The question of how we Christians are to live as citizens of both a future heaven and present earth has plagued us for much of Church history. A recent article in the online Tabletalk magazine by Justin Taylor (click here for a brief bio) provides part of another attempt to discuss the issue (click here for the article being reviewed). Taylor's article is part of a series of articles published in the 2018 edition of Tabletalk on how should live in two worlds at the same time (click here for that series).
We should note that in trying to answer the question of how Christians should live a dual citizenship, Taylor touches on two pertinent ideas. The first idea is an attempt to correct a common misunderstanding about Augustine's City of God where Augustine describes every Christian's plight of having to live in the city of the world while living in the City of God. The common misunderstanding Taylor is correcting is that Christians are simultaneously members of both worlds and thus have a dual citizenship. Taylor's interpretation of Augustine here states that Augustine was at that point talking about an exclusive-or choice of living in the sin-dominated city of this world with all of its traps vs living under God's rule to a significant extent. I cannot comment on the validity of Taylor's interpretation of Augustine here because I have not read enough of his City of God to grade Taylor's interpretation. But nonetheless, Taylor makes a significant point that is made in the beginning of Romans 12. Either we are to be transformed by God's grace or we are to let ourselves go by conforming to the world.
Regardless of his interpretation of Augustine, Taylor notes that we have a dual citizenship. We are both citizens in this world who are to have a godly care for temporal events and we are citizens of a coming heaven. As Taylor uses the Scriptures to point out, we live as exiles in this world because our true home is in heaven. But such does not negate the fact that we live as citizens here on earth. And thus comes Taylor's second interesting point. He states that we are citizens in this world, not subjects. The difference between the two lie in how and the degree to which one participates in this world. As citizens we are called to participate in the political system and mechanisms to help maintain 'civic order.' Subjects are denied the rights or privileges of such participation, but citizens are not. So not only do we have a right to participate in the political system, we have a responsibility to do so.
So far, I fully agree with what Taylor has said. My problem is found in what he has left unsaid. For while he describes our earthly citizenship in terms of how we interact with the government, and while he later on states that we are to work on solving temporal problems, he never mentions how we are to regard unbelievers with whom we share this world. Are we to recognizes them as fellow citizens or are we to recognize them as subjects? How we answer that question is revealed in what kind of governmental legislation we support and promote.
For example, those Christians who use to support Jim Crow laws were saying that Blacks were to be regarded as subjects while Whites, especially White Christians, were to be counted as citizens. Similarly, we could easily say that those Christians who oppose full equality for the LGBT community want to relegate those in that community to being either partial citizens or subjects of the state while Christians are counted as full citizens. Those Christians who support and promote full equality for the LGBT community are at the same time supporting full citizenship for both those from that community and themselves.
The basic point here is that our participation as citizens in this world should not be reduced to just our acceptance of the government and how it rules; our participation also involves our interaction with unbelievers. And our recognition of God's common grace is not just seen in how our government rules over us, it is seen in how all work together to help our communities.
So while Taylor says some worthwhile things in his article on the Christian's dual citizenship, because it is so oriented on what is political and our relationship with our government, he misses an important subject: how Christians should live as fellow citizens in this world with unbelievers. Will we Christians live in such a way and promote legislation that recognizes the full citizenship of all sorts of unbelievers? And we find ourselves working for such a full citizenship when we promote equality for all different groups of unbelievers. But when we impose many of our Christian values on unbelievers, we find ourselves working to demote unbelievers from being citizens to being subjects of this world and our own nation.
But something else should be added here. while we Christians are to be citizens in this world in more involved ways than what Taylor has suggested, these ways of involvement must be approached with a certain vigilance. Why? Because in collaborating with unbelievers, we want to ensure that we are not conforming to the world. We are to continue to be transformed by God's grace while we both work side by side with unbelievers for the benefit of all as well as enjoy the benefits of God's common grace on unbelievers. And that, perhaps, is the most difficult challenge of recognizing unbelievers as full citizens in the world. And, perhaps, the reason why many of us Christians feel uneasy in recognizing unbelievers as full fellow citizens in this world is that we both feel threatened by the dangers of being conformed to the world and we underestimate the common grace gifts God gives our unbelieving fellow citizens of this world.
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