God, the Bible and Political Justice: Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

GENESIS 1 AND 2: THE ORIGINS

On hearing of the “fall of man” those who would truly know God should ask, “Fallen from what?” Nothing in the Kingdom of God will make sense until we understand the purpose for which God created all things.

The tragedy of human history is not “the fall”, but what we lost through the fall. The unsurpassing joy of the Kingdom is not in conversion in and of itself but in the progressive redemption of the stunning, perfect destiny God created for humanity and all of creation.

Genesis, chapters one and two, tell us that God conceived of replicating and multiplying His perfect Self and the love and fellowship of the Trinity by creating the human being in His image. First He created space, then matter and time, the perfect environment for every living thing— water for sea creatures, sky for winged creatures and land for creatures that move along the ground.  Finally, God created those for whom all of this was designed, the purpose of the cosmos and pride of creation. God made human kind and He made them in His image. Then God declared all of this good!

God took earth in His own hands to form first Adam’s physical being. He breathed His own breath into lungs of clay giving divine life to His created being. God took a rib from first person Adam, to reproduce second person, Adam. From the same handful of soil and that one breathe, God created a second person with the identical image of God as first person Adam. And from them, Adam male and Adam female, human beings made in God’s image would multiply and fill the earth. The earth was created with all everyone would ever need, a perfect sustainable biosphere where life, fellowship, devotion, love, work, creating, stewarding, multiplying would never be diminished.  And God declared all of it good!

God walked daily with us in the garden.  He gave us, His human race, dominion over all the creatures of the sea, air and land.  Our mandate was to multiply, fill the earth and cultivate it. This Hebrew word “cultivate” is rooted in the same word as culture, cultos. God was telling us to populate the earth and create cultures.  Our destiny as human beings was to multiply, migrate and create “miniature kingdoms,” tribes and nations revealing the nature and attributes of God through how we live together as neighbors, co-rulers of the earth, and co-heirs of the Kingdom. To the human race, collectively, God gave authority and power on the earth.  Governance was mandated from the very beginning of God’s revelation of Himself and His human heirs.  By giving freedom, limited sovereignty and authority, God invites us to share in governance of the Kingdom.

Culture and community were conceived in the Triune nature of God. He gave the human race the potential to multiply His nature and character through individuals, families, tribes, and nations…forever. God’s glory, revealed through us, was to fill the earth with diverse communities of human beings committed to loving each other as God loves us. And God declared this “very, very good.” It was so good that God declared one in every seven days a day to sit back and appreciate the beauty and perfection of the productiveness of His—and our—creative work of building communities.  God called this day “the Sabbath.”

The Perfect Purpose

There is no Biblical understanding of any domain or dominion on earth without first understanding God’s design and purpose before sin and the fall.  We were not made for sin. Sin happened and we must deal with it.  But, we do not have governance, science, education, family, business, the arts, communication and all of culture because we are fallen from God’s ideal.  We do not have nations and cultures because, after sin, there was no other way we could exist. All of these arenas of society exist because we are created in the image of God and they all reveal Him. We don’t bring God into our family, community or work. He was there all the time. Each is a means to know, see and worship God. We rediscover God in our life and work. Creating families and communities that reflect God is our worship now and forever.

Civil governance and the political process are not an unfortunate result of the fall.  They are God’s revelation of Himself as King, the One who has all authority and all power over all things, and yet without fear, delegates real authority and power to those He governs.  In fact, giving authority and power away is part of how He governs.  God conceived of autonomy, sovereignty, rights and freedoms; He seeks to redeem them, not destroy them, in human culture.

Boundaries and Limits

Of course, God has created boundaries to all authority and power, to all autonomy, sovereignty and every freedom. God is not naive! Nor does He desire us to be. He sets boundaries on all rights. In His Word He details the proper use of all freedoms and transparently tells us the consequences of exceeding those limits. But, and this is a huge  “Biblical but”…He leaves us free and able to test those boundaries to see if we choose to agree with Him.  What daring; what confidence; what love God must have to risk human failure rather than refuse us the opportunity to achieve our destiny. God will not cheapen the value of human life with the simple formula of ontrolnot because He cannot, but because He will not!

We Are Created To Govern

In spite of the reality of sin, human beings are created by God to govern. As part of the image of God, human communities will have to decide how and by whom we will be governed. We will, like God, need to delegate authority to someone, somehow, somewhere, or perish in anarchy. The only governance more deadly than bad governance is no governance. As peoples we will have to devise some level of consensus because individuals do not have enough power to rule the many. We are given, by God, the freedom to experiment, make choices, create and even rebel.

