Revelation and Empire: Shane Wood | Faith & Politics #11

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.

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Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: Hey, everyone.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian.

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Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer. I'm joined today by Dr. Shane J. Wood.

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Speaker 1: He is the professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Ozark Christian College.

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Speaker 2: I actually said that wrong.

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Speaker 1: He's the professor of New Testament and its origins at Ozark Christian College.

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Speaker 2: Just reading too far ahead.

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Speaker 3: It's all right, man.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So, we're going to have, if you all don't know, Shane's been on the show a couple times. One of those, we talked about his book on Revelation called Thinning the Veil. And that's encountering Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation. And so, I want to have Shane back on as part of this series that we're doing on Christians in Politics. because Revelation has so much to do with the intersection of Christian faith and governing authorities, economy, all those kinds of things. And I just feel like there's some really important patterns in the book that we could unearth.

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Speaker 2: So thanks for being back, bro. Really appreciate it. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, man. You never know whenever you go on a podcast, if you're ever welcome back. So I appreciate you even. This is the third time.

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Speaker 2: It's yeah, it is.

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Speaker 3: That's right.

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Speaker 1: We'll get to five and then we'll do a whole Saturday night live five timers thing.

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Speaker 2: It'll be great. I'll get you a smoking jacket. You'll love it.

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Speaker 3: That's great.

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Speaker 1: Um, so, so my assumption, and I've read, I read your book, obviously on revelation. I've read, uh, reading revelation responsibly lately. Um, you know, I've been through Beals commentary, um, taught through revelation, my church, um, There seems to be some really interesting takes on what political implications.

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Speaker 2: You might tease out from Revelation.

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Speaker 1: Some of them with very Anabaptist roots, sort of like, let's just stay out of this kind of vibe. Others with a little bit more militants might be like, no, let's just avoid the Antichrist.

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Speaker 2: Let's crush him under our heel. So I'm kind of wondering what your.

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Speaker 1: Take is on this and how you think the revelation might speak to sort of the heart of being Christian in the world that is governed by these authorities that are instituted by God.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, what I love about this conversation, not just your guys' series on politics, but this one about revelation is that this is the core question that revelation begins with. You know, these these Christians in Asia Minor are under the thumb or under the shadow of the empire at a time when the emperor has kind of just lost his mind. So Domitian at the end of the first century is is spiraling. And he his primary people that he's attacking is number one is the Roman elite, especially. So senators are our number one targets that he is killing mercilessly. And then number two is Jews of the Roman Empire, of which Christians would have been considered a sect. You know, you had the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians. And from the Roman perspective and these other ones that follow this Christ, you know, or as Tacitus says, this Crestus. So they're being crushed uniquely, being caught really between if, you know, if let's say, for example, the Roman Empire comes after this Jewish community and the Jewish community, once in some sense to protect themselves, they may grab a Christian and put them in front of them. So Christians are being, um, at the end of the first century that they're caught in a world, a war of politics, um, which is frankly like the Bible. Like this, one of the things I'm just going to be honest, like there's one of the things where I'm like, we don't have to wait till revelation for the Bible to get political. Right.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Like the, the entire Bible is trying to help us navigate, uh, this world that is frankly, um, militantly warring against, I would argue, warring against God himself, but ultimately outworking the grammar of death that they've learned from their father of lies.

