THOUGHTFULLY DRIVING THE PORCELAIN BUS

A Column by John S Schroeder

February 22, 2003

I base this thesis on three simple arguments. Firstly, God has often commanded His people to violence. Secondly, God Himself has been known to be terribly violent. Thirdly, God’s redeeming acts and rituals are violent. Let’s look at these each in turn.

God has often commanded His people to violence. Time and again God ordered the Israelites into battle, often brutally so. Though the weapon of choice was a trumpet, can the violence of the taking of Jericho be denied? Saul lost his blessing as the king of Israel because he failed to follow God’s command to destroy not only the men, but the women, children, and livestock in a battle. That is violence on a level we cannot tolerate in this modern age. If you really contemplate it, I think it is fair to say that the allies of WWII were following God’s command in eradicating Nazism from the planet. No God does command us to violence.

God Himself has been known to be terribly violent. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. There is the flood of Noah. Are these not incredibly violent acts? Jesus ripped through the temple and ordered the fruitless tree to wither. When one considers the power at God’s disposal, as violent acts go these actually show remarkable restraint. God is capable of violence, and when appropriate is violent.

God’s redeeming acts and rituals are violent. Let’s start with the fact that fig leaves were inadequate to cover the naked Adam and Eve and it was necessary for God to KILL animals to make clothing. Bloody, nasty, animal sacrifice is as old as the roots of our religion. Read Deuteronomy sometime about the Day of Atonement rituals, it is not pretty. Even in God’s ultimate plan of redemption it was necessary for He Himself to be sacrificed in a bloody, awful, gruesome, and painful manner. What is the cross I ask you but an unspeakably violent execution? Even our current symbology is violent in metaphor. Is not baptism a symbolic death by drowning? Violence is at the very heart of our redemption.

When one looks at all this, one has to believe that violence is simply necessary to remove evil. Every time God needs to remove evil, there is violence. Sometimes that violence is directed at the source of the evil. Sometimes, as is the case with sacrifice, the violence is aimed at a blameless substitute for the sake of preserving the evildoer, but violence is always necessary.

When it comes to us exercising violence, the question is not "Is violence acceptable?" Rather there are two pertinent questions, "Is the object at which I direct this violence truly evil?" and "Do I clearly hear God admonishing me to this violence?" I the case of Saddam Hussien no one doubts the answer to the first question – He is an unrecalcitrant evildoer. The second question is far more problematic, primarily because God has been removed so from public discourse. I have little doubt that God is urging us to this battle, but I do not wish to argue about this particular war right now; I want to look at a bigger issue.

Another common theme among Christians right now is the spooky parallels between current world events and eschatological prophecy. My initial response to such talk is always that people have been seeing such parallels pretty much since Daniel first recorded his end times visions. The New Testament epistles make it plain that even first century Christians expected the immediate return of Christ. Frankly we will never know when He will return – He promised we wouldn’t and His promises are reliable.

The end times are marked by the rise of the anti-Christ. Most assume that this individual will be a person of such deceit and guile that he or she will rise to power without our knowledge of the evil represented. I am not so sure of that anymore. I think the picture is going to be very different. I think there will be little deceit, rather I think the anti-Christ will rise to power because we will have so lost our moral compass that we will praise the evil represented. Was not Hitler’s anti-Semitism shared by a large majority of the German population?

I think this goes a long way towards explaining why we always think we are near the end times. Maybe there is always a potential anti-Christ among us. Certainly in modern times Hitler or Stalin could have fit the bill. Maybe the end times will result not because of the appearance of someone of such unusual evil, but because there will be a very usual evil and we will fail to see it. Or maybe we will see the evil, but we will fail to use God’s instrument (violence) to eradicate that evil. Maybe the end times result not from some new strategy by the evil one, but from our failure to turn to and follow God, thus allowing the evil one to use his same old strategies.

Which brings me to a final train of thought. Politics must be constrained by a common understanding of morality. By "politics" I mean the kind of debate and action that happens in our legislative bodies every day. Morality forms a sort of fence around the debate, it says that here are places we cannot go. Once morality is absent, and the debate can go anywhere, things really begin to break down. Morality, by the way, can only be enforced by a higher being. In a democratic society, God is the only thing that stands between order and chaos. Once there is no God, once there is no moral fence surrounding the debate, chaos is inevitable. And it is in that chaos that I believe we will be unable to recognize the evil of the anti-Christ.

Violence is definitely an instrument of God’s will. He has deemed it necessary to eradicate evil. It is an instrument to be used judiciously and with restraint, but when appropriate, it is to be used. Despite the protests of a modern age, it is not all that difficult to recognize evil. I am sad now, not because we have to go to war, but because, as a nation, the necessity of that war is in question – That fact means that we have taken another step away from God.

I wish only to move closer to God.

With Love,