Regarding M. Cassidy. I am thankful when idols are toppled. I want to be confident that it was done according to the spirit and not the flesh. I am not.
Category: Freedom
A fourth installment of my series on Romans 13.
Why is it good to submit to the civil magistrate? Our text gives several reasons: because he is established by God, because he provides a particular service to society, because he is there for my good, and because if we do good, we will receive his approval. These are four distinct reasons we can find in Romans 13. Paul wants to establish that the civil magistrate is a good thing, just as the church is a good thing, and marriage is a good thing. If the civil magistrate is a gift of God, it is good for the Christian to recognize the civil magistrate’s proper function in society. We cannot simply reject the place of the civil magistrate for his failures, as our situation tempts many Christians to do.
We’ll look at the meat of Paul’s teaching on the civil magistrate by digging into three questions: “Why is Paul defending the civil magistrate?”, Why submit to the civil magistrate?”, and “What about a civil magistrate that does not approve of what is good?”
Why is Paul defending the civil magistrate?
The history of the exegesis of Romans 13 is a history of over-exegesis and under-exegesis. On the one hand, we magnify the civil magistrate to such an extent that we turn Christians into people without a voice or other ways to resist oppression. Here we argue from the word “submit” and apparently, “submit” means counting every government law as worthy of total submission. Unless it explicitly contradicts Christian teaching. Because, after all, God established him, so to obey his every whim is to obey God.
Suddenly, the Christian becomes the slave of the civil magistrate. And even though the New Testament recognizes that some might have the status of the slave, it does not teach that the Christian ought to arbitrarily let himself be enslaved. This view fails to see why God wants us to submit to the civil magistrate or what the civil magistrate is for. It fails to allow for God’s providence in giving individuals specific responsibilities derived from God and not from the civil magistrate. Finally, it fails to understand that the total submission they demand toward the civil magistrate only belongs to God.
Or we under-exegete the passage and end up ignoring or rebelling against the civil magistrate. We use every little mistake or weakness we see in the civil magistrate as something to cry out against. We forget that he is a gift and primarily view him as an enemy. Or we use his mistakes as an excuse to sin, not only against human law but against divine law. We allow envy and pride to dwell in our hearts, and we begin to curse man, whom God made in his image. That leads to further sinful actions such as lying, stealing, and murder until we are worse than the civil magistrate.
The fact is, we need the rest of the teaching of scripture to fill out our relation to a particular civil magistrate. God gives many and varied examples in the Old Testament of how Israel related to her leaders, and we need the wisdom to apply it. We must also keep in mind the ultimate goal, the kingdom of God. And the means for pursuing that kingdom, which is doing good according to our calling.
Paul is not arguing for a particular type of government. Paul teaches that God ordains the civil magistrate as a gift to man. He argues against Christians who minimize and reject the civil magistrate. He wants the Christian to look to the civil magistrate as protection against evil and support the civil magistrate by doing good.
It is important to see here that Paul is relying on general truths. He is not exploring every avenue of the question of government. He is not investigating every situation a Christian might encounter concerning his civil government. Instead, he demonstrates the importance of working within the status quo that God gives, transforming from within rather than seeking to inaugurate an earthly kingdom of God in opposition to the powers that be. These general promises are why the promise is here: the authorities will reward those who do good. He also demonstrates that God gave the civil magistrate for the good of society. Like other leadership positions such as the Pastor or the husband, Paul views the civil magistrate as a gift from God that fulfills a particular purpose.
Why submit to the civil magistrate?
It’s easy to look at the negatives of what the civil government has done, even to focus on it in an unhealthy way. We love to dwell on the injustices we experience. However, it is crucial in approaching the role of the government to begin with Paul’s perspective: that God intends the government, whatever its failings, for something good. Further, if we believe in the resurrection, the civil magistrate is not irredeemable. Rather, we have a job to do in relation to the civil magistrate to demonstrate the way of redemption through good deeds.
Paul has very positive things to say about the civil government. God gives them the authority to bear the sword as an avenger. They are there to reward good and punish evil. They are keepers of virtue. God has appointed them in this role, even if they might not recognize the appointment of God. That appointment is made through his providences.