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Speaker 1: Well, that does raise a question I wanted to ask you anyway that goes outside of Revelation. But one of the things that I've been thinking about with regard to Paul, So Paul has these really interesting little nuggets in first Timothy six, one and Titus two, five, where he's talking to bond servants in the first one. And he says, Hey, act in this way so that the name of God is not reviled. And the teachings of the church are not reviled. And Titus two, five, he does very, something very similar. It's a little bit different phrasing, but it's, uh, to young women. You also have then Paul sort of relocating the, um, the household code in places like Ephesians five, he's relocating it. What I mean by that is he's pulling it out from under the auspices of Roman authority and pulling it back out under God's authority. So he's saying, let's not, let's not reduce the structures to rubble. Let's revise the structures based on this new authority. Right. And so my question was really around my curiosity in this, not being a Pauline scholar. is just sitting back and saying, it seems to me that part of what Paul may be trying to do is he's trying to avoid, A, creating a greater offense within Rome other than the gospel, right? So we're not going to tear down these institutional structures. We're just going to act differently within them because we are trying to live relatively peaceably within the Roman Empire. But that ultimately, even as he's doing that, There's a recognition, and we go to other texts in Paul to see this, but because the world is bending away from God's order, there's always going to be a friction between what Christians are supposed to do and what the world wants them to do. And that friction can sometimes create enough heat that Christians are going to get burned. Does that reading strike you as, is that viable?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what you're surfacing is there is a clear tension within especially the New Testament text of obedience and subversion. There really is both that's at stake, which is why you're going to find scholars that really move to the extremes of the spectrum. And they both will have sufficient amount of text to justify their position. I think, though, what you're bringing up and I think is what is important is, but how do we hold the spectrum? How do we allow both ends of the spectrum to exist in a coherent way of understanding a Christian's relations to political entities? Yeah, yeah. So what Paul is arguing, which Revelation argues as well, but let's stick with Paul for a minute. He's arguing that when Christ came, he remapped the universe. The universe is now remapped around Christ himself as the king over not just the kings of the earth, which Revelation will argue that as well, but also the cosmic order. However, that word order is key because if Christ is the king, then the natural reaction would be, then is it justifiable for us to move into some sort of anarchic upheaval of the– of the Imperial entities.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Um, what, what Paul basically says is he, first of all, he says, um, if you think that the empire is the actual enemy, uh, then, then you're missing the, the bigger target. And John says this as well.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Uh, but like Rome is too small of a target in both Paul and, uh, in, in revelation, which is why Paul can say things like, you know, you know, Oh no, like, Yeah, obey in as much as it is up to you, Romans 12, keep peace with all the governing authorities, like leading into Romans 13. However, in as much as it is up to you, like what Paul is not saying is, so just roll over and rubber stamp anything they do, slapping the label of God on it as if because they're a government, whatever their actions are, it now dictates what is morally acceptable by our God. That's right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Paul never says that, and neither does Revelation. Instead, whenever you remap the universe, it doesn't lead to disorder. It doesn't lead to chaos because Genesis 1 is closer to the manifestation of the nature of our God. He's a God of order. From chaos, he brings structure. So even more than keeping the institutions, what Paul is clarifying is the institutions themselves are not what is evil. It's the ones that are either populating it with the will of Satan. or the demonic entities directly themselves. So you can restructure current institutions as long as Christ is the center in such a way that it both looks like and completely is opposite of the institutions that the empires themselves are implementing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: So whether we're talking bond servants or household codes or anything, the key is when Christ is the center of the universe, how does it bring a new order into Yeah. Yeah, because I think that's right. I mean, 1 Corinthians 7 is another one.

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Speaker 1: Of those that I kind of nude along. and it's like, you remain as you are called. And he has that reference to the bond servants there. And Paul doesn't tell the bond servants, Hey, you're a bond servant now and you're a bond server forever. No, what he's saying is, listen, you don't have to not be a bond servant to serve Jesus Christ because You can, you can serve where you're called. Now, if you have an opportunity to get free, go ahead and do that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But don't think that you have to change your situation in order to do what God is calling you to do is sort of a general idea.

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Speaker 3: That is correct. Our politics is not contextual. It transcends all contexts. Right. Absolutely.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So when we, When we jump into Revelation a bit and we're trying to think through, you know, how do we hold these different pieces together, this obedience and subversion? What we're starting to run to an awful lot in Revelation is subversion has its consequences. These are going to be pretty negative consequences. So as we obey the Lord, we are going to feel negative consequences from that obedience. And that leads then to what we see in the seven churches is compromise, different reactions to these negative consequences. Ephesus seems to pull back. Laodicea seems to lean in. And then you have Smyrna and Philadelphia that seem.

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Speaker 2: To do it well.

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Speaker 1: But those two churches are not without negative consequences for doing it well. So how do you see some of that working itself out there?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so when Revelation remaps the universe around Christ, part of– so you look at– like you brought up Smyrna.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Smyrna has been remarkably obedient, and this is their gift. It's going to get worse. Yeah. Like physical persecution is coming. You're welcome.

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Speaker 2: Keep it up.

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Speaker 3: Right. Which if you think about that, that almost feels like a punishment for being good. But really what ought to be surfaced is, but we have a certain metric by which we are measuring what is a positive response to my obedience. So whenever you remap the universe around Jesus Christ, who is a crucified king, now all of a sudden our definitions begin to shift. So what is victory or what is reigning in an empire? What is suffering? What is like all of these definitions that an empire really is governed by?

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Speaker 2: Yes.