Sin does enter the earth, invited Adam, male and female. Now alienated from “the God who knows” our experimentation on how to govern ourselves will evolve in a vacuum of ignorance. Our experiments will not be expressions of values in diversity, but will become expressions of diversity in ignorance and control. All human cultures will reflect and defend some level of truth because it is the only way to survive. But, tragically, all cultures will develop glaring holes of deception that destroy human life and dignity.

Our Concept of Governance Is Distorted

Inevitably, after sin, humans will have to figure out where “the right to govern” comes from. All human models will be “top down” systems of the few over the many. “I have the right to rule because I have the most powerful army. I can make you obey.” “I have the right to rule because I have the most money and can hire the most powerful army and I can make you obey.”  “I have the right to rule because my father ruled you and he had the most money and the biggest army and he gave them to me and I can make you obey.”  “I have the right to rule because god has the most power and he told me I can make you obey.”  “I have the right to rule because I am god and I can make you obey.” Later centuries will develop a new twist, “I represent you and therefore I have the power to make you obey.” But, in all of man’s designs, the power is at the top, controlling the masses at the bottom.

God Reveals His Template for Governance

Millennia into human history, God speaks. Choosing Abraham, God decides He will reveal to one people in space and time, His template for building a nation. They are not yet a people and will never become a perfect tribe or nation but He will use this one nation to teach all nations His ways—through the Scriptures, through the Messiah and, finally, through the Spirit and the global Body of Christ.

When, through Moses, God speaks for Himself on civil governance, what He says shakes the foundations of man’s concept of the right to govern. “I don’t want to make you obey,” He says. “I want you to choose it.” “I will not force you, but I will seek to convince you: My ways are perfect.” In Deuteronomy chapter 1 God tells the Jews, His template nation, you choose how, over what and by whom you will be governed. I will tell you what is right, but you will be free to chose or change those laws. He then tells us of 4,000 years of choices by the Jewish people and says to us, “What do you think? Was I right? Were they blessed when they obeyed? Were they blessed when they disobeyed? Now, what do you want to do?”

We Are Called To Govern

As God’s servants in all of history, our simplest task in governing will be discovering what would be best for our communities. God’s perspective is knowable. Our most difficult task is being convinced of that as believers, living that conviction from generation to generation. Our second most difficult challenge is convincing enough people to have the will and power to bring change in our nation. Having been won by love into the Kingdom of God we will not gain political influence in the nations by force. We will have to learn God’s way of wooing and winning every bit as effectively as an evangelist.

When we are called to governance, political office, military, judicial, law enforcement, paralegal, judge, lawyer, public defender, party delegate, or any other vocation supporting the justice system of our nations, we are saying we are called to this arena to do what God would do and does, to offer people the best choices, work to convince them of the value of these choices and to help them institutionalize these choices into law and enforcement. This is a God-size task and God gives account in Scripture of His ongoing struggles with Israel.

We Are Called As Citizens

As citizens of a nation, all believers are called of God to personally support what God considers justice for the people. We are called to raise our voice, not on God’s behalf (God is fine), but on behalf of what justice demands for the people from God’s perspective. We, God’s people, do not win or lose in the political process; our blessings are eternally assured. God does not win or lose; He is eternally blessed.  But the people we seek to serve with justice and freedom will win or lose based on the decisions they make. Our grief, our angst, our suffering is for them, not ourselves. We have lost nothing; we agree with God and we have the blessing of our choices. When thwarted, we regroup. We recommit. We rededicate ourselves to the cause of the people and the highest levels of justice with which they will allow us to serve them. We do this because we love them, as ourselves and as God loves us. Like Jesus, we love the world and are willing to lay down our life in the service of the human race whether accepted or rejected.

England’s Wilberforce has been much in the public eye because of the anniversary of his death. The film “Amazing Grace” gives an overview of his life.  He loved God and desired with all his heart to serve Him with every fiber of his being. He wanted to be a preacher, but knew that God had called him to Parliament. He spent his entire life fighting legalized slavery. In the end he had not succeeded in making it illegal, but he had found a loophole to make the profits illegal and the slave trade stopped in England. Was it worth an entire life? I am sure there were days Wilberforce felt not. But history, and the Kingdom of God, records his contribution to the justice of God through the system of law in his time.

God wants to raise up a generation of Wilberforces ready to take on the legal issues of our day. Modern slavery and human trafficking, undefended masses, global flaunting of threats of violence, crippling poverty, insufferable treatment of prisoners, economies built on the backs of economic slaves, poor development of land and use of resources, blatant tyranny and denial of human rights.

From God’s perspective work is not a privilege; it is a right. Health is not a privilege; it is a right. Life is not a privilege; it is a right. And we can go on and on.

But…and this is another very big “Biblical But”…. before we are able to defend the justice that God desires to restore in our societies, we must see what God sees, feel what God feels and value what God values. So we continue through Genesis and the line of history God has highlighted to sharpen our perspective.

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