God appoints them for his service. They are not just another service like a shoe salesman. The shoe salesmen may serve God, but he is not God’s minister in the sense that the civil magistrate is, or for that matter, the church officer. He does not speak for God. The civil officer and the ecclesiastical officer directly represent, respectively, justice and the mercy of God.
In the providence of God, God provides for all sorts of leaders in society. The civil magistrate is vital in bringing peace and order so that the wicked do not take over and attack and destroy the righteous. For the Christian, the civil magistrate is to be loved and honored because he is from God and ideally should reflect God. He is honored so that he might be encouraged to see who is truly an enemy of the land: not the Christian, but the one who seeks to destroy the good order of God.
They are ultimately a gift. Dealing vengeance according to one’s personal law or a sort of “might makes right” is not healthy for society. God gives the civil magistrate to adjudicate evil and good, not according to any law, but according to his law. Even an unbelieving civil magistrate can (the word can is important; many do not and many Christian civil magistrates do not) understand what sort of person provides stability for society and what creates instability and disorder. In that light, Christians have an important role in demonstrating that subjection to God’s Law is what is best for society.
Ideally, in such a situation, the Christian will also receive commendation from the civil magistrate for doing good. If the magistrate cares about justice and order for all, he will see the valuable life and the excellent example of the Christian even when they must not obey the demands of the magistrate.
What about a civil magistrate that does not approve of what is good?
The fact that our civil magistrate has lost this ability to distinguish between good and evil makes our society so unstable. Citizens who lawfully protest (I speak generally for there are exceptions)) unjust Covid regulations are jailed and mocked, while Black Lives Matter, an organization dedicated to overthrowing good order, is praised. What do Christians do in this sort of situation?
One line in Romans 13particularly helps us. Romans 13:4 says, “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do good and you will receive his approval.” That good is ultimately not defined by the government; the word of God defines it. If we took this statement in some absolute sense, we would almost have to conclude that Paul is lying or is incredibly naïve. However, Paul is neither. Paul is speaking in more proverbial terms.
Doing good will bring reward from the civil magistrate, but not necessarily immediately. If Christians are in a situation where they suffer for doing good, they ought to persist in doing it. Ultimately God sees that, and God sees the civil magistrate. And we trust that eventually, God will work the heart of the civil magistrate in our direction as long as we persevere with faithfulness. Sometimes that takes generations, as it did with the Roman Empire. But suppose we have Christians willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake, who are firm in their duties and firm in standing strong for the gospel and the kingdom of God? In that case, we will produce good order among ourselves and beyond us. Finally, we trust that we will earn the commendation of the civil magistrate.
In his own life, Paul didn’t always have an easy time with the civil magistrate. He was jailed, he was beaten, and he was mocked. However, he had moments where he did receive the approval of the civil magistrate. The Philippian jailer, for example, was moved to come to Christ through Paul’s example. King Agrippa and Festus were both profoundly impressed with Paul.
On a smaller scale, we have an example from the Covid pandemic: Pastor Stephens, who was jailed for his willingness to worship during Covid, had the opportunity to preach the gospel to the Calgary Police Force at a funeral for one of their members who attended his church.
So, we are to give the magistrate due obedience because they are a gift from God, appointed by God for the good of the peace and order of society, and in general, if we continue to do good, even when we suffer for doing good, there is a promise here of the magistrate’s eventual approval for persevering in obedience to God. The suggestion here is that we want not just a passive submission to the civil magistrate but an active submission that seeks the good of the country and the community. Ultimately in the hopes that the civil magistrate might see the goodness of Christ in us. May his name be glorified.
As we have worked through the context of Romans 13, we have assumed that Christians are allowed to resist evil in general and evil from the civil magistrate in particular. The immediate context of Romans 13 gives us the way of resistance. We are to put away a desire for vengeance and use the opportunities that God gives us to do good to our enemies; as Christ says, “love your enemies.” And so cause “coals of fire” to be placed on their head. Resistance, according to God’s way, is overcoming evil with good.
Now, this would seek to contradict the call to the Christian “to not resist” the civil magistrate in Romans 13. Yet, Paul says do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This teaching suggests that there is a way to resist evil. Further, Paul speaks of putting coals on the enemy’s head, another image that is suggestive of what we might call resistance. These contextual clues suggest that what Paul means by “resist” in Romans doesn’t necessarily stretch to the meanings we mean by “resist” in English.
