be a libertarian now, but keep this up for long and you may end up, oh I don’t know, like John Stossel or Andrew Napolitano…

But I’m still curious, why do “conservatives” want to oust Barry? Seriously, he behaves exactly like Republicans should want: he gives corporate handouts, he passes socialized medicine (remember Bush’s “Prescription Drug Plan” plus some), he encourages education (No Child Left Behind!), and most of all he ratchets up every war effort possible. What’s not for a conservative to love?

Oh wait, I get it. He’s a Democrat stealing the thunder of Republican big-government programs. That’s why.

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Jon Stewart Crushes Obama on Civil Liberties

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Tags: bush, civil liberties, Civil Rights, humor, News, Obama, war, war on terror

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A theological tradition is a behavior, doctrine, or practice of Christians, passed from generation to generation, informing participants within the tradition about their own identity in the church and in the surrounding culture. Theological traditions exist to help explain reality in the light of biblical reasoning and wisdom, that one may better live out the Christian way of life. Traditions inform dogmas (essential things to be believed), doctrinal values, ethical values, or church organizational principles; they often serve to resolve tensions or concerns experienced at the time by the church. Hence, theological traditions are a critical part of the life of the Christian, even if the Christian that thinks, albeit naively, that “all traditions in the church are just man’s addition to real Christianity, and thus worthless.” While this skeptical thinking has merit in certain cases, the concept of tradition in and of itself is neutral. Traditions can be good or bad. Lets consider how traditions work in more detail.Many factors influence how theological traditions develop. First, some emerge as a result of conflicts within the church. Such traditions are generally formed by consensus so that Christians can address a problem or confusion using the best theological reasoning possible. Examples include organizing church polity, means of church discipline, and ways a church chooses to worship.

Second, conflicts with the surrounding culture often force the church to respond in a unique way, and thus form the basis of new theological traditions (in this case, it is like establishing a precedent). For instance, pietist tendencies in the American church have influenced how we respond to cultural media as it has become more sensual, violent, permissive of deviant lifestyles, and the like. How many times have you talked in Sunday school or heard from the pulpit about “separating ourselves from the world” that does action X, Y, or Z? And rightly so, it is the responsibility of church leadership continually to encourage Christians in right living as well as right belief.

Third, the church forms new theological traditions as it encounters and deals with its own prior history and traditions. In other words, the church is always responding to passed down beliefs as well. One example of this kind of tradition, which happens to replay itself every century or so, is the tension of love vs. force, especially as it relates to participation with and justification of the state.

In summary so far, we are constantly building, tearing down, reforming, and revisiting theological traditions. For the most part, this is done in an effort to seek first the kingdom and follow God as best we know how.

Besides the rather obvious notion that traditions need to be grounded in the core of Christian belief, effective theological traditions have two critical components. The first is that the meaning or content of the theology contained in the tradition is clear. In theological literature, this is often called traditum. If the tradition is not understood, it will be displaced by something that is. The second component is that the tradition needs a concrete means of being taught to the next generation, often called traditio. Traditions not passed down inevitably die.

One of the greatest challenges the church faces today in the development and maintaining of traditions is the continued encroachment of the State into every aspect of life. In no other era in history has the State had so much power. Now, in America of all places, the state can birth you, feed you, educate you, provide you with a job (or at least purports to do so), provide you sustenance when you don’t have a job, give you protection, give you health care, give you transportation, give you objects of worship like flags and uniforms, give you opportunities to pledge your allegiance to it, give you hope, give you change, give you retirement — it even can regulate your own death.

In short, the State is like never before attempting to play god. And God only knows the long term effects of Christians attempting to live within this utter contradiction.

Churches could address this issue by exposing this system for what it is, but I am afraid that neither church leaders nor the average American church member are willing to hear such a critique right now. But ready or not, I would tell them three  things that will dissemble the system from the ground up. First, stop saying nothing. Silence, in this case, says so much more in consent than it does in even modest dissent. The state is the enemy of Christ, not the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Second, stop giving away your kids to the state via compulsory public schooling. As I have said many times at LCC and elsewhere, the school system is not built either to educate or to make children better people, but rather to enslave their minds to what the state wishes them to believe. Proverbs 22:6 does not say “let the state train a child in the way he should go…”; this is an injunction to the parents. And if parents really will train their children in the way they should go, then “when he is old he will not turn from it” and we will have a peaceful revolution on our hands. Third, stop encouraging kids to forsake the church by joining the biggest international war-making, killing enterprise ever conceived – the U.S. military (or any other military, for that matter, if you’re outside the U.S.). Can you imagine how much better off the church (and the world) would be, if every military church kid became productive in the church rather than train to be a tool of destruction?

So become aware and take action. Your church, whatever denomination that is, is taking part in the forming of Christian character through theological traditions. What are you going to do about it?

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Theological Traditions

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So yes, congratulations are in order…

Congratulations, President Obama, for proving yourself time and again that you are just Bush 2.0 (or is it 3.0).

Congratulations, conservative warmongers, for towing the party line and keeping this war going.

Congratulations, supposedly anti-war liberals, for believing the lie hook, line, and sinker, and supporting an immoral President through thick and thin.

Congratulations, establishment media, for continuing to shill for the State as thousands upon thousands of innocents suffer. Why should it take an independent media organization to expose what you should have been saying from the beginning?

Congratulations, Christian conservatives, for selling out to a political party where you don’t even get any positive influence in return, and using whatever influence you do have to promote continued murder. Seriously, you’re embarrassing. Stop it.

Okay enough with the sarcasm. You know who should get real congrats? Those who have been consistently anti-war since the beginning of the 21st century, no matter their political stripe. Those such as Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo, Laurence Vance, Ron Paul, heck even Cindy Sheehan have stayed true to consistent morality and opposed what is plainly an immoral, unjust, and unrighteous war.

Stay the course, friends. We must continue to oppose evil and call it by its name. Do not despair, for truth and justice prevail in the end.

(Hat tip to J.H. Huebert for the photo.)

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Mission Accomplished, Obama-Style

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