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Speaker 3: Like we have definitions of what it means to win. You know, even in even in modern America today, what does it mean to win a war? No one would say when you all are killed. It's like, no, no, no, no. The definition would be whenever you kill enough of the enemy to get your the result that you were after. Well, the reason why that is, is because we have a narrative that has given us definitions that allows us to measure what it is that we're doing positively or negatively and assess the outcome. Well, in Revelation, whenever the crucified king is the center of the universe, Smyrna, he's not looking at them saying, because you've done good, I'm going to now hit you.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: He actually says you have been victorious and your victory parade will continue.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So, so it's, it's invite revelation is inviting the Christians to see the world clearly by piercing all of the, the, um, the definitions that frankly are just, they're backwards in Christ's economy. But the fact that, that Christ is reigning and that we are reigning alongside of him, especially when we are, um, transformed or, um, expressions of his actual being on earth, his will, whenever Revelation guides us into those categories, it is also offering a way in which the empire won't be able to understand what we are doing, or at least they'll be conflicted by what we're doing. So a quick historical example, you're talking about 20 years after Revelation's written, 112, Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, which is just north of Asia Minor where Revelation's written. He's writing to Trajan in Epistles 96. He's going, okay, the economy has been absolutely ransacked in Bithynia, and he's been charged to go figure it out. He's like, this is what I found. The reason why is because all of their temples have been abandoned because, and I'm using his word now, because of this contagion known as Christianity. Because Christianity has spread. Now all of the temples are intricately interwoven. We see this in Acts 19. They're intricately interwoven with the economy, which directly impacts politics. So he's like, so I'm trying to figure out how to snuff this disease out. And this is, he goes, so I've grabbed some of the key leaders. He actually mentions he grabs to torture deaconesses. He says to figure out what it is that this, he goes, and all I found was just some silly superstition and a commitment to to obey all of our laws. And he gets confused. He's like, he's like, so I'm kind of confused as like why I'm going after them. He goes, so this is what I did. He's like, I brought him in and I'm like, so even when I told them, he goes, even when I outlawed their worship, they obeyed. And he goes, so I brought him in and I'm torturing him. And I'm like, all right, you either, uh, come up here, you invoke the gods, you curse Christ and you, uh, you worship an image of Trajan of the emperor, or I will kill you. And he goes, and when they all said, well, I'm not worshiping any of that, he goes, I went ahead and killed them because I figured, in his words, that that level of obstinacy deserved to be punished. But the whole letter is him going, so what? Why am I going after Christians?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: I mean, clearly there's something here. There's a stubbornness that I have to deal with, but it's a stubbornness to be better citizens than our citizens. Funny thing is, his Trajan response is, Yeah. Don't, don't allow like, you know, anonymous lists to be published naming Christians. But yeah, it seems like you're doing good. Like he doesn't even answer the question, but that's the, that's the situation that Christians are putting the empire in. They are obeying the commands. Even when the command is you either do this or I'll kill you. They'll say, I will obey it by being killed because when we die, we win. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: It's, That is the interesting part.

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Speaker 1: I mean, in working out the kingdom of God in the world, part of working it out has to be just radical obedience, regardless of consequence. And so that's what it is that they're doing. And I think Revelation does define it like that. I find it fascinating that that that illustration you give, though, I don't know whether you're familiar with Kevin Flatt's stuff on sacred social order. He wrote a book, Secularization, Social Order and World History. And he takes a guy's philosopher named Philip Reif, argued that culture transliterates a sacred order into a social order.

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Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so basically what you have in, and I think I'm getting this right from Flatt's book, he says, you know, in Rome, what you're seeing is a transition from a Roman sacred order. But it's not like, you know, everybody just stops worshiping the pagan gods. He's like slowly, but surely Christianity comes to be the sacred order and these pagan gods are then put away, but there has to be a replacement for that sacred order. And, and part of, he thinks part of the tension between the Christians and the Romans is that the Christians refuse to, uh, acknowledge Rome's sacred order.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So even in keeping this sort of social order, as much as they're trying to be good citizens, They're refusing that this being good citizens is aligned with the deeper transcendental sacred truth that Romans would have held in high esteem and really viewed as making their society function.

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Speaker 2: So it's sort of fascinating. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Rome's entire dominance is according to even Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which is a Greek writing about the Romans. He says, if you want to understand Rome's rise, you have to understand their piety, their worship, like for Rome, worshiping their deities correctly. That's why calendar systems were so important in Rome, because this is one of the things I always find funny with this. Some of my Christian friends will get really upset that we're losing Merry Christmas for Happy Holidays. And I'm like, you know holidays literally means holy days, like days that are set aside in Okay, it's all right. Whatever. But there were holidays because that day, it's the place in time where the deity and humanity can intersect.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And Rome believed that was ordained by that particular deity for that particular day where the festival then would be in their honor.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 3: So even calendar systems for Rome was wrapped up in their piety. It's why when Augustus died, comes to power. He brags in his Rescistae Divi Augusti, which he wrote himself, bronze tablets that go around the mausoleum where he is buried. He brags that whenever he came in, he restored every temple that had fallen into disrepair, 82 of them, and even built several others on top of it. If we don't understand that for Rome, worship was a national security issue, you'll never understand Rome. And frankly, you'll never truly understand empires as a whole. So one of the things I teach here at Ozark is a class on the history of Roman Empire. And I actually– I organize the entire class around seven imperial principles where I say every empire must have. And one of the things I say is a unifying religious system. Every empire has to have this because we're beings that crave worship. And if an empire doesn't satiate that craving, then we will not look to the empire to satisfy our needs. So even your most secular of governments still have ritual systems within it and worship intonations. They have to. I mean, Rome was great at it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you say that.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've done a fair amount of research on American civil religion at this point. And there's a line in Robert Bella's work. He's a sociologist, and he talks about how American civil religion was never anti-clerical. or he says militantly secular. It borrowed selectively from religious language so that American civil religion could be framed in ways that the normal everyday religious person wouldn't notice the difference. And that they can then accomplish through this American civil religion an allegiance to the state that would probably have come at a much harder, would probably have required a much harder road had they not used American civil religion. Now, I'm giving it a more utilitarian spin than I think he would. But the general idea is that a lot of times, even in our context today, you see the conversation around Christian nation, you see the conversations around Christian nationalism, you see all these sort of alignments and you're like, but American civil religion isn't exactly that. Like we're applying that to it. But American civil religion is something far more general and generic that has borrowed very selectively from the biblical corpus, from Christian ideas of the past or what have you. And we really need to make sure that we understand that we're still distinct from it. And it just feels like to me that we've merged a little too closely and are in danger of being, I don't know, that's the wrong way to put it. I think we're leaning toward– we're doing more leaning in in those respects. We're more like Laodicea where we're saying this could be really good for us. We should lean into this because now we can be prosperous and we kind of like this as opposed to really staying in the pocket saying.

