Chapter 14: Does This Make Us Peace and Justice Activists? From what I've said so far, you might be thinking that I'm saying we should all be peace and justice activists. Perhaps all of us should be picketing nuclear power plants and munitions factories. But that's not at all what I'm saying. Peace and justice activism is merely the reverse side of God and country activism.
Both sides imagine that the kingdoms of the world are part of God's kingdom, or at least that the kingdoms of the world can be run by Jesus' teachings. But did Jesus try to Christianize the world? When Jesus stood before Pilate, did he lecture Pilate about various social wrongs within the Roman Empire? Did the New Testament Christians work to end capital punishment and torture throughout the Roman Empire?
Peace and justice Christians imagine that they are otherworldly, in contrast to right-wing, redneck fundamentalists. They imagine that they alone are standing up for Jesus' teachings. But the truth is, they are just as worldly as right-wing fundamentalists. They merely align themselves with a different sector of the world, the liberal left. Yet, like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is the world.
Like their right-wing counterparts, peace and justice Christians practice a pick-and-choose approach to Jesus' commandments. They somehow manage to pick only the teachings that are politically correct in left-wing circles. They speak out fervently against the sins of war and economic greed. But they are usually silent when it comes to other sins, such as divorce, abortion, and homosexuality. They imagine that they can be an active citizen of God's kingdom and yet never have to be politically incorrect.
But Jesus is never politically correct. He wasn't politically correct in the first century, and he hasn't been in any century since. He didn't come to preach a message about changing the governments and kingdoms of this world. He sought to transform individuals, not to transform the world. He came to invite us all to join his kingdom.
His message wasn't, "Let's make the rich take care of the poor by taxing them heavily." No, his message was, "David Bercot, you give up your comforts to help the poor." He and his apostles didn't band together in a political action committee to force Zacchaeus to care for the poor with all of his money. No, Jesus changed Zacchaeus so that Zacchaeus wanted to care for the poor. Peace and justice Christians speak out vociferously against capital punishment, which kills a hundred or so Americans every year.
Yet most of them are totally silent about abortion, which kills more than a million Americans every year. Peace and justice Christians protest discrimination against women, but they are quite mute when it comes to discrimination against men. They speak out against the persecution of left-wing revolutionaries, but they rarely say anything about the persecution of Christians in leftist dictatorships. Like the God and country Christians, they let the world dictate their agenda.
Many peace and justice Christians imagine that nearly all of the evils in the world are caused by America. They continually lash out against the sins and policies of America. Yet they close their eyes to the evils and oppressions of other governments. America is not God's country, any more than is any other kingdom of this world. It has its inconsistencies, pride, and selfishness, like all other countries. It has used its enormous wealth and military power primarily to further its own selfish interests.
It rarely uses its money and power to help a poor, powerless nation, unless that nation is important to American self-interests. At the same time, America is certainly one of the most benevolent world powers that has ever existed. It has not used its might as cruelly as most past world powers, such as Russia, Spain, Rome, Babylon, and Assyria. Furthermore, it has been friendly to Christianity, and not just to worldly Christianity. It has been quite tolerant of kingdom Christianity as well.
Kingdom Christians can be thankful for the freedoms that the American government gives them. Today, most European countries offer the same freedoms, but America was the first to do so. The narrow way of the kingdom excludes political activists of both the right and the left. Kingdom Christians honor and obey their governments, but they don't imagine that their country is somehow God's country or a partner of God's kingdom. They know that God's kingdom is not of this world.