Initially, to speak of resisting the Civil magistrate seems to contradict Romans 13 directly. Part of that is simply a language problem. The resistance that Paul is talking about is an insurrection. Paul preaches against actions that seek to overthrow the existing order that God has established rather than seeking the good of the city. God had quite clearly told the Jewish people in Daniel that they would be part of the Roman Empire, and it was foolish to seek to overthrow it. Romans, though they could be cruel, had a strong sense of fairness in their justice system. For the early church, the Romans were very important for their protection from the predations of fellow Jews. It was necessary then to look at the civil magistrate as appointed by God to protect the righteous, even if the individual magistrates may not have been particularly virtuous.
Because of the Jewishness of early Christianity, there probably was a portion of early Christians that the zealots attracted. These men sought to bring the kingdom of God by physical violence. And this strain has always continued to be a part of the Christian story, especially at times of great social unrest. Some, for example, will accuse my position of being anabaptist. They fail to understand that the anabaptist position is not merely a theory of resistance but a rejection of the very idea of the civil magistrate. The fact that this accusation can stick demonstrates the failure of our awareness of church history.
I imagine that some hold to an Anabaptistic position today, perhaps secretly, hiding behind Protestant resistance theory, or more openly. I haven’t come across too many. This reality may be because of the circles I interact with. Some may also sincerely hold to legitimately reformed resistance theory but do not always act in line with it. Though I do not see explicit anabaptistic thought, I believe it is out there. I certainly come across attitudes I am uncomfortable with, even if I cannot pinpoint a bad world and life view.
The sum of this discussion is that there is an attitude toward the civil magistrate that all Christians are called to reject. We are not called to insurrection in order to bring in the kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God does not come by the sword. We do not reject the civil magistrate, but we submit to him as someone who God ordains.
So then, how do we resist evil? First of all, we put away our desire for vengeance and ensure in our own hearts that we desire the good of our enemies. At the same time, we must instill in ourselves the courage (a better word might be fortitude) to live according to our calling through good times and bad times. Through the Spirit, we can overcome. Through pursuing the goodness fo God, we can overcome.
A little note on the side, this attitude does not preclude acts of self-defense. Paul speaks of acts of vengeance or places where self-defense is impossible, unrealistic, or ill-advised. Christians may certainly defend themselves and certainly those who they are charged with.
On the other hand, Christians may also recognize through the Spirit that self-defense is not the right choice in a given situation. I think of men like Nate Saint, who, with his fellow missionaries, refused to defend himself against the tribe he was sent to as a missionary. He understood that in his role, his death would be more effective for the sake of the gospel than self-defense.
So, we want to overcome evil with good. We are granted the right to take vengeance, the civil magistrate has that right. So we take our “vengeance,” through doing good to our enemies
If that is the Christian way of resistance, what does that look like? What does that look like when the authorities over us work evil against us?
What does Paul mean by “Don’t be overcome by evil?” We can think of Cain, who is warned by God, “sin is crouching at your door: its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” When we receive evil in our lives, we want to respond with envy, anger, and malice. Our automatic impulse is to respond to evil in a way that satisfies our evil lusts. And so we become the very evil we war against. We end up mirroring our enemies in our desire to overcome them.
Another way to be overcome by evil is submission to it; becoming, if you will, “a doormat.” When the government gives evil commands, for example, forbidding us to fulfill our calling before God, we cannot submit to it. Sometimes we have no other choice but to submit to a wicked law and if such is the case, we need not worry; we can be confident in our freedom before God, even if we are not physically able to exercise it. However, when we have a choice, we ought to do what is right to the best of our ability. Being a doormat is just as dangerous for your spiritual well-being as mirroring your enemies. There is nothing holy about foolhardiness. There is nothing sacred about cowardice.
To all this, we can again apply the questions of prudence we discussed last time. We need to begin with the disposition of Christ, gentle and humble. The word “gentle” does not mean without offense rather, it means something closer to self-controlled, well-managed, motivated by faith, hope, and love. The result is that the gentle person is careful not to give unnecessary offense but courageous to offend when necessary. Like Christ with whips in the temple, Christ name-calling Herod, Christ condemning the Pharisees, and Christ who was willing to die for his enemies.
