Category Archives: CHRISTIANITY

A dictator ruins a nation and leaves its people devastated

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INTRODUCTION TO AN INTERVIEW
When we see a country that has been devastated and its people living in dire straits, it’s often the result of war. In March, 1995, I saw the results of a different agency of deterioration. I was stunned to see how a nation’s institutions could be ruined and its people plundered – not by war – by a dictator. I was in Romania for the first time, five years after the dramatic revolution that had overthrown Nicolai Ceausescu, the nation’s dictator President (1965-1989). After twenty-five years of repressive domestic policies by the Ceausescu government, I could still see unmistakable evidence of a society impoverished, an agrarian countryside ravaged, and a people living amid dire straits.

By 1995, Romania had received tremendous amounts of aid from the West, but widespread privation and institutional decay remained. My first sight of this was at the international airport in Bucharest, a grim-looking cinder block structure with poor lighting, ill-equipped toilet facilities, and antiquated x-ray booths that – I had been warned – might ruin my camera’s film.

On the ride into the city, the driver dodged countless deep potholes in the roads as if he were ducking bullets. Dilapidated cars and trucks rattled along, blue smoke pouring from tail pipes. Dirt and grime seemed to coat everything like a layer of paint. We passed neighborhoods in which the wood fences between houses were leaning over, collapsing in wide v-shapes. Gusts of wind stirred up dust along the curbs and sidewalks.

In Bucharest, the capitol, entire city blocks of high-rise Soviet-style apartment buildings stood partially completed. Their construction having been abandoned, their bare steel girders, rising no farther skyward, had been left to rust in the open air, the long booms of their derelict cranes swaying gently eight, ten, twelve stories high. It looked as if someone had fled during an emergency and had not come back. Well, someone had.

It was the absence of beauty. But that was not the fault of the people. The Ceausescu administration’s severe political repression and disastrous economic policies were responsible. Many of Ceausescu’s policies, however, were a continuation of Romania’s first communist president, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (1947-1965), who had implemented Stalinist policies of crushing the opposition. I learned how this worked and how it affected the people during the Ceausescu years from my translator Alexandru Nādāban and his wife, Daniela. We spent endless hours together talking in their home in Oradea each evening after my classes were finished for the day at the Bible Institute where I was teaching for a week.

I learned about the decrees, the endless stream of decrees issued by the regime. Electricity was often rationed. No room in a house could have more than one 40-watt light bulb. This decree was enforced. Informers walking the streets at night would report to the Securitate (the brutal secret police) about any rooms that looked too bright. Television broadcasts were limited to two hours a day, much of it being news about the Leader. Occasionally the power would be cut off without warning. You would be reading a book, mending a shirt, sitting in the cinema, or working at the office or factory when the lights would go out. Hospitals were not exempt. Patients died on operating tables and babies in incubators.

In the cities, the hot water – for homes, offices, factories – originated from huge water-producing facilities that conveyed the hot water through a vast network of very large pipes that snaked the streets above ground. I saw these ugly large pipe-snakes everywhere. Some that I saw were as large as 2.5 feet in diameter. During the winters, the government could cut off a city’s hot water supply if it got “out of favor.” Toward the end of Ceausescu’s regime hot water was limited to two hours a day, then two hours a week, then to once a week in most cities.

If the regime wanted houses or lands, they took them. Farmers and their families throughout the country were “relocated” to cities, where they were forced to work for the regime’s interests. Decrees were at times issued by the government even on how much people should eat. It was nearly impossible to organize dissent because the state made it difficult or impossible to disseminate information to friends or allies. Photocopiers were prohibited and typewriters were registered with the police. If you complained, the Securitate questioned you, or worse. Informers abounded. Fear was used to control many people.

I could go on telling you what I saw and learned about how horribly the Romanian people had suffered under the dictator. But instead, I want you to hear Alexandru’s voice. The professional relationship that began between us in 1995 immediately grew into one of those rare deep and lasting friendships. Alexandru was lecturing those years on theology and church history, and it was his students that I taught for the week – students who were as delightful as they were intellectually hungry for biblical wisdom.

Alexandru (Alex) and his wife, Daniela, pulled me through a depressed state of mind that frequently overtook me the more I felt plight of the people. They took me into their heart and home – which they had made in a Soviet-style apartment building. They looked after me. We broke bread together. I learned more about Christ’s love and Christian commitment and perseverance from them. I still do.

And I learned something else, too. It is one thing to watch your country being brought to ruin right before your eyes year after year by a corrupt, ruthless, and authoritarian President and his government. It is quite another thing to decide how you will live day by day amid the insistent darkness. So I invite you to hear Alexandru’s voice in the following interview, which I conducted with him in 1998. It took place in London, where he was conducting research for his Ph.D. It was originally published in Openings #2, January-March, 1999, and was slightly edited, here, for clarity.

INTERVIEW
Charles Strohmer: What was your general attitude toward the Ceausescu regime?

Alexandru Nādāban: It was like that of many others. Most of us had an official attitude and a private one. We had to use the official one in public in order to keep our jobs and stay out of trouble with the government. The private one was against the regime. For instance, privately, people would tell jokes about the regime, and this helped us to deal with the conditions.

Charles: What was your life like under Ceausescu?

Alex: I lived in Arad, in western Romania, near Timisoara, where the “revolution” began – we often now call it “the uprising.” When I was in high school, whenever Ceausescu visited Arad we were called to be out on the streets, along with many other people, to praise the dictator as he went by in his limousine. This happened all the time, everywhere in Romania. Ceausescu would visit the cities and parade by in his convoy and we would be all cheering. It was like Jesus entering Jerusalem. Flowers and carpets and songs and banners and bands. Military guard.

Charles: How did you take to this?

Alex: To me this was nothing. Just something to do. One time I was standing along the street waiting for several hours with everybody else. When Ceausescu’s convoy finally got close to us, two big policeman (they were driving a brand new BMW owned by the police) drove by telling us in a whispering voice, “Clap you hands. Clap you hands.” It was like in a movie, totally orchestrated. Television would show this quite often. I also remember after high school being in the army in 1975, when the economy had its first crisis [and] there was no sugar and work was becoming scarce because the country was running out of raw materials.

Charles: How did you get around the regime’s clamp down on getting information from the West?

Alex: At the beginning of Ceausescu’s regime things were more liberal. But after awhile not too much. I occasionally was able to listen to the Radio Free Europe station for Eastern Europe out of Munich and to Voice of America out of Thessaloniki, Greece. But it was forbidden to listen to them. People could report you to the Securitate for that. And then you would get a visit. I also listened to radio Belgrade for the music. We did not get this much, but occasionally we could pick it up. They played Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Gary Glitter, the Jackson 5, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles . . . I wasn’t crazy about this music like some of my friends were. I was interested in airplanes, cars, and weapons, so I occasionally read science magazines (one from France was especially interesting). The western diversity was a clear sign that in the East we were far behind.

Charles: Could you get anything from the TV about the West?

Alex: We got “Columbo!” And “the Saint.” And westerns. Programs like that, about the good guys and the bad guys but not about politics. During the recession in the 1980s, the state reduced TV to two hours a day. News at the beginning for twenty minutes. News at the end for ten minutes. Both about Ceausescu’s presidential activities. Then many times Ceausescu would also take up the other hour and a half. This was the Communist Party. We had a joke about this: Ceausescu was fighting to unite the two news programs!

Charles: What about public criticism of Ceausescu’s policies?

Alex: No. There was none because the state, one party, owned and controlled everything – the army, the borders, the companies, media, the newspapers, the trade unions, everything. Ceausescu was the president of everything – except the church, because he was a communist. I do not have any knowledge about any Romanian Orthodox Church protests against communism or in defense of the people. And the four Baptist colleagues I knew did not have any message for the situation either. Everyone’s private policy was to keep quite and not disturb the authorities.

Charles: I want to come back to your life under the dictator in a minute, but first, what was your religious background? How did you come to faith in Christ?

Alex: I was raised in the Orthodox Church but our family was very secular. As I think back to those days, I do not think that I was a Christian. I went to church at Easter but not Christmas (it was too cold!). If I went any other time it was only to see my granddad, who attended there. I never understood what was happening during an Orthodox service. So for me the church was meaningless. I became a Christian at age 28, in autumn 1982. I was in a personal crisis and couldn’t do anything about it. It was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t make decisions. I couldn’t make my will work. I was reading the New Testament and . . .

Charles: Why were you reading the New testament?

Alex: Well first my sister got converted in a Pentecostal church and then my mom was converted in a Baptist church. She gave me a Bible, so I was reading it. But I couldn’t understand a thing. Six months later I was still in this big crisis and also very sick by then. It was summer, and I had a day or two off from my job. I had a terrible pain in my stomach. I decided to pray about this. I don’t know why. I just said, “God, if you exist, this pain is nothing for you, if you exist. So you could stop it. If you stop it, I’m going to be baptized this year.” (I knew that to be baptized was to connect with God in some way, so I had this association.) And the pain stopped.