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Speaker 2: No, that's not who we are. That's not what we do.

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Speaker 1: We're just going to suffer like Smyrna and win.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. No, you're right. And there's actually two things I would like to say. First of all, I want to back up and in agreement, add to your language of the grammar of civil religion. And then I want to get to your point about how Christians feel that or where we're at as Christians today and how Revelation plays into this. It's not even just the grammar that they've selectively used. It's also the visualization, the iconography. It's like as a Roman historian, whenever I whenever I went to Washington, D.C. for the very first time, which was 2021. So is that no one was there? Like, I mean, it was it was a total ghost town because of, you know, still some of the covid leftovers, stuff like that. So but I remember walking in to the Lincoln Memorial and I immediately went, this is this is a pagan temple. Like you have you have the side porticoes. You have the center place in the seated on the throne where the deity would have been. I'm like, this is exactly what Artemis' temple would have been like in Ephesus. And it kind of took me– I was like, oh, wow. And I'm looking around going, architecturally, there's something more being communicated to me here than merely, wow, this is a really big, cool place. The second thing that I thought was, oh– why it is not incidental or lost on me that, you know, the dome and the Capitol building is this, is this depiction that, that the name of it is actually called the apotheosis of George Washington, which means the becoming of a God of George Washington. And I'm looking at it going, I've seen this depiction throughout hits, like, you know, the history of art where Yahweh would be kind of in a revelation for a moment. it's George Washington. So, so what I'm not, what I'm not doing is accusing anybody of anything. What I am doing is I'm saying this, um, to suggest that visualization or grammar doesn't ultimately guide us. A, that's just, even in churches, we don't believe that, which is why every Sunday we, we have similar mantras that we always say, you know, especially if you're the one that's supposed to be greeting all the guests and you got to mention there's a guest, there's a gift outside. If you just go to the, they're the welcome tent and grammar matters. And then what people see matters. And so we meticulously orchestrate the entire, uh, procession, the entire ritual of the Sunday morning, whether we have light and smoke or whether we have, but you know, where the crosses are or if there's even crosses at all in the sanctuary, this visual and this, um, sorry, there's a bug on my microphone. Uh, This visual and this grammar ultimately is guiding allegiances. That's the whole point. And empires that persist do this best. So whenever Christians then, even today, that's where a lot of the times I'll stop and ask myself the question. I was actually talking with a guy, a pastor up in St. Joseph's, Missouri named Brian Zond. This was a year ago. I just had happened to be talking with him and I just said, okay, you've been doing this for 40 years. So how have we gotten to where we are? And I'm not even, I'm not even assessing where we are. I'm just saying, how have we gotten here?

00:26:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:26:26
Speaker 3: And his response was, I have no idea. I have no idea.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And my thought was, well, yeah, because it's that subtle. Like you, you just speak the grammar so much. That's right. And you, you are saturated in the visualization so much that you don't even know what is dictating your allegiances. And that's what has fallen. That's why in Revelation 2 and 3, there is sternness and tenderness all at the same time that Jesus is speaking to these churches. Right. Because a lot of the times they're compromised. There are little choices along the way. But a lot of the times it is just this incremental. You stop and look and you say, how have I gotten so far away from whence I began?

00:27:07
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:27:08
Speaker 3: And that's where I see where we're at today. I don't even know a lot of the times if we stopped and reflected. where are we at today? And is this where Christ was intending for us to reside? I don't even know if we would know why where we're at is dangerous or B, how we've even gotten here. And my response is, well, that's because it's worked. The grammar and the visualization has worked. It's never usually a big conversion. It's usually a slow descent.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. I tend to agree.

00:27:40
Speaker 1: I mean, when I look back at this in US history, you see um, the use of the Exodus in ways reminiscent of what we would, uh, arguably speak against in liberation theologies.

00:27:55
Speaker 2: Sure.

00:27:55
Speaker 1: You know, um, God has freed us from the tyranny of great Britain. We are the new Israel. Now we can live on our terms. Um, you know, you just sort of cut off the law there and move forward. Um, you know, um, you, you see, um, You know, you see faith leaders sort of coming in and not doing a particularly well-nuanced job of articulating that, yes, these governing authorities have been instituted by God, and so we should respect them. But also we need to speak correctively and prophetically within this environment. Um, and, and it just feels like it sort of rolls off the tongue. You see the application of various Bible verses. You mentioned Washington, DC. I know there are tours that go around and look at all the different carved Bible verses in these different places. Um, and, and you just kind of sit back and you're like, well, that could mean one of two things at least, um, you know, you're interpreting it really positively, but we could also go a different route.

00:28:55
Speaker 2: Right.