Regarding Covid, my desire here is to defend my approach and others’ approach to this situation. I cannot read hearts. I do not seek to condemn others for their decisions before God (though I have an exception to this when others bind the conscience of those in their care). However, I believe that I have sought to do good in response to a tyrannical government with evil rules. I do not even consider the various individuals in government as particularly evil, but they did uphold evil and destructive laws.
We overcome evil, including evil from our government, with good. So, let us do the good that our God has called us to. That brings us now to the main body of Romans 13. Next time we will dig deeper into the role of the civil magistrate.
Another contextual clue to Paul’s teaching in Romans 13 is the words that come almost immediately before Romans 13, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” The call to submit to the Roman civil magistrate is part of the call to “live peaceably with all.” Our living peaceably with all depends on our ability to obey God; to live according to our calling before him. We are to honor God before men.
What does it mean, “if possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all?” There are a lot of ways to apply those words to today. Does that mean we are to do everything for the sake of peace?
A good understanding of these words begins with an understanding of the church’s mission. The mission of the church, the mission of Christ, informs what it means to live peaceably with all. Our goal is nothing less than the reconciliation of all things to Christ. The church’s work in fulfilling that mission can bring times we are offensive to the world around us. In fact, says the scriptures, “to those who are perishing we are the smell of death.” Jesus says, “the world will hate you as they hated me.” This is a reality, but within that Paul wants us to work our best to live peaceably with all, including the civil magistrate, as much as possible.
But when the magistrate interferes with the mission of the church whether in her worship or in her call to love one another, the church is called to stand up to the civil magistrate. But even so, she does not do this in a way that is malicious, angry, or threatening. She does this in a way that continues to keep the peace, recognizes the importance of law and order, and seeks the city’s good.
The good of the city is our ultimate goal. It is a good that is defined by the gospel of Jesus Christ. This good has two aspects. First, the righteousness and order of Jesus Christ: those in Christ and out of Christ have two different value systems. We want to bring the value system of Christ to the world as a whole.
The second aspect of this good is how it defines our resistance of evil in this world. Or we might say how we seek to bring Christ’s value system into our world’s value system. It is a spiritual war, not a physical one, which we fight. We do not seek to destroy our enemies. No, we love our enemies and aim to transform them by putting away our desire for vengeance and ultimately seeking their good. We seek peace with our enemies by continuing to do what is good, thus heaping burning coals on his head. This action is all according to the law of love and in line with Christ’s act of obedience to our Father in heaven.
Our ability to live peaceably with all depends on our ability to live according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Living according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ is not only about the things we don’t do, but also about the things we do. An example of the first might be where the government commands us to give a pinch of incense to Caesar or commands us to kill somebody who is innocent. An example of the second might be things that interfere with our worship or our call to love one another, basically anything that interferes with our three-fold office of prophet, priest, and king in Jesus Christ.
We must recognize that we have a duty toward the government as those who bear the sword for vengeance. According to this calling, they are to defend the righteous and condemn the wicked. We are called to give due honor, due obedience, and due monetary support, with regard to that calling. That is part of the righteousness and order of Christ. Some could argue that those things interfere with our ability to fulfill our duty as Christians, but they are also part of our duty as we seek the good of those in authority over us. Ideally, they also secure the peace and order of the community of God.
But when the civil magistrate begins to use its monopoly on force to deny or undermine our duties, then we ought to start to think through where we might owe obedience to God before we owe obedience to the government. I say start because there is an important place for patience and for conversation before action.
Here I want to discuss a bit the use of prudence in these things in making that decision about how best to respond to various types of tyranny. The very command “as much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” assumes a call to prudence. Our goal is the peace of God, but at the same time, faithfulness can disturb the peace. Ahab calls Elijah “A troubler of Israel.” Zechariah 1 describes a type of peace that is not due to faithfulness but due to unfaithfulness. The Apostle Paul is accused of “turning the world upside down.” He too is a disturber of the peace.
