The title of this article is based on the title of a multipart documentary by Francis Schaeffer. His work was trying to call America to return to a Christian base for thought. However, here, we need to examine what the New Testament tells us believers regarding how we should relate to unbelievers in our society. This is a very important subject seeing the rise in cultural and societal Christian hubris that is evident in many religiously conservative American Christians including those who are Christian Nationalists and a significant number of those who aren't. I wanted to write about this despite the fact that the biggest current threat to American Democracy is the oligarchy.
Before disussing how those of us Christians should live with unbelievers, we need to face one of our own liabilities. This liability is our penchant for authoritarianism. We are told to submit to so many biblical authority structures and figures that it is difficult for us to turn off the authority switch. Thus when we experience life in society, we are seemingly always looking for proper authority figures to give us orders to obey, and we expect all others to follow suit. After all, misery loves company. And since we are always looking for authority figures to submit too, we often conflate a biblical submission to authority figures with authoritarianism. And what we miss is that there are times and places where we can turn off the authority switch and live with others as equals.
And so we religiously conservative Christians can unknowingly embrace authoritarianism. We'll describe authoritarianism in terms of the relationships that exist between the authoritarian leader and their authoritarian followers. Authoritarian leaders want total control over what their followers believe. One way they do that is to use labels to reduce a person to just one characteristic, act, or a piece of slander. Such a use of labels is designed to get people to automatically or reflexively accept or reject what is said by a given source. Laudatory labels are used to persuade people to assume that what a given source says is correct while the pejorative use of labels are used to persuade people to assume that what a given source says is false. Notice the black/white thinking involved here.
As for authoritarian followers, they are looking for nanny thinkers. They are looking for leaders with whom they can automatically agree. Therefore, authoritarian followers are much more concerned with who made a claim rather than why the claim was made. If we want to escape from being an authoritarian follower, then we will invest more time into examining why a claim is being made than who made the claim. The approach taken by authoritarian followers can be best expressed by making a slight alteration to a bumper sticker about the Bible which I used to see:
'God said it. I believe it. That settles it'
Now if we insert a fill-in-the-blank for the word 'God,' then we get a picture of the sentiments of the authoritarian follower:
_________ said it. I believe it. That settles it.
For religiously conservative Christians, names that authoritarian followers might insert could include Calvin, Arminius, Luther, Jonathan Edwards, J. Gresham Machen, Tim Keller, Charles Stanley, Charlie Kirk, Rush Limbaugh (for yous psuedo old-timers), Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, John Hagee, Dr. David Jeremiah, and Robert Jeffress. Skipping over the Liberals here, leftist leaders drawing authoritarian followers include Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Chris Hedges, Bernie Sanders, Martin Luther King Jr., Mao, and Karl Marx. We should note here that not all of the people just mentioned act as authoritarian leaders. Just because a leader has authoritarian followers does not imply that that leader is an authoritarian leader.
We should note another reason why my fellow religiously conservative Christians have a penchant for authoritarianism. That reason can be observed by looking at the quoted bumper sticker. We sometimes project the same characteristics that we attribute to God or God's Word to our pet leaders and/or ideologies. For example, some believe that their favorite form of Capitalism works in all times and situations. For others, it is there favorite form of Marxism. Note that neither Captialism nor Marxism are monolithic. In addition, we prefer to become authoritarian followers because it makes life more simple and safe. We don't have to critically examine what our adopted leaders have to say, all we have to do is to trust and obey them. And as with authoritarian followers of different religious or ideological stripes, becoming such a follower of someone who is famous or seems to be an impressive leader can give us a sense of significance and even belonging.
I believe that it is the penchant for authoritarianism that us religiously conservative Christians have which has provided a significant driving force to the recent emergence of today's Christian hubris. We believe that our leaders know what's best and because we have been trained to look for authority figures to follow, and, again, misery loves company, we not only fall in line, we expect, or demand, that everyone else in society do the same
Now we can examine what the New Testament says about how we are to live with unbelievers in society. Note that this discussion will be incomplete in the Scriptures that will be mentioned. But that does not imply that nothing of value will be said. Our first stop is John 3:1-8 (click here for the source).
'Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; 2 this man came to Jesus at night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus responded and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”'
Why is the above passage important? It is because one of the justifications why some are promoting Christian Nationalism is that Jesus charges us to make disciples of every nation--a.k.a, the Great Commission. Despite the fact that the declension of the word for nation used in the Great Commission (click here for the source of the passage) most often refers to ousiders in the New Testament, one cannot be a disciple without faith. And note, in the passage quoted above, what determines when faith comes. Though we Christians are charged with evangelizing, we can't control the results. We can't control whether faith comes to a person. And so how can any set of laws or leaders make anyone into a disciple of Christ as defined by the New Testament? And yet that is what Christian hubris, especially Christian Nationalism, tries to do.