00:28:56
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:28:56
Speaker 1: Um, you know, the use of second Chronicle seven 14 and numerous speeches, you know, if my people were repent and turn and, you know, um, Psalm 33, 14 gets sucked into that, you know, um, a nation who's God is the Lord that all that kind of stuff. So, you know, we see all these little subtle pieces that are sort of drawing us in and, um, and, and, and making it very difficult, I think, for us to distinguish what is and what isn't, um, You know, there's a there's a sense in which we are very much assimilated into a political notion that may not be a political notion of Christ.

00:29:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

00:29:39
Speaker 3: I mean, that's where. I, you know, these same leaders that, again, like you even said, like when we're quoting these verses, it could be positive. It depends on how it's being used.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: Very much.

00:29:49
Speaker 3: But I will say I'm going, why don't we, why do we select the verses that we select to carve? Like, why aren't we selecting verses? revelation 18, two and three, when it says, come out of her, my people.

00:30:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

00:30:04
Speaker 3: Like that's in the Bible too.

00:30:05
Speaker 2: Right.

00:30:05
Speaker 3: You know, so right. Well, and that's like, I always, you know, I kind of like, you know, jokingly quip whenever I'm at, you know, churches where I'm like, I've never once been in my Matthew class at Ozark and ask the question. Never once have I had anybody raise their hand whenever I said, how many of you have highlighted in your Bible, sell everything and give it to the poor.

00:30:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:27
Speaker 3: No one wants to highlight that one.

00:30:29
Speaker 2: No.

00:30:29
Speaker 3: Because we love to carve the Bible into pieces and make it serve us.

00:30:33
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:30:34
Speaker 3: And that's where my pushback when it comes to, first of all, it depends on who I'm talking to. My first pushback is always like, if you think that the Bible or the gospel is not political, you're not reading the New Testament.

00:30:48
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:30:49
Speaker 3: Jesus was crucified on a cross because Romans reserved the cross for political revolutionaries. So on some level, whenever Pilate asked Jesus the question, are you a king? Even though Jesus says, well, my kingdom is not of this world, Pilate still saw his answer as legitimate enough where he could use this execution tool and he wouldn't be violating a Roman law. It would actually make sense. The second thing I always push back on, though, is I'm going like– but to be– to suggest that it is political is not to implement it in the same way that we typically do. That's right. We then typically think, well, if the Bible is political, then how can I get my particular Christian ethic legislated?

00:31:34
Speaker 2: Right.

00:31:34
Speaker 3: And my response back is like, the Bible never asks us. I'm not saying don't do that. I'm saying, please tell me your goal is bigger. Yes. Please tell me that you know that the enemy is bigger than that.

00:31:48
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: No, the way I usually phrase it is if we're going to participate politically, our political participation needs to emerge from our discipleship.

00:31:57
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:31:58
Speaker 2: And so the way I read.

00:31:59
Speaker 1: Matthew 28 there in the Great Commission is what we usually see. It begins with Christ's authority. This is a political statement. Jesus is now in charge. However we want to read authority, it's going to be hard to get it away from. Christ is now in charge.

00:32:15
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:32:16
Speaker 1: And so what do you do now that Christ is in charge?

00:32:18
Speaker 2: Well, you go and make disciples. Yeah. What does that mean?

00:32:21
Speaker 1: Well, you get people to commit their entire lives to the triune God and, you know, put themselves through this ordeal event in baptism. And then you teach them to obey everything that Christ commanded.

00:32:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:32:35
Speaker 2: That is political.

00:32:38
Speaker 1: And I mean— Because you're learning to live under Christ's authority, to your point, now that that map is re-centered on Christ. Discipleship now is learning to read that map.

00:32:50
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:32:51
Speaker 2: And follow that map.

00:32:52
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:32:53
Speaker 1: And so you do see a lot of this, I think, people have tended to, and I think this is part of our American context, but I would sort of argue that maybe we see some of this in Revelation as well. there was a tendency on some level to pull faith private. In other words, Christ has to be the master of my universe, but not necessarily the universe. And so this is where I can start to compromise. I can say, well, yeah, but it doesn't really seem like Christ's authority is working itself out too well over here, so I can make a different choice. I don't know that that's an appropriate reading, but it seems to me that that's a dynamic that we struggle with throughout scripture.

00:33:37
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah and uh because it reminds me of the way in which i i remember as an undergrad being uh told that with a straight face that people believed that the sermon on the mount applied to individuals but it didn't actually apply to anything on a nate on a national level okay and i'm sitting there going okay now wait a minute but what is a nation made of Right. Individuals. OK, so I don't understand how there's not national together somehow. Yeah, I'm like, I don't understand that. So then I at one point because in the professor wasn't making the argument, he was exposing us to the argument. But I raised my hand and I said, so you're telling me if I just wear a different name tag, I have a different set of ethics that I can obey. And because that's that's I mean, that's basically what they're being said is like, well, no, because my because I have a different name plate. I have a different– because this says senator. That's right. I now don't have to do turn the other cheek.

