Our government
has granted us the “right” to speak freely about our beliefs and to voice our
opposition even of the government itself; while this is a great blessing in
some ways, it has certainly Americanized many modern Christians. What that means is that we Christians too
often forget our place and our duties within the physical world and assume that
if we disagree with a governmental edict that we have the “right” to
rebel. Unfortunately, this simply is not
a Scripturally sustainable perspective! While the argument could be sustained
that we are to be submissive to the authorities so long as they do not
specifically require us to go against God’s will (Acts 4), we too often
misconstrue that principle. Simply
because the authorities advocate and may even require certain practices that we
do not like does not give us the right to rebel; we must still be submissive.
Too often,
modern American Christians take the Americanized view of the world and believe
that we have the right to be belligerent in our attitudes and in our actions,
that we can rebel against anyone and anything that we deem to be exerting undue
authority over us. This is a very
selfish attitude to have and it certainly is not one that the Scriptures
support. We are to submit to the government (Romans 13, 1 Peter 2:13-17), submit to other Christians (Ephesians 5:15-21), submit to the elders (1 Peter 5), wives to husbands and husbands to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33), submit to God (James 4:7), and the list goes on. We are commanded to "live peaceably with all men" (Romans 12:17-19). Becoming a Christian does not free us from our responsibilities in this physical life, even if we deem those circumstances to be unjust; conversion does not free the convicted criminal, nor does it free a slave (1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Philemon 1:1-25).
Would we have the attitude of Naaman's slave girl in 2 Kings 5? While we could devise all sorts
of convoluted arguments to claim that this girl wasn’t a slave or that she didn’t
have it as bad as slaves in other time periods, that simply isn’t substantiated
by the text. This girl was a captive and
a slave. By modern standards, even many
Christians would argue that she had the right to rebel since slavery is wrong!
But this girl shows the true nature of a follower of God; rather than dwelling
on her own undesirable plight of being a slave girl in a pagan household, she
selflessly thinks of the well-being of her master…yes, her slave master! Would a
modern Americanized Christian be so selfless?
The other day, a fellow evangelist admonished those who read his post to think about the content rather than immediately trying to think of possible exceptions; I make the same admonishment here! Rather than trying to look for passages that fit with our Americanized view of Christianity, let us think about how God would have us to act.