Charles: That day?

Alex: That very moment! So I realized that God exists. Some days later I got in touch with someone who knew more about this. Oddly, I also made plans to leave the country by hiding in the back of a big truck going to the West. In the autumn I talked to a Baptist guy about God. He explained about the Bible and salvation and baptism, and finally I reached a point where I had to make a clear decision. So I prayed with this guy to give my life to the Lord. Afterward I was so happy that for three or four weeks I thought I could fly, and I was talking to everyone about Jesus. So then I was baptized. When I went to the church, a Baptist one, it was so different from an Orthodox one. A man was preaching and explaining the Bible and it made sense! And I was devouring the Bible on my own, too. I could not stop reading it. Also, my past began to make sense and I saw why my crisis had happened. God helped me to get out of it and become normal again.

Charles: You teach theology and church history. What motivated you in that direction?

Alex: I was involved in numerous Bible study groups, teaching, and people said to me, “You have teaching skills.” So after the revolution, London Bible College started teaching a course in Romania and I enrolled. Then LBC received some funds from Sainsburys to bring three students to London for three years, and I was one of those. So I did a BA course there, with a M.Phil. toward a Ph.D. in historical theology.

Charles: After becoming a Christian, did you think differently about your nation? Did it change how you were treated politically?

Alex: The first thing that happened was that the truck driver never came to pick me up to smuggle me out of the country. In fact, he had completely disappeared. From this I realized: I’m a Romanian, I’ve become a Christian, my place is in Romania, and as a Christian I should be a good citizen. But in terms of politics, I realized that I now had to show the authorities that there is another kind of righteousness. So I did this whenever I could.

For instance, a couple years after I was a Christian, I was “invited” to come before a committee of the Communist Party in the company where I worked (remember it was communist owned and controlled) to be questioned about my “new opinions.” You could not resist this or you would be out of a job and then nobody would employ you for fear of recriminations. I answered all their questions, but it was not what they wanted to hear. Immediately afterward the secretary of the Communist Party in the company said to me that I would be “treated accordingly.” This meant that, among other things, I was refused promotions and looked on with suspicion. Also, I needed to find another apartment and they prevented me from getting one.

Charles: How could they prevent you from moving?

Alex: Because the state owned all the housing (blocks of flats). The exception was if you had a lot of cash to buy a place, or if you inherited. So you were on a list and the state gave you your housing. You could build a house with a state-owned company, or try to buy an apartment, but that took at least five years. Anyway, this was a way of protesting – just by telling them my opinions as a Christian. Another way I protested was to stop going to many of the communist political meetings in the company. You were expected to attend. But not going was a way to protest. Anyway, I did not want to hear all the propaganda anymore.

Another time, the communists began another political arm called, believe it or not, the Democratic Front (something like that). When I was in my early 30s, I was “asked” to join by a communist leader in my company. (The major pressures always came through the company where you worked.) The Democratic Front was a new invention for people who were not in the Communist Party. Even the churches had to belong. But I refused to enroll in it. They pressured me several times, but I finally said, “I’m not going to do it and that’s it.” Some time after that, interestingly, I was walking to my job one day and I saw the guy who had been trying to recruit me. He did not have anything against me personally. We started talking and he said, “Be yourself. Keep to your way. And be smart. Things might change.” So here were the two attitudes. An official one and a private one. I think this guy wished he could take a stand like mine.

Charles: Sounds like being a Christian gave you the wisdom and courage to make public stands politically and socially even though they were personally costly.

Alex: Yes, because by reading the Scripture and having fellowship with God, I now knew the truth. No one forced me to have this new attitude; it was natural, like breathing, like finding my identity finally. I remember I would ride around on the tram or walk among the people in the city and see them downcast and dissatisfied and all the time complaining. And I wasn’t. I didn’t have a good apartment or very many things or much money. And the communists were in power. But so what? Life was nice because I was in fellowship with God.

Charles: Did you get involved in the “revolution?”

Alex: Yes, a little. But I was ready for a lot. No one knew what was going to happen. First I heard a few vague things on Radio Free Europe – “something was happening.” And then some relatives of people in my company got killed in Timisoara. I got sick and could not eat, knowing that people were getting killed. Then little by little some of us who had been in the army organized now as a small group to fight against the communists if they tried to do the same thing in Arad.

By the fifth or sixth day of fighting in Timosara, a bunch of my colleagues and I left work one morning and met with 500 hundred others in the main square in Arad. By late afternoon there were about 20,000 people gathered there. Soldiers were shooting bullets into the air occasionally. But not at the people. I went up to an army officer and looked him straight in the eye and asked, “Do you have war ammunition?” And he said yes. So I asked, “Did you receive an order to shoot?” He said no. Then he lit up a cigarette and we talked for another minute and he said to me privately, “Even I don’t like what is happening here.” And from that minute I knew we were going to win.

Charles: Really? What gave you that idea?

Alex: A month before this, during the Communist Congress, we thought Ceausescu might step down because that was a time when communist leaders everywhere in Europe were resigning. The Berlin Wall had come down, Czechoslovakia had become Democratic, and so on. I was deeply let down, along with everyone else, when Ceausescu did not resign but was reelected by the Communist Party as president. That very night, when Ceausescu was reelected, the most famous classic choir of Romania, called Madrigal, dressed in exquisite seventeenth-century clothing and sang: “Glory, Ceausescu, glory.” And I remember saying to myself, “That’s it. He’s now a god. Until now, everything was tolerated, but this is too much for God.” And I told a friends, “This is the end. Ceausescu will be replaced soon. God can be offended. He’s going to take action now.” I thought, “This is God’s hand,” because it would have been impossible to overturn this dictatorship without God, because they were so well organized. So I was willing to get involved because I realized that it was a judgment from God. I also realized that if I died I knew where, as a Christian, I was going!

Charles: Looking back, it all seems to have happened so quickly, in just a week.

Alex: Everyone was pretty nervous. The day that Ceausescu fled Bucharest, my church in Arad had its usual church meeting and I went. But they didn’t say anything about what was going on. So at the end I raised my hand and said, “I have one request. Would you like for us to sing a song?” I’m sorry, I cannot remember the name of this song, but the lyrics are powerful and they were very relevant. They talk about giving honor to the Resurrected One because he scattered the night of death and awakened the world from its tomb and gave it life and power. The chorus goes like this: “Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. Praise and honor to him.” [After the army sided with the people] and Ceausescu fled, the present minister of culture, Ion Caramitru, came on TV saying, “Ceausescu fled from the capital. Jesus Christ is born in Romania today.” This was only two days before Christmas eve.

Charles: All kinds of significant aid poured into Romania after the revolution, from both Christian organizations and secular sources and from governments. What do you see as the effect on the people?

Alex: A lot of it was needed. The country was on the verge of starvation. I could not think what would have happened without the revolution. Maybe we would have become the European version of North Korea. It was crazy. There was a rumor that Ceausescu intended to put his son Nicu in his place. We would have become the first communist dynasty! But western materialism conquered Romania without warning. If under Ceausescu’s regime you could find thousands of Romanians who were ready to become missionaries for Jesus’ sake, you cannot find them any more, and they haven’t gone on the mission field! Now Christians are more used to receiving aid and benefitting from this.

A wrong mentality has developed. For example, one of our radio stations recently broadcast a short drama based on Jesus’ comments about the poor widow who put two very small coins in the temple offering. Through the words of one of the characters in the drama, the Christian playwright gave this interpretation: in order to help the poor, he (the character) will convince the rich Christians to give him some money. Then he will give his money to the poor. But this is the exact opposite of why Jesus told that story, but it is what a lot of Christians are doing now in Romania. They do not want to give up their material achievements to help others. Does this look familiar to you?

Charles: So the influx of western materialism has even changed Christian attitudes?

Alex: Yes. During the uprising, everybody was shouting “God exits” and praying and kneeling in public squares and things like this. Nobody did this before. A communist country recognized that God exists because of the miracle of the revolution. But after that – it did not take long – people did not seem to be interested in God but in getting something because many ministries and organizations from the West were coming with a lot of clothes, food, and medicine. So Christians were thinking: “We should be like the West.” Instead of being something, having something. Of course there was a lot of good taking place, in terms of schools, clinics, and orphanages, and so on. But many Christians became too caught up in getting dollars for the buildings and for all the latest technology instead of for the church – the people. Part of the reason is because millions of dollars came pouring in from overseas only to build new big buildings.

