Jesus & Government
Historically, it seems that Christians have more times than not lost sight of Jesus’ stance on government – and no end of suffering and missed opportunity have been the result.
In Jesus’ day, the Jewish culture had a palpable sense of anticipation that the Messiah – the long-awaited rescuer from God who would bring about the Kingdom of God or the Dream of God – was about to appear. This anticipation saturated the culture and the common discourse. There were different ideas about what this Messiah would be like and how he would rescue the world, but the overwhelmingly predominant vision of the Messiah was a political and military hero who would overthrow all of Israel’s enemies, put the nation of Israel over all the nations of the world, and establish a government – perhaps a one-world government – of peace and justice.
Yet, on nearly every other page of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – the parts of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus’ life) Jesus either directly or indirectly rejects the political/military hero model and method for saving the world.
Why?
The answer to this is critical for understanding God and humanity and for pursuing a world of love, peace, and justice.
Here is the reason: you can’t build the Kingdom of God, the Dream of God – or what Martin Luther King Jr. called the “Beloved Community” – with the tools of government. You can’t get there from here.
What are the tools of government? Fundamentally they are violence and the threat of violence. Everything government does and is able to do, every dollar government spends, borrows, or gives, is through the power of these two things – violence and the threat of violence.
This basic concept might seem shocking to some people so I invite you to think about something for a minute. Who would pay taxes in a world where the government could not harm you? How much would they pay? Who would go to court or obey a police officer if the government and its agents couldn’t harm you? What would be the end result of refusing to pay an increase in your real estate taxes and refusing to leave your home?
To say that the fundamental tool of government is violence and the threat of violence isn’t to say that this is all bad. It is government violence that locks away murderers and child predators and it is the threat of violence from government – the ability to take your property, your freedom, or your life – that discourages many people from doing bad things.
This does mean though, that there are things that government and its violence simply cannot accomplish.
To use a contemporary American example, through the power of violence a government can force someone who believes gay marriage is wrong to make a gay wedding cake, or force a gay person to make a cake for anti-gay protestors, a force a Jewish person to make a Hitler cake for a neo-Nazi, or force a neo-Nazi to make a cake for a bar mitzvah – but it can’t make these people love each other. No matter how much government takes, hurts, or kills it can’t make these people or any people care about each other, humanize the other, or know and love in their hearts what is good and right.
This is why Jesus consistently rejected the government model for saving and healing the world – it can’t be done that way. The only way to truly save the world is to address it at the root of its problem – the human heart. The only way to bring about the healing of the world – to get people to love what God loves, grieve what God grieves, and dream what God dreams – is through the power of love, self-sacrifice, and the Spirit of God reorienting the human heart, one life at a time.
As we follow Jesus, may we join him in the healing of the world by rejecting what he rejected and embracing the hope and the mission that he embraced.
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