daniel j davis

the church

May

Re: Gay Marriage: Chill Out

Posted by Daniel at 11:30 pm

gay marriage

Apparently the POTUS said that he personally thinks gay folks should be able to get married. He demurred about enforcing this legally, digging up the corpse of federalism for a riot shield, but whatever.

The point is that my fellow Christians are freaking out about it.

(Negatively. On the flip side, progressives are freaking out about it positively, which doesn’t make any sense either. This was just a “hey, whatcha think?” moment blown out of proportion for fundraising purposes, and who really thought that his previous opposition to gay marriage was anything but political gaming?)

And my fellow Christians shouldn’t freak out about it.

There are several issues here:

(1) It’s kind of a stretch to refer to same sex marriage as marriage. Folks have a point when they say the term has indicated hetero (though not necessarily monogamous) legal unions for a reeeeeal long time, usually tinged with religious significance as well.

So I get that criticism. But not when it’s paired with the contention that governments should define marriage. Because . . .

(2) There’s no reason for governments to be involved in the marriage business at all. For the religious component, there are churches and synagogues and mosques and sacred groves or whatever. For the legal component, there’s this thing called a contract. Combine the two, and what do you know? Marriage. Abraham didn’t have a government “sanctify” his marriage to Sarah. It was still a real marriage.

Sure, if gay people want to consider themselves married, Christians can look at that and say, “Nope, that’s not the real thing.” And that’s correct. It’s not. Marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church. Gay marriages, necessarily involving serious sin, are therefore a big offense to Christians. I find them offensive. I don’t like them and wish they wouldn’t happen. However . . .

(3) Christians shouldn’t use the sword of the state to enforce their preferences on their neighbors. This is a big problem. Right now, Christians are saying, “Hey, we get these benefits, and you, gay neighbor, shouldn’t have them, and I want to make it a law that you can’t! Now why do keep on saying you don’t like Christians and don’t want to come to church with me?”

(4) And gay folks: what’s so great about the government saying you’re “married?”

If the issue is a contractual one (e.g., assignment of federal health benefits to dependents), then that’s the issue. Lobby for a revision of those rules, allowing an assignment of benefits to an individual of the beneficiary’s choosing. Saying we have to have government marriage in order to get insurance is a non sequitur. And, plus, who cares what the government thinks about you or says about your relationships anyway?

If the issue is religious or legal, there are liberal churches, liberal synagogues, etc. that can service you. If the issue is contractual, hire a lawyer to draw up a contract.

Summary

Let’s just get the feds (and the states) out of the marriage business entirely.

May

Tread on Me

Posted by Daniel at 10:59 pm

This photo has been going round the interwebs. Problem: it’s antiChristian in both tone and content.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. http://esv.to/James5.6

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. http://esv.to/Matt5.38-41

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. http://esv.to/Rom13.1-2

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. http://esv.to/2Cor10.3-4

Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. http://esv.to/Matt26.52

May

[Two Kingdoms] I Samuel 8: Quick Thoughts

Posted by Daniel at 3:23 pm

i samuel 8

I’m not going to write my full, “real” post on this text yet, but I want to give a quick burst of my talking points for it, partly so I can remember what I’m going to talk about when I actually do talk about it.

1. The religious, non-state character of pre-monarchical Israel

You’ll look in vain for anything like a modern state in the Torah. It’s not there. There’s no executive branch. Yahweh is king. In fact, wanting a king (or political head, however constituted) is a sin. And wanting a king is synecdochal for wanting a government, a state. The people of God are a society not of this world. We are sojourners like Abraham, and our land is not in this age: Palestine is a picture.

2. The irrelevance of democratic objection

People frequently say “Oh, they shouldn’t have asked for a king, as if that was the problem. It’s not. The point is that, by asking for political leadership, they evidenced an abandonment of theocratic leadership. It’s the same way today when Christians want to use the sword against their neighbors rather than leaving the sword in the hand of the true king to use as he wishes and in his time.

3. Understanding Judges

Further objections to Christian anarchism use the chaos in the book of Judges to bolster their arguments. I use the text of Judges itself to show the flaws in those arguments. Briefly, the author of Judges uses particular anti-faith crises in Judges to show that the people had rejected God as king and the chaos that brings, culminating ultimately with his complete rejection in 1 samuel 8 and leading to the expulsion of the people from the Land and, more ultimately, the destruction of the temple in AD 70. The period of the judges was largely peaceful, with long periods of “rest” between the recorded episodes. The same can’t be said for the period of the kings.

4. Premonarchical Israel as type of the Church

Premonarchical Israel is a type, of which the Church (in its idealized and schematic and becoming form) is the antitype: a group of people not from here with their own non-human king, who care for each other as themselves, and who conquer the land. However, the church conquers not by the sword but by persuasion and love, and the land the church conquers is the whole earth, not just Palestine. Just as a Jew wouldn’t have gone to Pharaoh to judge between him and his brother, the Christian doesn’t go to the state to judge between him and his brother. We have a separate, voluntary legal system, based on love, forgiveness, and the acceptance of being wronged. When Christians make the pro-state move, they enslave themselves and their neighbors.

Mar

Two Kingdoms: a Brief Manifesto

Posted by Daniel at 11:18 pm

church
state

I’m writing about the state and the church and their relationship. What’s backing up everything I’m saying on this and will say on this is that the church is a kingdom, the kingdom of God in Christ. I’m not annotating with scripture references on everything, but I can provide upon request.

Here we go: Christians are citizens of the kingdom of God and owe allegiance to that kingdom above all other allegiances. The kingdom of God is a state: an entity with a territorial monopoly on the initiation of violence. This is a commonly accepted definition in political philosophy.

