#9-Jan. 31, 2017

Respect, Resist, Refuse

Unjust Leaders

by Dave Jackson

Why would I say respect, resist, and refuse an unjust leader? Some people will choke on the respect part. Others will say we should obey the government in every regard.
            With the blizzard of recent edicts coming from the Oval Office, it’s time for Christians to review what the Bible says about cooperating with injustice. But first, let me tell you a true story from 1968, when our nation was in similar throes of unrest.

April 4, 1968
My National Guard unit was stationed 30 miles west of Chicago in the town of Elgin. But my wife, Neta, and I were members of a black storefront church on Chicago’s impoverished near west side when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. National Guard units were federalized all across the country and sent into most major cities to quell the rioting of American citizens who’d been pushed too far and couldn’t contain their grief and rage.
            Chicago area units were stationed in dozens of neighborhoods. Mine, from thirty miles away, could have been sent anywhere, but (perhaps as a divine lesson to me) it was assigned to the blocks immediately around my church. On Sunday I’d brought my Bible to teach the kids about Jesus, but on Thursday night I returned with a rifle in the back of a duce-and-a-half truck.
            I stood up and watched the jeep at the front of the convoy turn onto Roosevelt Road. We jolted over the spider web of fire hoses in the street and coughed on the smoke from burning stores, many of which had been gouging the residents for years with prices far higher than the suburbs.
            I stared hard at a tall, lanky guy swaying nervously on the corner, the glint of flames reflecting off his processed do. Wasn’t he the man who’d stood in the back of the church a couple of Sundays ago? And around the next corner, that’s where Willie May lived. I could see her black face in the choir singing, “We’ve come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord.” She’d just invited me to join the choir. “Oh God,” I prayed. “Don’t let me make a mistake out here tonight.”
            “Hey,” called an old man sitting on the hood of a car. “Where the black soldiers? There ain’t a soul brother among you. I don’t care why you’re coming down here. We don’t want to be overrun by no white army.”
            “I’m in the Lord’s army,” I’d sung in Sunday school as a child. I pulled my helmet lower over my eyes and stared past my jagged bayonet, hoping no one would recognize me. What army was I in now?
            By the next night the darkened shells of buildings along Roosevelt Road smoldered in blue haze with only a flicker of flames here and there when my squad was ordered to clear an alley of a suspected sniper up on the third floor. The wrought-iron grid of a fire escape was barely visible as it zig-zagged up the wall of the apartment building while we crept closer. We heard a clang from above and froze, weapons at the ready, squinting to see our target. And then a window sash flew up, and a woman yelled,  “Jo-Jo! You get your raggedy behind back in here right now, boy. It’s way past your bedtime.”
            It hit me like a concussion grenade: These people weren’t my enemies! In fact, in spite of the rioting, my brothers and sisters from church were in most danger from the occupying army patrolling their streets. And that was no idle concern. The year before, 43 people had been killed in Detroit when the National Guard was deployed to quell that riot.
            Time dragged on until our “white army” had toured those blocks for a week. I didn’t have to shoot anyone. I didn’t have to stab anyone. The worst any of the men in my unit did was yell insults at residents and reinforce their own prejudice toward the people I loved. Finally we gathered up our dirty uniforms, rolled up our sleeping bags, and left.
            But whether or not it was God’s plan to station me right around my church, I did learn a divine lesson that week. You cannot serve two masters! Joshua’s challenge to “choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15) caused me to think long and hard about what I’d agreed to when I took the oath to join the military: “I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” It wasn’t the objective of quelling the violence after Dr. King’s assassination that was problematic, nor today the need to deal with immigration issues, homeland security, and gang killings. I don’t diminish the complexity of those challenges. But the ends don’t justify the means if those means (or the ends) are unjust. We must prepare our hearts and minds to refuse cooperation with any evil. In the military there are ways to refuse illegal commands, but the burden of proof is very steep and in the moment of crisis, hard to discern.
            With questionable commands swirling out of the White House, it’s a good idea to think through when, if ever, you’d refuse and why.