00:34:37
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: And I'm like, well, no, no, no. Okay. Now, I'm not asking all of my senators to actually obey the Christian ethic. Correct. But I am asking all Christians, even Christian senators, to obey the Sermon on the Mount because Christ is king.

00:34:53
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:53
Speaker 3: And that is actually the whole– so you bring up the end of Matthew, and my first thought was– Okay, so the definition of the word politics is also what gets people confused is we think politics– like politics comes from the Greek word connected to polis or cities.

00:35:09
Speaker 2: Polis, yeah.

00:35:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it is these principles that organize, that bring structure to a group of people that are living in a similar location. And so polis– well, I mean that– the Old Testament– so Matthew begins retelling– the narrative of Israel just through Jesus. So, you know, you have, you know, especially Matthew chapter two, where all of the children under the age of two are being killed, which is how Exodus begins.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: Right.

00:35:39
Speaker 3: And then, you know, Jesus in chapter three, well, well, he's actually protected, you know, by being taken to the heart of Egypt, just like Moses was.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:35:46
Speaker 3: He then experiences his own passing through the red sea in chapter three, then goes directly into the wilderness of chapter four, The last temptation of which Satan gives Jesus is to bow down and worship me, and then I'll give you all of the kingdoms of the world. And then in chapter 5, Jesus, just like the nation of Israel, he gives his own law. The Sermon on the Mount, Sinai. Why that's interesting is because Exodus is the story of the forming of a nation.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: Yes.

00:36:14
Speaker 3: It's the formation of a people around an allegiance and an ethic that regardless of where they go, wilderness or promised land, which that's why it's interesting that in Matthew 8 and 9, there's 12 successive miracle accounts, one for each of the tribes that are established in Canaan. But it begins this retelling, and it ends with your Great Commission because it is establishing that Jesus is king of the kingdom. And that is exactly how Revelation begins. Like, Revelation has the same assumption, which is why Jesus in Revelation 1-5 is referred to as the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

00:36:52
Speaker 1: Right.

00:36:53
Speaker 3: So if we are his kingdom, if we are pledging allegiance to this king, we cannot bypass, regardless of our occupation, we cannot bypass Christ's commands. That is actually the issue that prompted Revelation to be written. It does not matter what the consequences are.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:15
Speaker 3: Even if Rome has a sword to your throat. I mean, this is Revelation 13.10. If anyone comes to take you away as a prisoner of war, as a prisoner of war, you go off. If anybody comes to kill you with the sword, by the sword, you will be killed. This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints. It doesn't matter the consequence. Your allegiance and your call is absolutely clear in Christ.

00:37:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:37:40
Speaker 1: And because we're not simply serving a king who came to the throne through suffering, We're also serving a King who after that suffering was ascended and glorified.

00:37:54
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:37:56
Speaker 1: The only person to have done that, right? The only life to have ended in resurrection, ascension and glorification. We're pretty sure it's a good idea.

00:38:04
Speaker 3: To follow him.

00:38:06
Speaker 1: Like this is a guy that you might want to follow. And in his example is going to lead us to good places. Maybe not right at this moment. I'm sure Jesus wasn't hanging on the cross. Like this is awesome. Um, And in the same way, we don't, we don't enjoy the suffering either. We just know that this is how we win.

00:38:23
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:38:25
Speaker 1: This is the way the kingdom of God fights its battles. It fights it with the blood of the saints through their obedience. Let me ask you this question. Cause I think in, you know, when I look at Romans 13, I get a certain reading of this. And then when I read through revelation, I think it's reaffirmed, but I get the general idea that, um, in as far as we can maintain peace with the governing authorities, yes, that's a big part on us. But when I think about, okay, when do we not maintain peace? Part of that is we're just obeying and at some point obedience is going to run aground. It's going to create friction with the governing authorities. But then there's this other side of it that I usually illustrate in Germany, but.

00:39:13
Speaker 2: I'll say it just like this. It's like.

00:39:16
Speaker 3: The.

00:39:17
Speaker 1: Governing authorities are given an authority. Oftentimes what ends up happening, though, is they want to expand the scope of that authority beyond what God has given them.

00:39:30
Speaker 2: And so as they expand that scope.

00:39:33
Speaker 1: There's a much higher possibility that they're going to be doing things that we shouldn't agree with. Now, the reason I do that in Germany is because Germany, when we do our tours and we're in Nuremberg, Um, there's usually a, a tour we take and it walks through red, red light district.

00:39:56
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:39:56
Speaker 1: Like, and so in Germany, prostitution is legal. And so every major town has brothels and those kinds of things. And we'll inevitably get into these conversations about how horrible this is.

00:40:08
Speaker 2: Right.

00:40:09
Speaker 1: And so you have interesting conversations about law and, you know, law, not necessarily gesturing toward the ideal, but managing and restraining evil. But then I also like to flip it on its head and say, well, but it also doesn't mean that just because it's legal here means it's okay to do.

00:40:26
Speaker 3: That's right.

00:40:27
Speaker 1: Like there is this stretching of authority that happens partly because of the limitations of government, like the limitations of people running government. They just don't know how to handle all of this evil. And part of it probably because it is bending away from God's order. There's a natural tendency toward it. Just in that description, does that seem to fit what's happening in Revelation, where you have this sort of hubris developing, but it's not necessarily a direct assault on God, but it's a.