So is it time to be an Elijah or a Paul, or is it time to be quiet and patient? How do we accomplish the goals of the kingdom in our station of life? Paul is not a revolutionary, he desires to transform from within. Just as the Spirit comes into a person and crucifies the flesh and brings to life the new man, so those moved by the Spirit transform from within society with deeds of love and mercy. We look to the Spirit to apply the wisdom of scripture in our current situation.
Part of this prudence is in recognizing your situation. If the evil done to you comes from those who are positioned over you, the response is different than to one who is your equal or under you. You owe greater honor and patience to the civil magistrate than to your average citizen because of the nature of their role in society. You will also have a different response as a pastor, plumber, farmer, policeman, or nurse. Each of those comes with varying factors of risk. It also matters whether you have dependents or not. Paul sees the importance of the work of providence in giving us each a different vocation in our lives. That is why he tells us in 1 Corinthians 7 to “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”
Another part of that prudence is discerning what you are willing to risk or what hill you are willing to die on. The natural way of the Gentiles is to lord it over one another and we should expect that they will try to lord it over the church as well. The natural way of our hearts is to lord it over one another. Therefore, the first attitude toward the rise of tyranny is one of patience.
In terms of Covid, which is the apparent reason for writing these articles, I would argue that most Christians responded with patience. Still, beyond initial patience, Christians had different metrics for deciding when civil disobedience was necessary and different understandings of the severity of the pandemic, understandable because of the lack of open conversation about these things in the public square.
Yet even when we decide that it is necessary to ignore government mandates, we must still seek peace with all men as much as possible. That doesn’t mean we can’t be sarcastic or confront the authorities. After all, Christ gives us examples of precisely this type of action. But we must, in all this, prioritize mercy and justice. In all this, we must follow the way of Christ. “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” “Bless those who curse you,” says the Lord. God gives us this truth generally and this is where prudence and the leading of the Spirit come in. We’ll come to this more in our next article, where we will discuss resisting the government God’s way.
Genesis 47: 13-30, 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Romans 12:14-21
There is one argument that stands out to me among the pro-lockdown arguments that has truth to it. I don’t know to what degree or what was hidden because I am not an expert in these matters. This is the argument from the limits of our healthcare system; this argument had two iterations, lack of ICU beds and lack of staff. Of course, the lack of ICU beds has a lot less weight because it is something that a first-world country should be able to accommodate, especially with the amount of money that flowed from all levels of government into this problem. However, the lack of staff is a real problem, and considering that these first-line workers were likely to contract the virus themselves, the problem was only made worse. And it’s only made worse recently by vaccine mandates.
(I should add there is another problem—something I’m not planning on dealing with, but something that needs attention—the amount of regulation in our system due to legislation and unions. I do not have enough awareness of our system to give thoughtful commentary beyond the fact that this does affect our system)
Considering the wait lines have always been the first complaint about the Canadian Healthcare system, the lack of staff should be no surprise to the thinking person. Covid-19 should have been a catalyst for much needed reform rather than an opportunity to subjugate the populace to experts’ prudential concerns.
Our Media’s use of fear over breaking our system, in order to push the public into our brave new medical order, confirms old concerns about our system; Universal Healthcare is a mechanism of enslaving the Canadian public. Maybe not consciously, but considering the shape of reality that is its true end. I think here of men such as Ernest T. Manning who warned the Canadian Public about Tommy Douglas’ socialistic framework for “free” healthcare.
What is slavery? It is to limit a man or woman so that they are not able to fulfill the fullness of their calling as man or woman according to their station in society. We were not allowed to assess our own risk with regards to the Coronavirus because our health is owned by these representatives of the Canadian Public and they must preserve the integrity of universal healthcare. This is a sign of things to come.
I want to do two things here. I want to demonstrate the enslaving nature of what is going on. And further, a discussion on what the good Christian response might be.
What does enslavement look like? We often think in terms of war. And this in fact was a very common way to become a slave. One nation might finally win over another nation, and enslave its people or a portion of its people. In our own history this was a common source of slavery; internal conflict between African tribes was exploited by slavers, who sold their slaves to the new world. Similar to slavery by war is simply man-stealing in order to sell an individual into slavery. Joseph’s brothers claimed ownership over Joseph’s body and sold him into slavery.