The state: an entity with a territorial monopoly on the initiation of violence.

The territory of the kingdom of God is the universe. The sovereign in whom power resides is God. The delegation of that power is in his discretion.

The other kingdom is “the world,” which is under the dominion of Satan, who (while providentially superintended of course, as in Job) plausibly has some role in establishing configurations of earthly political power (see the temptation narratives in the Gospels). He is “the god of this world,” “the prince of the powers of the air,” the one against whose “thrones, principalities, and powers” Christ through the Church wars without “carnal weapons.”

The kingdom of the world is not limited to states; it is manifested in them: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome (and I’d say line up all the rest too).

The Christian is a sojourner in the world, like our father Abraham, who as a family, a gathering, suffered persecution from Egypt in the first conflict between the state as such and the people of God as such recorded in the Bible. Unlike Abraham, we bless rather than curse; we put away our swords; we engage in radical submission to the powers that be to show that God fights through us against the kingdom that the state manifests and represents. The kingdom of God is not of this world; otherwise, we would be fighting.

Because we are sojourners in the world, we consider ourselves citizens of heaven exclusively. We may use political citizenship when expedient, as Paul did, but we do not use the sword of the state against our neighbors. The wars of this world, between outposts of Satan’s kingdom, do not concern us, except to the extent that they provide opportunities to love our neighbors, pray for our enemies, and bless those who curse us.

The kingdoms of this world delegate the power of the sword to their servants. Our sovereign has denied us the use of the sword: “vengeance is the Lord’s.” God uses states to punish evildoers. He uses America and Iran for this just as he used Assyria and Egypt. This does not mean that Christians are to participate in those functions or approve of them morally. God ordains everything, even the sinful actions of wicked men, such as Pontius Pilate and the patriotic, obedient soldiers who nailed Jesus to the cross. And not only will we stay away from Satan’s battlefields, we’ll stay out of the courts, choosing to suffer wrong and be defrauded rather than use the judge’s sword against our neighbors (I Corinthians 6.7).

This is the general position. I’ll engage with particular texts in subsequent posts. I’ll start not with Romans 13, as is common when dealing with the relationship of the Christian with the state, but at 1 Samuel 8.

Oct

Ideas for Church Reform: Eat Together

Posted by Daniel at 10:21 pm

church reform

Jude talks about “love feasts.” I Corinthians 11 talks about where folks were getting stuffed and drunk. Of course, like a ton of other things, the Corinthians were doing it wrong, but Paul nevertheless called it “the Lord’s supper.” And what were they getting wrong? They were being selfish and overdoing it. It wasn’t the thing itself that was wrong; it was their particular practicing of it. Here’s a long quote:

20 When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.
21 For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
22 What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not.
23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”
25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
28 Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29 For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
30 That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
31 But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
32 But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
33 So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another-
34 if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home-so that when you come together it will not be for judgment. About the other things I will give directions when I come.

Does it sound to you like communion was eating a bit of cracker and a shot of grape juice? And the point wasn’t that the Corinthians had the wrong idea entirely. It wasn’t like Paul said “Hey, you guys should really just be sitting in pews and eating a cracker and throwing back 1.5oz of Welch’s finest.”

Instead, he was saying they were being selfish and really just bad folks. It’s a potluck meal. Everyone’s bringing stuff, but some folks are too poor to bring a whole lot, and some folks are bringing, like, 2 KFC family meals. And they’re eating all of it. The point of the meal, of the Lord’s Supper, is to have communion with each other and thereby with Christ. If you’re ravenous before you meet with the church, you should pre-game: eat you some Lucky Charms in the a.m. so that you don’t just destroy the whole platter of fried chicken.

Know another thing that’s great about eating together? You talk. Sure, not everything you talk about is going to be “spiritual.” Football may be discussed. But you’re getting to know each other. You’re learning about who these other people are that Christ redeemed. You’re learning how to pray for them, where they’re weak, how you can help them, and how they can help you. I know that’s the kind of thing I need to know more of. And how are you going to get that if you don’t talk to people? And what’s more conducive to that than a shared meal? (And, on the negative side, what’s more visible for church discipline purposes than saying “No, you can’t eat with us”?)

Now, there are deeper and more significant insights into what the above text means for our observation of the Lord’s Supper. I personally think it means we should abandon the ritualistic grape juice and cracker thing. But that’s for another time. The main point here is that we need to eat together more, in big groups and small. And that’s because we need to know each other more.

Oct

Ideas for Church Reform: -Politics

Posted by Daniel at 5:27 pm

I’m thinking about writing brief posts on practical, concrete steps for reforming the churches. I’ll lead with an easy one. It’s easy, but it’s controversial, especially with the elections for Caesar that are coming up next year.

Idea for Church Reform #1: No politics.

Here’s the first thing you do: take out the flags. No American flags, no Canadian flags, no Mexican flags, no Iranian flags, no Israeli flags, and no silly “Christian flags,” which don’t have any basis in Scripture and seem to me to be originated in the aping of the war-banners of governments.

The reason? We’re citizens of heaven, and who cares about our earthly citizenship? We can use it to get ourselves out of trouble (like Paul did), but it’s spiritually unimportant. Removing these national symbols can lead us to identify with our brothers around the world without fretting about the particulars of their civil oppressors.

Here’s another thing you do: stop talking about politics. That’s it: in the context of the church, it’s off limits. It divides and not based on doctrine. Instead, focus on civil/community action in terms of church, family, and individual. Don’t talk about passing this or that legislation, getting this or that guy or party into or out of office. Instead, talking about helping this person, offering to adopt these babies, caring for these widows and orphans.

Notice that that’s the kind of stuff the NT talks about? Notice how it’s completely unconcerned with political agitation? Maybe there’s something to that.