00:41:04
Speaker 2: More oozing out the sides.

00:41:08
Speaker 1: As these governments sort of begin to realize that they can't hold it all together unless they get more more control, more authority.

00:41:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, that's an interesting question. The problem is, where I hesitate is that the characterization of that with Rome is very emperor-specific.

00:41:37
Speaker 2: Gotcha.

00:41:38
Speaker 3: I was sitting there thinking, well, yeah, under Augustus, the the emphasis was very different. He was always constantly trying to deflect on her because, because that was actually the way of accumulating power. Okay. So he's always like, Oh no, you can't call me God. Now you can call me son of a God, I guess, because my dad, Julius Caesar was, but don't call me, you know, he's always trying to play this, but then you have people like Nero. This is one of the things I always find interesting with Romans 13. Yeah. It's, it's written under Nero who eventually is the one that crucifies Peter upside down and beheads Paul. The other thing I find interesting about Romans 13 is I'm going– and with that type of level of hubris in Nero and in therefore his governmental structure, I don't think he would really appreciate being repeatedly referred to as God's servant.

00:42:31
Speaker 2: Right.

00:42:33
Speaker 3: I don't think Nero is like, yeah, I love Romans 13. I think he's.

00:42:36
Speaker 2: Going– Nero is a deacon.

00:42:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like– Who do you think I'm a servant of? No, your God's a servant of my gods because that's why I'm on the throne. There's this fascinating way that Romans 13 is used that I don't think Rome would have really appreciated. Probably not. The same thing with Revelation, though. With Domitian, you're dealing with a very insecure emperor who is, for the first half of his empire, almost bankrupted the entire empire trying to curry favor with everyone. So he triples the salary for the soldiers because he has no military prowess to command their legions. So then what he does is he throws all these parties. He's bankrupt. And then finally, a Saturninus, a general in around 88, 89, brings a legion to kill him. And it so rattles Domitian. That then begins what a lot of Roman scholars refer to as his reign of terror over the last half, and that's when Revelation is written. So what you have in the situation of Revelation and these Christians is they are a vulnerable group within an empire that is already somewhat ambivalent to them. They've already been blamed 30 years earlier for burning Rome by Nero. So they've been targeted off. Some of their leaders have been executed. Actually, every one of them has been except for John at this point. And he's exiled on the island of Patmos. And now things are getting worse.

00:44:05
Speaker 1: Why?

00:44:05
Speaker 3: Not just because the emperor is targeting Christians, although he does kill Clemens and Domitilla, who were the they were they were elite. They're actually their children were going to be the heirs of the throne because Domitian didn't have children. He kills them for, quote, Jewish ways of living. I mean, if you go to Rome today, you actually have the Christian catacombs as the Domitilla Christian catacombs, likely after her. So Christians were being caught up, but Christians weren't really the target. That's the thing. Christians were being caught up in this tension. But it wasn't like Domitian's like, if I kill the Christians, everything's fine. Domitian is spiraling.

00:44:47
Speaker 2: He's just, yeah.

00:44:48
Speaker 3: And because of that. And what typically happens is whenever the very elite of any governmental structure becomes increasingly unstable, every person that is trying to– that is frankly parasitic in their relationship to that king, they will start to act in very similar ways in their own sectors. And so it bleeds down. The character of the emperor very much dictates– how the government is either oozing or contracting. But usually it's a reflection of that. That's good.

00:45:24
Speaker 1: That's helpful. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Like it doesn't just happen one way. It's going to be a set of contextual factors because I even think back to Pharaoh in Egypt, right? I've made this point numerous times when I teach through Exodus. It's like you sort of have to sympathize with the Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, right? Because all he's seeing is a foreign group multiplying within his nation. And he's going, what do I do with this problem? And so he does what he does. We don't have to agree with what he did and go, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But the logic of going, this is going to be a problem if I don't take care of it does make perfect sense. And he does it out of ignorance. He does not know Joseph. So he doesn't understand that this is a blessing. He doesn't understand what the Israelites can do for his country. Now, as he goes on, there's obviously recalcitrance and he's much more stubborn. He refuses to look at what God is telling him. He refuses to accept God's authority over him. But in that first section, that's not what's at play.

00:46:35
Speaker 2: He's ignorant.

00:46:36
Speaker 1: He doesn't understand what's happening, but he sees a real threat and begins to respond to it.

00:46:41
Speaker 2: And I think we have to give our.

00:46:43
Speaker 1: Leaders some level of grace there to recognize that even as they're trying to do good or good by the nation, they're working in a partial understanding of the good. And again, the Christian job is to come alongside and say, listen, you haven't, You've recognized something that's important. You haven't recognized it all.

00:47:08
Speaker 3: That's right. Right.

00:47:09
Speaker 1: I liken it to the Ethiopian eunuch who's reading Isaiah and Philip comes along and what does he say? He says, how would I know what I'm reading unless I have someone to guide me? I think sometimes we forget that we're the guides.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:47:23
Speaker 1: That these good and bad things you're seeing in the world, we're supposed to be guiding leaders toward Christ, toward the kingdom, not helping them decipher political moves.