It is the other form of enslavement that relate to our topic today. It is that of indebtedness. This was actually quite a common form of slavery in the past. What we know today as “indentured servants,” was really a form of temporary slavery, putting somebody to work for an individual until they could become free.
So behind debt, at least ordinarily, there is was always the possibility of slavery. We can be thankful for those parts of our system that keep debt from being the road to slavery it often was in the history of the world.
Debt is not necessarily evil, but it must be managed. We can think of the term loan shark or the fast cash places that have popped up all over the place with questionable business ethics. Lending out money to someone should help that person or be mutually advantageous. It should not be at the expense of the one who is borrowing.
It’s interesting that the Hebrew word for deceive and the Hebrew word for lending with usurious rates are connected to one another. The loan shark is called a loan shark because he is using his power in order to hurt, extract from, even enslave the one he is loaning to. In a similar way, Satan by deceiving the woman, also enslaved her, with her husband to sin. This is why the gospel is described as a clearing away of a debt (the debt in this case is to God (Satan indebted us to God)) and a freedom from slavery, especially slavery to sin.
This is not just a spiritual thing. Rather in this case the Spiritual affects the physical. God’s spiritual generosity ought to work itself out in man’s physical generosity. God wants the spiritual freedom he gives us to work itself out in physical freedom. Within his divine plan it is not always so, but this is the sense of the scriptures. He warns about those who take away spiritual freedom in a book like Galatians, but that spiritual freedom results in treating slaves as brothers. In that spiritual freedom, we are willing to free the slave. In 1 Corinthians he warns, “you were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.”
In our current situation it is the universality of the healthcare system that is enslaving. I have a problem with a state-funded healthcare system in general, but I realise that state-funded healthcare system does not take away our freedom in the same way. Their natural end may be the bloated corruption we see in the Medicare-insurance-pharmaceutical company racket in the USA.
I purposefully focus on the Universality of our system because that is the place where the system becomes self-re-enforcing rather than allowing for voices of reform. In the States there are various voices on the margins that push against the dominant system. They do this by creating different payment systems that circumnavigate the insurance companies and the medical bureaucracy. But that is not possible in Canada, in part because it is illegal.
In the name of fairness and equality, the Canadian people bought into the universal healthcare system, but in doing so they created a system in which their health was the immediate concern of those who also happened to have exclusive ownership of the sword as well. They lost choice; they lost viable possibilities for alternatives. Because it was a public system, the government could argue that the public had a responsibility to be healthy so that their neighbors would not have to pay for them.
And that is basically what the arguments I referenced at the beginning boil down to. We are indebted to our healthcare system. Whether we like it or not, we have to pay into it, and unlike the public school system, we have to use it. If you want health, particularly healing from something like a broken limb, or some other sickness where you need drug treatment, you will indebt yourself to this system. In the name of fairness and equality, we all need to do our share in supporting this system.
The fact that there is no free market system on the side adds to the danger of the situation. There is no price discovery for medical goods. Whereas in the states, those who are able to sideline the insurance racket down there are able to get reasonable prices, here in Canada there is no possibility of knowing the true costs of the various procedures our healthcare system might provide. That means I have no real idea what I “owe” to the healthcare system and thus it is easy for them to claim that they “own” my health choices.
Now of course this is not how our universal healthcare was sold. It was sold in the name of fairness and equality. Unlike the Egyptians of Joseph’s day, we did not actually contractually sell ourselves into slavery, but we were sold on a different contract, that we would get free healthcare if we all pitched in monetarily. Canadians were tricked, though of course, they should have known better. If somebody, like Ernest Manning, former Premier of Alberta, and one of the strongest voices against Universal Healthcare, could see what is happening, he would probably say “I told you so.”
Peter Leithart relates something similar going on in the States in his recent blogpost “from sword to syringe.” The civil magistrate did have a control over some aspect of the political body. It had the authority to control the bodies of those who transgressed over person and property. He notes that that control has moved to the syringe. Rather than bearing the sword of vengeance, the civil magistrate now bears the syringe of health. If true in the States, all the more so in Canada.
As a side note, there are various ways to use the mask as a symbol of protest, I think a fitting one would be the words “property of Manitoba Health” stitched into the mask, because it reveals what our governing authorities our truly saying by mandating masks, and of course, now vaccines, in private businesses, privately owned churches, and not least our ownership of our own bodies.