Charles: This reminds me of the prophet Amos, whom God called to denounce ancient Israel, in part, because material prosperity had influenced them to lose sight of their covenant responsibilities with one another.

Alex: As I said, there was a lot of good. But the emphasis is now too much on things. Before it was on people and Christians had a message. Now we don’t look any different from the nonChristians. Our message has become watered down. We don’t have the influence we had before.

Charles: During one of my trips to your country, a Christian confessed to me that he did not trust in God like he used to before the revolution.

Alex: This is not uncommon. People are reinterpreting Scripture in order to fit the materialism. Before, there were times when you couldn’t get even the basic things you needed. You had to pray. You had to trust God. People were more involved with people then. Now you just go to the market and you buy it – if you’ve got the money. Now you need God only when things go wrong. Before, everything was wrong, so your faith had to be everyday faith. Also, a lot of Christians “don’t have time” now for helping others.

Charles: It’s now ten years after the uprising. A lot of economic and political reform is still needed. Do you see the government as able to accomplish this?

Alex: Things are moving quite slow. According to the Romanian newspapers, politicians are more interested to get a raise for their salaries than to govern the country. True changes will only be brought in by honest hard working people who are willing to confront the corruption and bribery, as well as the poverty. But what Romanians must understand, and I refer here to the common people on the street, is that corruption and dishonesty does not refer only to politicians, financial sharks, and the selfish rich in high positions. It refers to all Romanians. We have to be honest. Everyone of us.

Charles: Under communism it was not possible to mention the Bible as a source for instruction about economics, politics, business, and so on. Are Romanian Christians thinking about this and trying to apply biblical wisdom is such areas?

Alex: Some Christian leaders are trying to do this. But it is a slow process, and not many Christians have studied the Bible to know what ideas it might have for these areas. For instance, the Bible gave people an alternative for the communist wisdom of the past, and now we even have a Christian Democratic Party. But people in Romania cannot say that this party has the answer or the solution for the country just because it as a Christian Party. On the contrary, because they are Christians (most are Romanian Orthodox), they are blamed for not having very much in common with the Bible!

Another big problem is that after the revolution, almost all the communists politicians became “Christian.” This was how they denied their past. But saying they are Christians is not enough, and it is one of the reasons why Romanian society still does not work. The Bible is a book for all of life. If all the Christians really believed that and began to study the Bible that way, it would make a big difference. Romania is in a transition period. We lack good laws and a decent economy. But God through the Bible can provide us with help in these areas.

Charles: What do you see happening in the future?

Alex: I think the nation will be more and more inheriting the problems of the West. And in the churches we’ll have more and more full time professional Christian workers, and we’ll have the congregations. Leaders will be those who know how to manipulate the congregations to be responsive to their message. It will be more and more difficult to find someone who is dedicated to God and not to capitalism.

I also think that people will get more dissatisfied with the churches, both the Orthodox and the Protestant, and that there will be many liberals and that the society will become more secular. I think that this Constantine style of keeping the country united by religion will fade away because Romania is not menaced by a foreign power. Maybe it will take all of this to happen before the true Christians can show the people what the real church is all about.

(This interview was first published in Openings #2, January – March, 1999. It has been slightly edited for clarity here.)

The Church at Philippi and Christian Political Allegiance

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The gospel of Christ enters Christians into a life-long process of discipleship in which everything, but everything, sooner or later, including our politics, must get squared with the gospel. This is what dawned on the church at Philippi one sunny morning concerning their Roman political identity and allegiance. As a result, that early church issues us a challenge concerning our political loyalties as American Christians. It begins with a little history and ends with the Cross.

During the time of Christ, the city of Philippi, Macedonia, had been a strategic military outpost of the Roman Empire for nearly 200 years. There were Greeks and Jews in the city, but a large percentage of the population were Roman citizens, people who treasured that citizenship for the special civic and political privileges it gave them. Roman citizenship was for them essential to their national identity and it afforded them many benefits, included having their rights protected by the government. It would have been second nature for the Roman citizenry of Philippi to rely on the laws of Rome to protect their rights and to demand those protections should the need arise. Citizenship was a big deal. Even the children of the Roman citizens were taught to get that.

About twenty or thirty years after Christ’s death and resurrection, a church was founded at Philippi by the apostle Paul (along with Silas and some of his other companions) during one of his missionaries journeys. Given the large percentage of Roman citizens among the local population, it’s reasonable to conclude that a good portion of the church established by the apostle at Philippi was comprised of Roman citizens. It’s also reasonable to say that the Roman Christians in the church had a pronounced pride in their Roman citizenship, not unlike we American Christians take pride in American citizenship.

Some months after establishing the church, Paul left Philippi to continue his missionary journey; then some years later, while imprisoned in Rome, he sniffed out a serious problem in the church. Paul learned (probably from Epaphroditus’s visit to him in prison) that a number of believers in the Philippian ekklēsia were holding on much too tightly to their Roman citizenship as their fundamental political identity and allegiance. Paul then wrote a letter to the church, which appears to have been a vibrant and well-organized community. The Epistle to the Philippians shows the apostle’s deep affection for the church and a considerable amount of praise for them.

But here’s the thing. The apostle to the Gentiles admonishes the church for going overboard with their political loyalties to Rome. This is significant. Religion’s scholar Richard A. Spencer has written that only in Philippians does the apostle use language that speaks specifically of political identity, when he admonishes the church to live in a way that is worthy of the gospel of Christ. That political admonition is found in 1:27 and 3:20. Yet there’s been bit of mischief in the English translations of 1:27, which in turn conceals the takeaway in 3:20. Here’s how.

What is overt in the Greek – Paul’s admonition about the church’s politics – is hidden to us in the English translations. A key New Testament Greek phrase in 1:27 is commonly translated: “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Almost identical is another common English translation: “… let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” The trouble, here, is that the translations focus our thoughts on moral behavior in general. Yet in 1:27, the key verb construction in Greek, politeúesthe, refers not to moral behavior in general but to political conduct. Of course political life disciplined by the gospel of Christ cannot be disassociated from general moral conduct, but who thinks of that when reading about general moral conduct? In the Greek, the language has a clear meaning about political loyalty: i.e., let your political behavior be worthy of the gospel of Christ.

A little further on in the short letter (3:20), Paul reinforces the political point of his earlier statement (1:27) with the word politeuma, a commonly used noun of the day to denote Roman “citizenship.” Everyone would have understood politeuma that way, and by implication the rights and privileges of a Roman citizen. Even those who were not Roman would have understood the word that way, perhaps somewhat enviously. And the word is translated as “citizenship” in English Bibles in 3:20. But notice that Paul deliberately draws attention to a unique type of citizenship: in heaven: “Our citizenship is in heaven.” Notice, too, that the word politeuma closely correspondences to politeúesthe. The clear similarity would have set the Philippians to thinking.

By the time of the Epistle the church in Philippi had become well-established. It was filled with serious believers and practitioners of the gospel. It had its own deacons and elders. The letter reveals an ekklēsia that, all-in-all, was doing quite well, even when enduring periods of persecution. Throughout the Epistle it is obvious that the apostle to the Gentiles loves these believers dearly. Yet he loves them enough to include a clear exhortation to examine their political loyalties. Even a vibrant body with able leadership can overlook having its long-held political allegiances disciplined by the Cross. For the Philippian Christians who were Roman citizens, their civic and political loyalties to Rome needed rethinking. So Paul, whom we know is no slouch when it comes to argument, seeks to turn the tables on those loyalties.

He sets them up for that by first by using the verb construction politeuomai (1:27): “let your political behavior be worthy of the gospel of Christ”; then he draws their attention to their politeuma, “citizenship” (3:20). When coming to the word politeuma, perhaps they thought, oh, Roman of course; we’re Romans after all! But while they are congratulating themselves on being Roman citizens, Paul immediately upends their glory with: “your citizenship is in heaven” (3:20; emphasis added). With the words “in heaven,” he suddenly “forces” the church to face what he was really on about in 1:27: rethink the state of your political identity and allegiance. Paul was not patting them on the back about being Roman. You have a fundamentally different identity: as citizens of heaven. Too bad, I say, that the apostle’s warning about political conduct has been hidden from us.

I can almost hear Paul saying to his friend Epaphroditus as they are talking in Paul’s prison quarters in Rome: “They are such a great assembly. I love them to death, but I hate to think that their Roman citizenship holds such a powerful grip on their public witness for Christ. Their citizenship in heaven must be reflected in their political behavior. Let’s pray for them. Maybe the Lord will give me an idea about how to address this issue and I can include it in the letter I’m writing to them. They need a shift of mind-set, from Caesar and Rome to Christ and heaven.”