00:47:34
Speaker 3: Especially the prophetic tradition. You're right. But I'm like, that's literally– so even what you just described, my initial thought was John the Baptist. Yeah. He gave Herod an opportunity. That's right. Yeah, he did confront him. But a prophet doesn't confront solely out of anger. It's actually a torturous confrontation where it says, I'm telling you, this is going to end bad for everyone, especially you, if you do not repent.

00:48:03
Speaker 2: That's right.

00:48:04
Speaker 3: And when he confronts Herod, Herod has an opportunity, but Herod denies it because he's trying to still curry favor of the people instead of God and beheads John the Baptist.

00:48:16
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:48:16
Speaker 3: So the same thing with Revelation. Like, Revelation is a prophetic book.

00:48:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:48:21
Speaker 3: But I will say this, though. I want to make sure that I get this in here before we end because I know we're coming close to the end.

00:48:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are. Yep.

00:48:27
Speaker 3: But Revelation really– Revelation does depict Rome's destruction. That's not necessarily, though, this anti-Roman– although, I mean, Roman would not say it was pro-Roman.

00:48:41
Speaker 2: Right.

00:48:42
Speaker 3: But in depicting the end of Rome, Revelation is– in calling Rome Babylon, Revelation is saying this. Rome will go the same way that every empire before Rome goes.

00:48:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:48:52
Speaker 3: Like the end is secure no matter what Rome says. Rome thinks they're eternal. Every empire thought they were eternal. Egypt did. Babylon did. Rome is going to fall. That is clear. The question, though, is this. I think in Revelation it says, but how do you respond to a war if you don't even know who the true enemy is? Because Christians– I know Rome is killing you. I know they're making your life hell, but if you think Rome is the enemy then you've not looked back beyond the veil. Part of the reason why the suffering is how we win is because the true target is the dragon. I mean, in Revelation 12, 11 says, you conquer the dragon by the blood of the lamb and by the testimony of the saints that would not shrink from death. Our ethic then is The reason why there's this collision is because our ethic governed by our king is targeting the greater enemy that you can't kill with a sword. Or as Paul would say it, our war is not with flesh and blood. And therefore the weapons of flesh and blood won't be effective.

00:49:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's been interesting.

00:49:58
Speaker 1: I mean, that comment, I think we often sleep on Acts 17, 26 and 27. We get kind of caught up in the Athenians and their unknown God. But in Acts 26 and 27, Paul says something very interesting about God establishing nations within a certain set of boundaries and for a particular time so that they may seek God, feel about for him, like grope around in the dark for him and perhaps find him. And as we think about that, it's just this is what the nations are, right? This is part of why God establishes them. it seems evident then that they are not the enemy, that these are good things that are easily corruptible, durable, but not eternal, that give people within them the opportunity to respond to God, to find God, if they have, I would argue, if they have a guide to do so.

00:50:58
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, go ahead. I would even say that from my revelation Christian perspective, I think that the highest politicians of any empire would be the most pitied, not the most revered. Yeah. Genuinely. And I think we just have it backwards. But that's what I see with the testimony of our early church. Yeah. They didn't look at the emperor as something even to be scared of. They looked at him as genuinely someone to be the most pitied.

00:51:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:51:30
Speaker 3: And it would be wonderful if we recovered that today. Yeah, yeah. And I think it would clarify a lot. I do think back to– and I know that this quote is a little bit out of context, but it's not– I don't think it's inappropriate. I do think back to the wisdom of Martin Luther when he was asked if you want to be king. He said, why would I step down to be a king from being a preacher? Yeah. There's a different economy. With which we're dealing with. And I do. I pity. I pray for our leaders. I do not justify what they do. And I believe they will be held accountable.

00:52:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:52:08
Speaker 3: But I pray for them out of pity because they even have believed that they are the world's greatest men. But in reality, I'm going like, no, like there's a different metric here. Yeah. And I hurt for you. I hurt for you. Yeah. Because of the situations that you're in, the decisions you have to make. And frankly, the system that has actually given you a measurement that's just not real.

00:52:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good, man.

00:52:34
Speaker 1: It'd be nice if we could cultivate a little bit more compassion for our leaders and take the pressure off them by pulling the responsibility that we have to convey the.

00:52:47
Speaker 2: Gospel well back onto ourselves. Yeah. Great stuff, bro.

00:52:54
Speaker 1: Really appreciate you being back on. We're out of time, but this has been a fantastic conversation.

00:53:00
Speaker 2: So thanks a lot.

00:53:01
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, buddy. Appreciate it.

00:53:03
Speaker 2: Absolutely. All right, everybody. Well, I hope you enjoyed this.

00:53:07
Speaker 1: Join us back on Thinking Christian next time. And we'll continue talking a little bit about politics and America and all that kind of fun stuff. And hopefully give some guidance that you can use as you're moving into the midterm elections.

00:53:18
Speaker 2: Take care, everybody.

00:53:19
Speaker 1: Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.