I should also add that I am not one to say that the civil magistrate has no responsibility for public health, but I believe it is more about collating and distributing information and facilitating the work of health workers; coercive power is off the table.
But God likes freedom; freedom that is used for good, freedom unto maturity. I quote again from 1 Corinthians 7, “you were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.” Even as Egypt was selling herself into slavery, making the name “land of slavery” a fitting name for her, God was preserving his people in the land of Goshen. By God’s exaltation of Joseph, his people are preserved, even preserved from the slavery of Egypt. Of course, later the Egyptians choose to enslave the Israelites, but we are not told that story in the scriptures.
God’s ideal for the Christian is described in Romans 12, “owe no-one anything except to love one another.” Similar themes come up in 1 Corinthians 1-4 where God warns the Corinthians about Lording it over one another, reminding them, not that ultimately they are to be slaves to one another, but that “everything is yours is Christ.” So even though the slave must recognize the reality of the situation he is in, he does this as someone to whom everything belongs in Christ. The slave may wear the garb of slavery, but in reality he is a king at God’s side. And the Master who recognizes that does well.
Again in Galatians 2, people come to bring the people into a spiritual slavery, a spiritual slavery that is marked by a very real physical mark: circumcision. While Paul is happy to recognize the dignity of those who wish to be circumcised, he hates the desire to use circumcision to subject people to the ceremonies that have been abolished in Christ Jesus.
Though God likes freedom, I do think that we need to accept that we have been sold a raw bill of goods about the Canadian Healthcare system. We are, at least in part, owned by the Healthcare system. And we need to come to God in repentance and hope that he might free us from this evil. At the same time we must continue to do good. In as much as our situation is like the slave than we must follow the words of 1 Peter 2, when he calls slaves to submit to unjust masters as well as just ones.
If we do imagine that somehow the system has fully subjugated us, we can imagine that a slave might sneak out of his property against the wishes of his master to go and worship God, then come back and be discovered only to be beaten. I would hold that he is then being beaten for something good. And thus is justified. The same would hold for Christians who went to church during this time.
However, while I use the image of slavery to describe our situation in Canada, I do not believe that we have been completely enslaved. We still have a good way to go. Contractually, we are not yet in the place that the Ancient Egyptians were in the story we read from Genesis. Rather the position we are in is an enslaving one. We are on the road to serfdom. It is incredible how far they have gone in the shutdowns, the masks, but at least it was sold under the idea of emergency.
This provides us, as Christians, with the opportunity for resistance. We ought not to allow ourselves become slaves; we are bought by Jesus. I particularly want to point to finding those possibilities for reform in our healthcare system. Don’t take this to mean that this should be the task of the church, rather I would encourage individual Christians to take leadership in this area. If you know lawmakers or lobbyists, or leaders in the sphere of healthcare encourage them toward reform.
But I’m not only thinking in terms of politicians and lobbying. These are important, we could use a cutting of bureaucracies, regulations, and unions, allowing for greater flexibility, especially for something like staffing in the next public health crisis.
Perhaps too, Christians should be willing to take up the mantle of civil disobedience in this matter, finding ways to provide free-market healthcare at the margins. I believe this is justified by Paul’s words in Romans 13, “owe no-one anything but to love one another.” This could be done for profit, but if we wish to gain public support it would probably be wise to begin with a private charity model.
I hope that this pandemic is a catalyst toward more freedom in our healthcare options; freedom from our universal system, which becomes less and less reliable. Realistically, however, there are groups who are already arguing for more intervention. For example in Ontario, people are pushing for the government to take more control over senior homes. Of course, these are already basically government entities. Let’s do our best to hold back these forces. I hope that we can use these realities to carve out a space for Christian freedom. In the meantime, continue to “live as people who are free.” It is only as when we are free in our hearts from sin, from anger, from greed, that we can give people political freedom.
Once again I don’t know exactly how to apply these truths to the road God has set before us. But I know that God does not wish a passive response to our healthcare system’s continual subjugation of all areas of life. Romans 12:21 does give us a template for how we can begin to do this “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”