Whether any such conversation occurred between the two friends, the fact remains that the political admonition of 1:27 and the takeaway meant in 3:20 is hidden from us by the English translations. The crucial question “where is your ultimate civic or political identity and allegiance?” is never asked of us. I think Paul would have “Amen’d” what Charles A. Wanamaker said in his commentary on Philippians. The apostle Paul, he wrote, is exhorting them, and us, to live as citizens of heaven, “in a manner commensurate with the values and norms of the good news of Christ.”

The Philippian challenge to American Christian political loyalty remains. The believer’s citizenship in heaven is not about waiting for a life to come in the sweet by-and-by, so that in this life you just get to go ahead and think and act politically according to the basic principles of this world. Our political lives do not get a free pass on being disciplined by the gospel of Christ. Although Paul has much to say about the resurrected life elsewhere (1 Cor. 15), in Philippians he leaves no doubt that citizenship in heaven entails a basic identity with Jesus that instructs our way of life on earth, including our political life.

“Brothers and sisters,” I hear the apostle’s voice echoing down the corridor of history to us. “You are following Jesus in many areas; follow him in your political life also. Sure, that may be tough. Believe me, I get it. I’ve been hounded, persecuted, beaten, arrested, and now I’m in prison! Still, don’t let your American political loyalties get the better of you. Don’t let anything trump your political witness for the gospel. Jesus suffered politically by decree of the government. Follow his lead.”

But back to the Epistle. In the same breath in which Paul challenges believers to live their political lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, he adds,“[t]hen, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you . . . standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, working side by side for the faith that comes from the gospel” (1:27).

That there will be no misunderstanding of what he means by the gospel, in between 1:27 and 3:20, Paul reminds the Philippian church, and us, of their responsibility to imitate Christ’s humility in all things. He does this by quoting the extraordinary Christological hymn, sung by the early church, about our Lord’s unmatched humility:

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross! . . .

“Therefore, my dear friends . . . continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (2:6-13). Your citizenship is in heaven. Live politically, as well as in every other way, in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.

©Charles Strohmer, 2025

Easter?

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Dear Friends,

Okay, you’re right. I’ve never before written a letter to you my faithful readers here on my blog, but I wanted this post to be a bit more personal. So here goes.

We live during such a fast-paced and unusually dramatic and demanding period that the day we take to stop in grateful memory of the most significant event in history can by now seem like an event in the distant past. Old news. No longer on our minds. Even though it was only a few weeks ago. We’ve moved on. Today’s events are the thing.

But is the greatest event in history, what we call Easter, behind the times? Behind your times? I ask you.

Thanks to one of the more constructive benefits of the Internet, I listened online to two Sunday morning messages by Pastor Mike Osminiski in the quiet of my study on the afternoon each one was preached, Palm Sunday and Easter. Each teaching was an hour long and I found myself taking a lot of notes, but it was not time spent but time deeply blessed. I was so totally blessed receiving fresh and relevant insight and understanding about the last week of our Lord’s life and the resurrection that I’m linking both messages here on my blog for you.

Opening up Psalm 118 and Psalm 22 in the context of Mark 11, Pastor Mike took me into the story of Jesus as Jesus personally entered the story of God for the closing days of his life on earth, moving from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the Passover meal and then through the betrayal to Jesus’ trial, death, and resurrection. Although this was theologically solid stuff, it wasn’t abstract theological teaching. It was rich immersion into Scripture corresponding to what Jesus faced then and there, during a week that at times even for him seemed unimaginable.

We are often told that Jesus fulfilled the Scripture. And that is true. Yet Jesus’ life was also embedded in the Scripture. The two Sunday messages brought out to me that Jesus had a very real personal understanding of having entered the narratives of Psalm 118 and Psalm 22. Jesus saw in them timely words from Father to Son (from hundreds of years earlier!) that gave him courage to face the way ahead, to keep going, so that his own mind, will, and emotions did not dominate his decisions that terrible week, when unthinkable grief and suffering were to be placed on his shoulders (that he might fulfill the Scripture). Also, and importantly, the two Psalms gave Jesus vision and hope of the joy he will experience after his resurrection from the dead.

And there was this too. Both messages gave me fresh insight that helped me understand more clearly as to why seeking the Lord to locate ourselves in scriptural narratives, particularly during dramatic and demanding days such as ours, is a vital part of following Jesus.

Mike did not use the word “Easter” to talk about this. He talked about Resurrection Day.

Resurrection life, not bunny rabbits, is what we ought to be gratefully remembering on the day everyone calls Easter. That indestructible life is God’s gift to us. It’s not passe. It’s for our life today. Hey, here’s a thought. Perhaps we should start a movement to replace the name “Easter” with “Resurrection Day”?

As we understand more about Jesus’ life that week, its unprecedented personal challenges, and where he took inspiration from, perhaps we may be able to see and be inspired to keep going by seeing at times where to enter the story for God in Scripture for our own lives, humbly and obediently, to receive more of that resurrection life of Jesus to get us through whatever kind of trial or suffering we face. Please don’t read that as offering a “there, there now” brother or sister, “all will be fine.” This is not that. Who knows what lays ahead for us during the ongoing, demanding, time-foreshortened moment that we still find ourselves in as followers Jesus. We live in seriously shifting times. Let us not take the world-historical event of Resurrection Day as a thing of the past.

I ask you, what other than the everlasting power of the life that defeated death will do for you today?

I don’t know how Pastor Mike’s teachings will personally bless you. But this I pray. If you’re longing for a fuller lifting of the veil in order to better see Jesus today, and to receive insight into the power and authority of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection as essential graces for your faith and life today, in whatever you face, or that faces you, no matter how demanding, I pray that you will find all of that and more in these two messages.

‘Nuff said. It’s over to you now. Here’s the two links. Oh, I should add that Mike opens the start of each Sunday service, but you may then want to scroll ahead to where he starts each message, as preceding each one is a 20+ minute word on Communion from someone else – not to say those are not worth your time! Also, you’ll see two different ways to listen. I suggest listening by clicking the little white arrow at the bottom of the church scene, rather than the one below it, which is audio only.

Pastor Mike starts the Palm Sunday message around the 20min, 30sec mark:
https://www.lhcfwarren.com/sermons/palm-sunday-and-psalm-118/

He starts the Resurrection Day message around the 38.00 min mark:
https://www.lhcfwarren.com/sermons/psalm-22-good-friday-and-resurrection-sunday/

If you have any difficulty accessing a talk, let me know.

Yours truly, in His life,
Charles

©2022 by Charles Strohmer

Image courtesy of Creative Commons, Samantha Simmons

Our Citizenship (on earth as it is) in Heaven

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In 2020 and 2021, I guest-preached two messages at Evergreen Church in which I tired as best I could to offer biblical responses to the difficult historical moment in which the American church finds itself. There are, of course, many and varied aspects to this unusually challenging period in American history, and by no means do I understand it all, or fully understand what I think I know! But two significant aspects kept pressing on me in 2018 and 2019. One is the centrality of the human heart and the refining fire of God upon it. The other is our citizenship as American Christians (lived on earth as it is) in heaven. Below here is a YouTube link to “Our Citizenship (on earth as it is) in Heaven.” (If you prefer an mp3 vocal-only of the talk, send me an email and I’ll send the link.)

A brief word about the talk. As I understand unusually challenging historical moments, they must be met with moments of deeper learning on our part than what we are accustomed to, which though prayers, grace, wisdom, and the mercy of God lead to greater redemptive responses to the crisis on our part than what we may otherwise typically rely on. Although the word “heaven” turns our thoughts to the next life, the talk focuses on our citizenship lived on earth as it is in heaven – to adapt a phrase from how our Lord taught us to pray. So in this message I introduce what I think is a much needed conversation we need to have as American Christians: the difference between the duties Jesus calls us to fulfill in the Sermon on the Mount v. rallying around demanding our rights.

(See this link for the other talk, “The Refiner’s Fire in a Time of Crisis,” go to: https://wagingwisdom.com/2020/08/27/the-refiners-fire-in-a-time-of-crisis/)

I want to thank Pastor Wes White for the invitation to speak and worship leader Brennon Carpenter for making the talks available online. Your comments, questions, or feedback is very much welcomed. (We are all in this as learners, that is to say as disciples.)

Here is the talk about our citizenship priority. This talk starts immediately after clicking the arrow, so if you miss the opening words, I’m just saying that Philippians is one of the apostle Paul’s prison letters.

Charles Strohmer is a Christian minister and writer. He blogs at http://www.wagingwisdom.com.