Or let's look at other New Testament Scriptures. For example, in Matthew 10:12-14 (click here for the source), Jesus told his disciples that if people do not listen to what they say, then leave and walk away.
In addition, both Jesus and Peter instruct us not to dominate others (click here and there for those sources). And though those instructions were about how Christian leaders were to treat believers under their care, why does that not have at least some application to how believers should treat unbelievers.
We could also look at I Corinthians 5:9-11 (click here for the source). There, Paul tells fellow Christians to not associate with church members who are immoral. But note that he does not say that we shouldn't associate with immoral unbelievers. What those with Christian hubris want to do, to varying degrees, is to use their laws to remove unbelievers who are immoral as described in the I Corinthians passage from the presence of God's people in society. That would have the same effect as what Paul said should not be done: to remove Christians from the world.
Another passage that is quoted to justify Christian hubris in society is a passage like Romans 13 and in I Peter 2 (click here and there for the sources). In those passages, the government's purpose is to punish those who do evil and honor those who do good. And since all sins are evil, those with Christian hubris believe that we need laws that are only based on God's laws. There are two problems with such an approach. First, again, we are sharing society with unbelievers and so we, in many instances, would have to require an obedience that can only come with and after faith and we can't manufacture faith in people. In addition, such an approach causes governments to only represent believers and to be apathetic or hostile to unbelievers. Such an approach would allow believers to use the government as a proxy to dominate unbelievers. We should also note that the evil mentioned in those two passages was not defined but assumed to be understood by that audience.
Another justification for Christian hubris in society which I have seen consists of a logic that says because we, unlike those in New Testament times, have an opportunity to make society a Christian one, we should do so. And so the examples and the teachings of the Apostles become irrelevant. But such opportunism ignores the New Testament and forgets the dynamics involved when people come to faith and start to become obedient to Christ.
The New Testament tells us that God is patient and wants all to come to repentance and believe. And the question becomes whether Christian hubris practices that patience. Yes, we need certain laws from the Scriptures to protect a nation's citizens from each other and others. But most, if not all of those laws, have been repeated by other sources and provide no privilege to Christianity in society. Those laws that would privilege Christianity above the beliefs of others and would put us religiously conservative Christians into positions of treating unbelievers as subordinates and thus in ways that are not supported by the New Testament. Tim Alberta emphasizes this point when he talks about Peter. For example, when Jesus was being arrested, Peter responded with the sword and Jesus rebuked him. But in I Peter 2, when Christians are being persecuted by unbelievers, Peter tells us to imitate Christ when He was put on trial and was crucified. Christ didn't trade insult for insult. Instead, he suffered quietly so that He could be take our place by being crucified. Peter goes on to say that how Christ responded set an example for us to follow (click here to see that portion of I Peter 2).
The final argument for Christian Nationalism rests on the claim that God made a covenant with America and so, to keep that covenant, America must follow God. Such a view, however, ignores how covenants were made in the Bible. It was always God who initiated and defined a covenant, not the people. And those covenants are recorded in the Scriptures. In addition, the fulfillment of every covenant was seen in Christ and in Him only. Claiming that God made Americans his covenant people removes Christ from the center of the revelation about the covenant and the covenant itself. Instead, we need to ask whether proclaiming that Americans are God's covenant people is more a result of corporate self-promotion rather than preaching Christ.
And so, just perhaps, we should examine whether democracy with equality puts us religiously conservative Christians in the most optimal situation for how we should share society with unbelievers. That we should look at ourselves as peers with unbelievers in sin because we are. We should look at unbelievers as peers in society, because they are Thus, we can work side-by-side with unbelievers in shaping society knowing that not only do we need to give them, what is for us, an uncomfortabe amount of leeway, we also have much to learn from them. In addition we have Christ's first coming as our example, not His sescond coming. And at that point, we should focus on bearing the fruit of the Spirit in their presence, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez constantly tries to remind us (click here for the list of the fruit of the Spirit). We really need to get how we share society with unbelievers right because the reputation of the Gospel is, in large part, riding on it. Here, we should note that when Christians dominated many nations during Christendom, all sorts of injustices were practiced then and thus became associated with the Gospel.