Respect
“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities,” Paul wrote, “for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves” (Romans 13:1-2, niv). Other translations tell us to “submit” or even “obey.”
            I use the term “respect” for how we are to regard human governments rather than “obey” because I think the context indicates that a government’s legitimacy is based on the good it does, not upon some divine right of kings to do whatever they want, even if it is evil . . . though many have wielded their power toward evil ends.
            We respect the office of the president—in our case—and the proper role of governments in the world because God established those institutions to do good and maintain justice for all. But governments frequently don’t fulfill those functions in a fair and just manner, and thereby loses any claim to divine legitimacy.
            So how are we to respond when that happens? Being so obstructionistic the government cannot govern at all—as has happened these last few years—does not, in my opinion, represent respect, neither does name calling or disrespectful speech. We should take the high road and not replicate or encourage those responses. But sharply targeting specific evils is another matter.

Resist
Old Testament prophets are prime examples of why and how we should resist. They stood up, they spoke up, they put themselves on the line with public demonstrations against every kind of evil and corruption, and many were killed for doing so. They called out the evil rulers and they even engaged in legal maneuvers to defeat and depose corrupt leaders. In fact, if you could ask Haman, he might say Queen Esther “tricked” him into admitting his own guilt in having devised unjust laws. Her efforts resulted in their reversal and his downfall. Today, litigation can still work.
            But also, Psalm 94:16 calls to all the upright people: “Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?”
            Even Jesus cleansing the Temple could be compared to a disruptive demonstration to stop the evil “robbers” who took advantage of the poor and foreigners (Jews from the Diaspora).
            In our form of government, “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” no leader—even if elected—has ultimate authority that exceeds the will of the people. Therefore, we cannot blame evil done in our name on our elected officials. We must resist, because in the end, the responsibility rests upon us.

Refuse
For this reason, the degree we submit to human authorities must never be absolute. Anytime the government asks us to disobey God, we are to say with the apostles, “We must obey God rather than human beings!” (Act 5:29). In that instance, it was to obey God’s commission to peach the Gospel rather than follow the gag order from the authorities. Even Paul, who wrote Romans 13 about being subject to governing authorities, renounced his commission to arrest Christians as soon as he became a believer. Though he’d earlier “signed up,” he quit. He refused to do evil any longer.
            Throughout history, God’s people have often had to make this choice. Daniel and the three Hebrews refused to eat the king’s rich food (Daniel 1:8-21) or pray to the idol (Daniel 3). As far as we know, all the apostles (except for John, who died a natural death) and thousands of saints after them could have avoided martyrdom had they agreed to obey the rulers over them. But they refused. We have a long heritage.
            Some people say such refusal is only legitimate when faced with renouncing one’s faith. No! It’s about obeying all God’s commands and refusing to carry out any evil ordered by human rulers. The same God who calls for our allegiance tells us to preach the Gospel, love our neighbor, love our enemies, welcome the stranger, treat the foreigner equally, defend the marginalized, tend God’s creation, feed the hungry, and “let justice roll on like a river” (Amos 5:24).

Last Respects
In my own situation, I found a legal way to stop bearing arms against people who were not my enemy. Following that long, legal path was one way I “respected” the government, but I was clear, if there had not been a legal means, I would have submitted to the consequences of my conscientious stand even if it meant imprisonment or exile.
            I have been heartened by the many mayors and other officials who have declared they will not cooperate with a Muslim registration or the mass deportation of what the Bible calls “strangers” and “foreigners” among us.
            But we all may face the question of how to respond to any edicts that hurt people, whether we are employed by the federal government, are a state or municipal administrator, a law enforcement officer, member of the military, school administrator or teacher, social service or medical provider, pastor, employer, business person, or neighbor. What will we do? Now’s the time to think about it so we are not flailing around over every outrageous presidential twitter but with targeted resolve obey God rather than any unjust edict.

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Dave Jackson is the author of Risking Grace, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus, Castle Rock Creative, 2016. He and his wife, Neta, live in the Chicago area and together are the authors or coauthors of over 120 Christian books.