©2021 by Charles Strohmer

The folly of listening to conspiracy theories

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glass chess piecesIn a 1952 essay on the return, or Second Coming, of Christ, C. S. Lewis wrote that our “ears should be closed to any future William Miller in advance. The folly of listening to him at all is almost equal to the folly of believing him.” It’s a warning not to fall prey to the heedless disregard some people have for Christ’s own words about his return. To typify this, Lewis looked back to William Miller, a nineteenth century American farmer who also served in the War of 1812. But Miller was also a religious enthusiast. During the 1830s, he preached and published pamphlets of lectures proclaiming the world would end in 1843, with the bodily return of Jesus Christ.

Miller justified his belief from Bible passages he had strung together and put his own spin on. He preached with such passion that many who at first just listened ended up believing that he had actually decoded from Scripture the unknown; that he actually knew. Tens of thousands of people, called the Millerites, amassed around his view, convinced that he knew. Of Miller’s folly, Lewis, relying on the words of Jesus – “of that day and hour knoweth no man” – writes that Miller “couldn’t know what he pretended, or thinks, he knows” (Lewis’s emphasis). But Lewis goes further. In the essay he shows the folly not only of claiming to know when “the world’s last night” (the title of the essay) would arrive but even of listening to the claim.

While reading the essay it hit me that we today would do well to listen to Lewis’s warning about listening. But not about dating systems for Christ’s return. Every generation of Christians since Miller’s has learned its lesson about that. Today we need to learn it about conspiracy theories. And if we say, “well, we don’t really believe them,” with how much honesty can we say that we aren’t listening?

I learned my lesson the hard way. In the late 1970s, a newish believer, I listened to Christians who spoke in hushed tones about secret organizations that had strange names such as the Illuminati, the Bilderbergs, and the Trilateral Commission. Most people don’t know anything about them, I was told, but they have a lot of money and power, and they control world leaders, and through the European Union they’re going to usher in the anti-Christ and set up a new world order. It’s all in the Bible, they said, the signs are everywhere if you look for them.

I came to regret my naivety, but what did I know? I was a young believer. Aren’t we supposed to listen to older believers? But I wasn’t going to take anyone’s word on conspiracy theories. Not even a Christian’s. The stakes were too high. During my years in the occult, before becoming a follower of Jesus, I listened to, and then believed in, and then taught what I later found out were the most unbiblical ideas and views. Christ had delivered me from those subtle yet powerful beliefs and I wasn’t going to let myself get fooled again. So after earnest prayer for guidance and my spiritual antenna tuned up, I plunged down the rabbit hole.

During that labyrinthine journey I saw how even well-meaning people might spin into dark webs of intrigue any number of conspiracy theories from twentieth century old bookshuman history. But after awhile I also saw that all such listening-journeys were a waste of precious time. A distraction from following Jesus and listening to him.

Trying to pin down the truth about conspiracy theories is like trying to trap a wet watermelon seed between the tabletop and your fingertip: just when you think you have it, it darts of at the last second. Time and time again. That personal experience was supported by a sense of the occult that I discerned on occasion drifting around the dark corners and cul de sacs of conspiratorial thinking.

Besides, I thought, if I were a member of a cabal that really could take over the world but did not want the public to know what our plans were, the first thing we would do would be to concoct a conspiracy theory that had nothing whatsoever to do with our plans; but to a naive public it would seem credible enough to be listened to, if not also believed. Once we had devised that, we would then cleverly use our vast resources to start leaking it out to the public. Its purpose would be to create an on-going distraction in the minds of a gullible public from our real plans. Surely, I thought, any cabal with the money and influence to take over the world would certainly have brains enough to include that kind of misdirection in its plans.

I should add that my decision to have nothing whatsoever to do with conspiracy theories anymore was not an easy decision to make. For the pull into listening is fascinatingly hypnotic, the spell hard to break once you’re lured. But it was such a relief to break free. Knowing the trap even of listening, I refuse to waste time looking into even the popular whisperings available to our ears today. I have done a little look-see into recent offerings, but only briefly, to know what all the fuss is about.

The bottom line is that listening to conspiracies reveals a childish ignorance of God’s sovereign rule over history and opens the door for replacing the fear of the Lord with one of the worst kinds of fear: “the fear of man, which brings a snare” (Proverb 29:25). It ought to be second nature to Christians to know that time and time again the Bible records various interventions of God to stop the wayward plans of rulers and their nations while simultaneously admonishing God’s people to “fear not” the plotting of cabals but instead to “fear the Lord.”

Yet through belief in a conspiracy theory the people of God become ensnared by fear. That is partly the topic of Isaiah 8:10-17, where the prophet announces God’s rebuke to the people for their belief in a conspiracy:

“Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it. The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy, he is the one you are to fear, he is the one you are to dread” (v. 12).

The prophet brings lack of trust in God’s sovereignty and both kinds of fear into sharp focus during a time of international intrigue, secret alliances, and public confusion. The message is clear. A faith-based confession in God’s sovereign rule had been replaced by a fear-driven belief in the sovereignty of man. Like severe arthritis can cripple the use of one’s hand or knee, the fear of man had stopped the ability of God’s people to think rightly as God’s people.

Isaiah is in effect disclosing a tragic irony. Bad times are indeed looming for the people of God, but its source is not going to result from the conspiracy being fulfilled but from God’s judgment (vv. 14-15).

But there is another significant part to the text, one that is often missed: even a prophet of God can be about to step into the trap. Using his own words, not the Lord’s, Isaiah includes an explanatory note to his audience that God had warned him not to follow the way of the people. The prophet was in jeopardy of being caught in the same snare, of not thinking rightly.

“The Lord spoke to me with his strong hand upon me, warning me not to follow the way of this people…” (v. 11).

This personalized warning to the prophet needs to be heard and internalized by God’s people today. Pervasive fear in many Christian circles, particularly in American Evangelical communities, is greatly harming the church’s witness and damaging the nation. So it is encouraging to hear David French, for one, a notable writer in the conservative Christian world, speaking to this. As a pastor and friend of mine said, it’s admirable that one of the things to be admired about what French is doing is that he is writing not only as a member of conservative Christianity but as one who makes sense and appears to put Scripture above party platform.

French has been offering not only incisive analysis of why the fear is rampant but why it is rampant now, during a time in America when political and legal movements of the last forty years, at both federal and state levels, have favored conservative Christians, colleges, and businesses more the ever. And yet excessive fear reigns. Here is a recent piece of insightful analysis by French to get you going: “How American Christendom Weakens American Christianity.”

In his essay on the return of Christ, Lewis writes that believing in dating systems for the end of the world has “led Christians into very great follies… To write a history of all these exploded predictions would need a book, and a sad, sordid, tragi-comical book it would be.” We would do well to hear that today about our own folly.

We Christians have made ourselves into a sad, sordid, and tragi-comical lot in the eyes of the world, deservedly so. By listening to conspiracy theories, whispering to our friends about them, blurbing about them on social media, we are not thinking rightly. Enough is enough. “God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Best we repent and seek God for mercy and grace to close our ears to conspiracy thinking and to instead live in the fear of the Lord. And then, following Isaiah’s lead, let us publicly confess to our Christian friends and on social media how the Lord got our attention and warned us. Whether we are prophets or not. It would be a good start.

Charles Strohmer is a Christian minister and writer. He blogs at www.wagingwisdom.com

©2021 by Charles Strohmer

Images courtesy of Creative Commons.

A rare astronomical event is happening this Christmas. Is it the Star of Bethlehem?

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(This essay by Charles Strohmer was originally published in Religion Unplugged, December 14, 2020)

Stargazing into the western sky this December has captured the interest of millions, as news stories of every kind highlight the appearance of a rare conjunction appearance together of our two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn. Amateur astronomers are manning their expensive telescopes taking once-in-a-lifetime photos. Astrologers are counseling clients to use to their advantage the energies of what they call “the great conjunction.” Social media outlets have millions imagining that this is the return of the Star of Bethlehem in the story of the Magi. But is it?

Most of the buzz has arisen from the fact that this is an exceptionally rare extra-close conjunction of the two giants, pulsing in the night sky with enough combined light to impress even the most uninterested. That the two planets will be at their closest and brightest on Dec. 21, the winter solstice, has only added to the mystery. The two giants may also be seen nearing their closest proximity night after night in the weeks leading up to it, and then moving away from it for many days afterward. The last time these two planets shone so brightly to the naked eye was 800 years ago, in 1226.

If I were still an astrologer, you can be certain I would be advising my clients to take advantage of the good vibrations. After turning to Christ and becoming a Christian, I lost interest in astrology, but since becoming a minister I still get asked about the nature and meaning of the Star and the Magi who followed it. But even after two millennia of scholarly research, questions remain.

Were the Magi astrologers, astronomers or some combination of the two? What starry indications, if any, motivated them to allocate time, money and effort to travel hundreds of miles from the East by desert caravan to Jerusalem to search for the Christ child? Were they following the stars, as many presume? Or some other natural phenomenon? Perhaps it was a supernatural sign seen only by the Magi? And what is the religious meaning of the Star made famous by the Gospel of Matthew and still the subject of speculation today?

Religious scholars generally agree that the history of the Magi can be traced back to an elite priestly class in the royal courts of the Medes and Persians, centuries before the time of Christ, and that their religion included belief in the advent of a savior. Their counterparts in neighboring Babylonia likely were persons such as the sage Daniel who, although Jewish, rose to become a diplomat and trusted counselor to successive Babylonian kings.

The biblical book Daniel details what their exceptional education entailed. The entrance exam alone would exclude many of us. Prospective students had to be “young men without any physical defect,” as well as “handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace.” Once admitted, they were taught “the language and the literature of the Babylonians” and received “a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table.” After three years, “they were to enter the king’s service” (Daniel chapters 1–3). Religious historians also agree that the Magi (wise men) were learned in religion, diplomacy, literature, divination, esoteric wisdom, magical practices and the zodiac.

As for the nature of the Star of Bethlehem, views abound, from the purely natural to the mystical. Astronomers have calculated that Jupiter and Saturn were in conjunction around the time of Christ’s birth, but they also have reasons to understand that the starry visitor may have been a nova, or a comet, or a meteor, or perhaps a supernova. Others think that it may have been a completely new star, a tremendously bright yet inexplicable light in the heavens created as a token of the Savior’s birth, a light that shone on the shepherds, which they took for angels and which the Magi saw as a star. Or perhaps it was not an external light, only a vision given to the shepherds and the Magi. Some think that it was a supernatural phenomenon. None of these views has ever been established to the exclusion of the others.

For the birth narrative in Matthew’s Gospel, as understood in the Christian tradition, a purely naturalistic view fails to account for the religious meaning of the Star of Bethlehem. The narrative does not deny that a natural phenomenon and the laws guiding it may have played a part in announcing Christ’s birth, but only a part. For it records the Star as having “appeared” at a particular time, and that it “went ahead of” the Magi “until it stopped over the place where the child was.” This seems to hint at some kind of personal rather purely natural guidance behind the phenomenon. The likelihood of that is supported by linguistic studies of the original Greek language of the New Testament, where many times the same words translated as “appeared,” “went ahead,” and “stopped” (to describe the movements of Star) also describe deliberately taken actions of people (Matthew 2:1–12).

Another possible clue that something more personal is taking place than anything purely natural may be found after the road weary Magi arrive in Jerusalem with their large desert caravan. Their persistent questions about a king of the Jews cause such a public and religious stir in the ancient city that it arouses the interest of King Herod, who invites prominent rabbis to the palace to get to the bottom of the disturbance. The rabbis point Herod to a prophecy in the Bible: “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2).

Herod, now fearful about the birth of a rival king, secretly plots to have the child put to death, and he enlists the Magi as unwitting pawns. Summoning them to a private meeting, he sends them to Bethlehem to search for the child there, but he also directs them to return to Jerusalem to give him the child’s address, saying that he, too, wants to go to worship him. The Magi depart for Bethlehem, just several miles south of Jerusalem. But there’s a problem. They now know what town to go to but they don’t have an address.

It is clear from Matthew’s Gospel that the Christ child was no longer at the place of his birth, the manger, with Mary and Joseph. Months, if not a year or more, have passed since Christ’s birth when the Magi finally arrive where the family are living. And it is the Star that reveals the address. The Star “went ahead of” the Magi “until it stopped over the place where the child was.” This would be pretty unlikely behavior from a mere natural phenomenon. The Magi reach their goal, worship the child, and present him with their precious gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh. Unaware that Herod is using them as pawns on his political chessboard to have the child murdered, the Magi are warned in a dream not return to Herod, and “they returned to their country by another way.”

In the Christian faith, the little phrase “another way” opens up the religious meaning of the Star of Bethlehem via some strange alchemy left to us by the witness of these Magi long dead. How so? It is commonly presumed that the Magi were astrologers who merely followed stars to Christ’s birth. Nothing in Matthew’s Gospel precludes the Magi as being astrologers, but even if they were, the record in Matthew does not show them relying on astrology but on Scripture to interpret the religious meaning of Christ’s birth.

The Magi leave Jerusalem for Bethlehem by following the rabbi’s interpretation of their scriptures, and it is likely that they left their homeland in the East by following the Bible. Magi of the Ancient Near East were, among their many other skills, sages learned in the religious literature of neighboring cultures. In their diplomatic roles as shuttle diplomats, this would have been a necessity. Ancient Israel being part of the neighborhood, the Magi of Matthew’s Gospel must have had among them some collective awareness of a prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, that a “star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). This was usually treated as one of Israel’s messianic prophecies about the divine Ruler to come. It may have been enough to motivate the Magi to head for Jerusalem, the heart of Israel’s religious life, to receive further their understanding after the appearance of the unusual and prominent Star.

In the Christian faith, more is going on with the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi than meets the eye. They represent the divine help that even the currently remarkably rare and bright conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn cannot provide to those soul searching for the Savior. Although some may need to suspend disbelief to imagine the possibilities, it is “another way” indeed.

Image via Creative Commons: Texas Monthly (stars); George Thomas (surprised look)..

©2020 by Charles Strohmer

“Arms and the Man” v. “Put up thy Sword”: Tough Questions for Rick Joyner, Jim Bakker, and the Prophetic Movement

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Swords into plowsharesNot many years before Jesus was born, the Roman poet Virgil died. In the decade preceding his death, Virgil was writing the Aeneid, a poem that has been called the national epic of the Roman empire. In the second half of the epic, Virgil brings his skill as storyteller to the subject of anger, revenge, violence, and bloody warfare.

In a visionary book that explores the limits of violence and war, and skillfully shows the benefits of peaceful change, the late Jonathan Schell puts his finger into history at the time of Virgil and Christ to write about two coexisting yet conflicting traditions. One is worldly and violent, Schell writes. It is “a system, at its best, of standing up for principle with force, right with might; at its worst, of plunder, exploitation, and massacre.” This tradition, Schell notes, was exemplified by Virgil in the Aeneid, whose opening words set the stage: “Of arms, and the man I sing.”

Not long after Virgil was writing “Of arms, and the man I sing,” Jesus, Shell writes, was speaking words that would become much better known: “Put up thy sword, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” And “it was in the heat and fury of [a] bloody altercation, not from the quiet of a philosopher’s study,” that Jesus said this. Jesus, Schell continues, “sang of the man without arms,” and since then “the two conflicting traditions – one sanctioning violence, the other forbidding it – have coexisted,” each retaining its power in spite of the other. But, he concludes, “Force can only lead to more force, not to peace. Only a turn to structures of cooperative power can offer hope” (The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People).

I was disturbingly reminded of the diametric tug of these two perennial traditions upon the human heart when I watched a television interview of Christian author and speaker Rick Joyner. For those unfamiliar with the name, Rick Joyner founded MorningStar Ministries in 1985 and became fairly well known within charismatic Christian circles for his books and for teaching about his many dreams and visions, which he claimed were prophetic. In 2004, MorningStar purchased part of the former Heritage USA complex, once owned by Jim Bakker and PTL, in North Carolina. Bakker and Joyner have been close friends for decades and it was Bakker’s interview of Joyner that I listened to.

The interview aired two on September 11, 2020, on “The Jim Bakker Show” and ran for nearly an hour. It included much mutual back-patting that lead to this question from Baker: “Where are we in the prophetic time line?” What follows is a long and disturbing conversation in which Joyner mentions a dream he had in 2018 about what he calls a “civil war” being fought in the streets of American cities.

As the interview progresses, Joyner sounds more closely allied with Virgil’s violent warrior Aeneas than with the gospel’s peaceable Jesus. Joyner asserts that America is already in that civil war and that followers of Jesus need to be prepared to take up arms and fight in it. Although Joyner briefly mentions that he “hates to say this,” and that “some people don’t even want to comprehend” it, any fellow feeling meant dissipates before his contention that followers of Jesus get out their guns and join in with those he calls the “good” militias to fight bloody battles in the streets of their cities against those whom he identifies as “the bad people.”

One cannot listen to the second half of the interview and conclude anything other than that Joyner is talking about followers of Jesus getting their guns and participating in a violent civil war. That is the plain message, which Joyner loads with comments such as: “we’re already into it”; “we’re gonna have to fight for what we believe”; “it’s time to choose sides”; “we’ve gotta fight to win.”

wisdom traditionFollowers of Jesus are meant to join militias to fight and kill fellow American citizens? Followers of Jesus?

Joyner’s battle cry to Christians is not compelling. There are many reasons why, more than can reasonably be assembled here, including the dubious, if not flawed, enlistment of biblical texts to support the call to arms.

But one particular text must be discussed, Luke 22:35-38. It is a brief word from Jesus to his closest followers about forsaking the violence of swordplay and instead follow his way of self-sacrificial love of others, including enemies. Strangely, Joyner flips this word about non-violent resistance around to mean the opposite of what Jesus meant. He lifts Jesus’ comment about a sword out of its context to justify today’s followers of Jesus heading out into the streets to fight a literal civil war in American cities. I want us to spend some time with that text here, as its meaning cannot be quickly understood. But when understood in both its immediate and larger contexts, Jesus’ words actually undermine the entire call to arms.

In the interest of full disclosure I should perhaps first say that I am offering this critical analysis of Joyner’s interpretation of the Luke text as someone who in principle is not opposed to what the New Testament identifies as the gift of prophecy, which, being part of “the way of love,” is meant to be spoken to people “for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort,” or, in short, for edifying the church (1 Corinthians 14:1-4).

I spent most the first fifteen years of my new life as a Christian in charismatic fellowships where, blessedly, mature expressions of the gifts of Spirit were operative, including that of prophecy. If someone stepped out of line, pastoral oversight appropriately addressed the situation. I personally benefited from this learning curve. Although I was eventually called to serve in (so-called) non-charismatic congregations about thirty years ago, I have enjoyed, benefited from, and been greatly thankful for being invited to minister countless times in charismatic fellowships since then. I try to be among them as best I can in the way of love, for their strengthening, encouraging, and comfort. (For the record, I am not a fan of the word “non-charismatic” applied to churches.)

If memory serves, I became acquainted with Joyner through two of his books in the mid-1980s, when I was still active full time within the charismatic tradition. (I don’t recall those books as objectionable in any fundamental sense within what I understood orthodox charismatic theology.) Around 1990, Joyner’s name dropped off my radar. Until the Bakker interview..

Now let’s get down to business. Here is a typical translation of Luke 22:35-38:

Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That is enough!” he replied.

During the interview with Bakker, Joyner places Jesus’ comment about the sword in the service of motivating today’s Christians to fight with weapons in a civil war in American cities. Joyner offers no explanation why he believes in this equivalency, which makes followers of Jesus instruments of violence and bloodshed. “We need to recognize the times, be prepared for them,” he explains, while confessing to viewers his worry that “God’s people” won’t become “part of the militia movements, the good militia” to fight the “bad people.” But “Jesus himself said there’s gonna be a time when you need to sell your coat and buy a sword. That was a physical weapon of their day. And we’re in that time here. We need to realize that.”

Bakker makes not a peep of protest to what Joyner is saying. Nevertheless, prophecies and interpretations of dreams and visions presented to the body of Christ as authoritative have to be tested, examined to determine if they are credible, authentic, or morally acceptable. After careful consideration of the Luke text, I believe that Joyner’s contention fails the test.

Jesus’ meaning about the sword, when considered in both its immediate and its related contexts, cannot be interpreted as call to arms. Instead, it undermines that call. Here’s why.

The immediate context is the Last Supper, where only Jesus’ twelve closest followers were assembled with him (until Judas leaves). The related contexts include events immediately following the Last Supper and also events in the three-year witness of Jesus’ life and ministry on the hillsides and in the towns of Galilee and Judea. Let’s start with the latter.

During those three exceptional years on the road with Jesus, the Twelve had witnessed Jesus’ self-sacrificing love of others, including of enemies. countless times. (The supreme expression being, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”) That is essential to who Jesus is. His ministry exemplifies it. In all sorts of relational encounters – whether someone needed counsel, or healing, or was up a tree – Jesus graced people’s lives with all sorts of various and diverse good. Day in and day out, the Twelve not only saw the beneficial effects of this on others, they even a hand at times in making it so.

But something else essential was also taking place. It wasn’t only through his acts of compassion – what the Old Testament person would call chesed (God’s loving-kindness) – but through his teaching that Jesus sought to instill the practice of self-sacrificing love of others into the lives of the Twelve. The fundamentals of that radical teaching are set forth in what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which arguably, can be understood as the Constitution for Jesus’  followers to live by. Their having been diligently taught for there solid years by their Rabbi, whose acts are consistent with what he taught, you can be forgiven for assuming that by the time of their last meal together the love of others would have become normative ministry for the Twelve. But our text in Luke reveals that a strong pull to take up arms had gotten hold of them. How so?

All four Gospels reveal that in the weeks leading up to the Last Supper Jesus knew he would soon be enduring a violent religious and political opposition that would put him to death, crucified as the archetypal act of self-sacrificing love. He also knew he was not going to resist this death with arms, even though he could command a legion of angels to fight for him (Matthew 26:53). With that understanding, let’s enter into some of the sights and sounds of the Last Supper.

All kinds of conversations and activities are going on among the thirteen men who have gathered privately to remember the Passover, a ritual meal that takes several hours. Jesus knows his arrest and violent death are imminent and that this would be their final meal together. In what has been called his farewell discourse, given to us in John chapters 14-17, Jesus offers many words of comfort and instruction for the eleven remaining disciples (Judas had left the meal early on, apparently; see John 13:21-30).  At some point during those hours of communion and prayers in that room, Jesus detects a rising attitude of violence among his intimates. It needs to be addressed. So he brings up the subject of swords. He is, in effect, wanting them to know that although things are going to be different for them after his death, his message is not changing. It is still the gospel. The good news. The redeeming love of God. And they are to preach it and live it after he is gone, just as they saw him doing, day in, day out.

wisdom wayWhy, then, was Jesus telling them to go buy swords? The answer is, he wasn’t. The Luke text intends for us to understand that no one at the Last Supper slipped out of the room to buy a sword. They did not need to. Some had arrived carrying swords: Lord, we’ve got two swords right here, they tell Jesus, no need to go buy any. As if he hadn’t noticed. Of course Jesus saw their weapons. If you have dinner guests over and two of them are packing, you may not notice that, but you’re sure going to notice if they arrive armed with swords.

What’s with the sword comment, then? The answer will emerge from clues in a few other scenes during this period. One is found in John’s Gospel (18:1-11), which describes a moment during Jesus’ arrest that identifies the bluntly outspoken Simon Peter as one of the two with a sword. The personal identification seems more than an aside. Not many days before the Last Supper, Jesus had revealed to the Twelve, in plain language, that he was going to get arrested, suffer, and die. Hearing that, (Simon) Peter tried to talk Jesus out of going the way of the Cross. For having that attitude, however, Peter got rebuked by Jesus in no uncertain terms. Then Jesus adds: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Matthew 16:21-25). Here was yet another teaching moment from Jesus, seeking to instill in his followers a heart attitude of self-sacrificing love toward others, including enemies.

Did Peter take the hint? Apparently not. The arrest scene described in John’s Gospel seems to imply that Peter arrived at the Last Supper armed with a sword. Maybe he regularly carried that weapon. Maybe he was carrying it the day he rebuked Jesus for wanting to go the way of the Cross. The Gospels are silent on these matters.

Another clue to Jesus’ meaning about the sword is found in Matthew’s Gospel in a scene described after the Passover meal. Jesus takes his inner circle to the Mount of Olives, where he again explains that he is soon to die. This time, Peter does not try to talk Jesus out of going to the Cross. Instead, he declares that he has such steadfast loyalty to Jesus that he is prepared to die with him right then and there. “And all the other disciples said the same” thing (26:35).

How Jesus understood the implication of that ad hoc agreement among his inner circle is important. Under Roman law there would be no legal reason for Peter, or any of the Twelve, to have been in jeopardy of prison or capital punishment at his arrest unless they had broken the law, which they would have done had they brandished weapons and ended up killing people in the mob who had come to arrest Jesus. Now Jesus and his disciples would have been fully aware of this Roman law. Yet at some point during the Last Supper, the eleven remaining intimates let their emotions get the better of them, becoming really angry and motivated by a spirit of violence. By the end of the hours’-long meal and much back-and-forth conversation during the meal and on the heavy walk to the Mount of Olives, these good guys (now sans Judas) are locked and loaded and ready to fight the bad guys, intent on becoming a band of street fighting men, a militia for Jesus.

In other words, the weapons carried in to the Last Supper and then to Jesus’ arrest had a literal meaning for his disciples. The inner circle (sans Judas) will take up arms to fight, even kill if necessary, those who had come to arrest Jesus. They seem to think that’s a good thing. That it is what Jesus is calling them to do.

Jesus had just dedicated three years of his life as a crash course of instruction and training to equip his closest followers to follow his lead, the peaceful way of the gospel. No way he does want them to get arrested, tried, and executed for acts of violence. If they go that way, end of them, end of story. No Book of Acts. It is difficult to imagine how distressed Jesus must have become by their rising attitude of violence just then.

They want to go kill the bad guys? Really? We’ve just broken bread together for the last time. I’m going away. They’re meant to carry my message of love to others, including love of enemies, out into a violent world. Are they going to do that now? What is this spirit of armed resistance among them? They’ve brought swords and mean to use them. What’s up with these guys? That’s not the the message of the Cross. Why do I even bother?

It is not difficult to see why the inner circle held a literal meaning to the swords. Just as we today know what weapons are used for, they too had absorbed that meaning since childhood. By the time they had reached adulthood it had become a given in their worldviews. All around them, for all their lives, they saw Roman legionnaires carrying a gladius (short sword), a pilum (six-and-a-half-foot javelin), and sometimes a pugio (dagger). How often any of the Twelve saw these weapons used in violence, your guess is as good as mine. What does not need guessing is that the sight of these weapons, and a knowledge of what they were used for, was inescapable to anyone who lived in the Roman empire. Jesus alludes to that widespread understanding in an arrest scene described in Matthew, Mark, and Luke: “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?”

Can there be any other that a lethal meaning to the swords carried by Jesus’ followers? Jesus is about to demonstrate love of enemy to the uttermost empathy. Yet his intimates have decided they will move in the opposite spirit. I offer that in the Luke text Jesus, through grim irony, gives the weapons another meaning. Consistent with his message and example of love of enemy Jesus eschews the literal meaning of the swords and instead gives them a symbolic meaning: the violence in heart that objects to love of enemy. Jesus, deeply trouble by their attitude, in effect bursts out with, I’ve had enough of this! Let’s just go!

Although that is not how any translation I’m familiar with “hears” the words of Luke 22:38, and though personally I am not partial to paraphrases, at least not for serious study of Scripture, I often benefit from the fresh insight that can be derived from them, such as from this language in The Passion: “The disciples told him, ‘Lord, we already have two swords!’ You still don’t understand,” Jesus responded; and this from The Message: “They said, ‘Look, Master, two swords!’ But he said, ‘Enough of that; no more sword talk!’”

Why no more sword talk? Because Jesus see that his followers are in jeopardy of unleashing violence. They haven’t gotten it through their thick heads that the way of the gospel is absolutely not the way of violence.

Yet even during the heat and fury of his arrest, Jesus has a last go at changing their minds. When a cadre of Jewish religious officials and a crowd of their supporters are about to arrest Jesus, Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of the high priest’s servant. Personalizing that violent act even more, John includes the servant’s name, Malchus. And to that violent act Jesus immediately responds with a twofold action whose meaning could not be clearer. First: his sharp rebuke to Peter – “No more of this!” “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Second: the healing of the servant’s ear (Luke 22:51; Matthew 26:52; John 18:11). Here we see Jesus, the quintessence of love toward others, even to those in the mob come to arrest him, acting consistent with his cry of deep frustration, recorded in Luke 22:38. He has had enough. Off he goes to his crucifixion.

This was not the only time Jesus laid a stern rebuke on members of the Twelve for being motivated by a violent spirit. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, the brothers James and John (the Sons of Thunder) cited an incident from the life of the prophet Elijah (2 Kings 1:12) to try to justify calling fire down from heaven to destroy an entire village. But Jesus “rebuked them and said, ‘You know not what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man [has] not come to destroy lives but to save them’” (Luke 9:51-56).

Gruenwald's Isenheim AltarpieceIsaiah chapter 53 indicates that the Messiah will be the suffering not the military servant. Sure, followers of Jesus may and do face violent opposition at times and even death. If that hour arrives, let us come boldly before the Throne of Grace for divine help in our time of deepest need, to cry out for the grace of sacrificial love toward our persecutors.

Things are going to be different, now, Jesus in effect said to his disciples. Times are changing. I’m going away. But my message to you to love others is not changing, even when you are threatened with violent religious or political opposition. You have not been called by me to take up arms but to open arms of love. And this you will do through the peaceable gospel in power of the Holy Spirit. For I have come into the world not to add violence to violence but to subtract violence from the world.

Jesus’ intimates eventually got the message. The love that Jesus had toward others became his followers normative witness after his death and resurrection and the Holy Spirit, who testifies about Jesus (John 15:26), took up residence in their hearts. And thus we do have the Book of Acts. It is noteworthy, is it not, that in no place in the Book of Acts, or in any other Epistle, does an Apostle or any other follower of Jesus take up arms, even when facing violent social, political, or religious opposition. In other words, the Last Supper was not just meaningful to Jesus but also to his followers. As the Last Supper represented to them how Jesus had lived, it gave them direction as to how they were to live.

And live that way they did, not perfectly of course, but they were continually reminded about what was at stake through their regular practice of the Lord’s Supper, first mentioned in chapter eleven of First Corinthians. What was at stake was their faithful communion, day in, day out, in the church and in public, with the meaning and message of the Last Supper. And the consequences of maligning that knowledge.

Today we have what we call the Lord’s Supper, which we partake of in remembrance of the Last Supper. (It may known by other names, such as the Lord’s Table, the Breaking of Bread, the Eucharist, Communion.) What are we today remembering? What are we partaking of? What are we agreeing to when we receive the bread and the wine? Of what is it a symbol to us today? For the earliest followers of Jesus it was indeed remembrance of Jesus’ sacrificial death. But it was also a symbolic reminder as to how they were to live everyday, and not just toward some people but to all people, and not just in one’s family or church but in all areas of life. Let us ask ourselves how we’re doing at this. In humble prayer, let us ask the Lord how we’re doing.

To partake of the Lord’s Supper in remembrance of so great a salvation that Jesus Christ has accomplished for us sinners is a great thing. But it is not the only thing. Perhaps every time we partake of the bread and the wine we are also meant to remember that we are no longer our own, that now we live for Another, for the One who himself lived for others. Perhaps each time we partake we are giving our assent anew to follow Jesus, to live in the world as he lived in the world, serving others in denial of self. Perhaps every time we partake we are renewing our commitment to be living epistles who demonstrate to whosoever as best we can, including to enemies, the grace-giving love of Jesus, in small things and large, in any state of affairs, including socially and politically. If it is true that our partaking of the bread and the wine commits us to following Jesus, to live as he lived, it would make it a serious matter indeed to partake unworthily (1 Corinthians 11:27-32).

Will we not be judged as bearing false witness to Christ’s love of others if we if we partake of the Lord’s Supper one day and take up arms the next?

There is another sword spoken of in the New Testament. It is not the sword of a violent, murderous world. It is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17), which we are called to study and rightly divide (2 Timothy 2:15). And “the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword…, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). These are exhortations to open our hearts to let the word of God search and refine them in utterly personal ways, including how we interpret the meaning of Luke 22:35-38, especially in the heat and fury of our national moments.

Choosing between the two perennial traditions – the one violent, the other forbidding it – is always being placed before followers of Jesus. Will we walk humbly in the grace and power of the Holy Spirit into the pages of our own Book of Acts? Or will we take up arms to participate in the kind of violence that killed our Lord?

Top photo: Sword sculpture photo by Andrea Brizzi. Lower photo: Grunewald’s-Isenheim Altarpiece. Star flower and two paths images courtesy of Creative Commons.

©2020 by Charles Strohmer

The Refiner’s Fire in a Time of Crisis

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In the following talk (see YouTube video, below), I guest-preached at message at Evergreen Church in which I tired as best I could to offer a biblical response to the challenging historical moment in which the American church finds itself. The topic was “the centrality of the human heart in crisis and the refining fire of God upon it.” The idea had been pressing in on me for a couple of years.

As I understand unusually challenging historical moments, they must be met with moments of deeper learning on our part than what we are accustomed to, which though prayers, grace, wisdom, and the mercy of God lead to greater redemptive responses to the crisis on our part than what we may otherwise typically rely on. That idea seems a good way to summarize what I hoped to make practical from some biblical narratives during the talk.

I should add, briefly, so that it’s not misunderstood when it occurs, there’s an unexpected time of quiet about 2/3 of the way through the talk when I was fighting back tears and couldn’t talk, my voice was then cracking a bit at times afterward. Also, do listen to the reading of the poem on the refiner’s fire which concluded the talk, accompanied by Art Stump, on keys. It surprised many of us that morning by how movingly relevant the 100-year-old poem became.

(A second talk is found here on responding biblically to our challenging historical moment is about “living our citizenship as American Christians on earth as it is in heaven.”)

Thank you to Pastor Wes White for the invitation to speak about this and to worship leader Brennon Carpenter for making it available to you online. Your comments, questions, or feedback is very much welcomed. (We are all in this as learners, that is to say as disciples.)

Here is the YouTube talk on the refiners fire:

©2020 by Charles Strohmer