I am disturbed by the Christian tenor towards politics and the more important spheres of life if there are any allowed these days. Words have become difficult because there are so many labels hurled as pejoratives and so little meaning behind them. Some of the terms swirling about this idea I am attempting to get to are ‘theocracy’, ‘pluralism’ and the phrase ‘religious freedom’. I have seen very little evidence that anyone knows what these words meant or mean. And I am almost certain that no one thinks of these things as they should by any standard of Biblical or Orthodox authority.

What is a Jew? Do we want Jews around? What is a Muslim? Do we want Muslims around? Why do Christians talk about three great faiths? Why do we talk about Christ as King and then mock all monarchies? Why do we sing “our God reigns” and then use the term ‘theocracy’ as a pejorative? Why do we call ourselves evangelicals, people dedicated to spreading the ‘good news’ to the whole world, and then speak highly of pluralism? None of this makes any sense to me.

Janusz Antosz. Contemporary.

There is an ancient tendency to begin the story of a religion or a family at the beginning. And this makes perfect sense, if your god wasn’t there in the beginning, where was he? Was he sleeping for 2000 years? 4000? Was he made by another god? Then isn’t that other god the one we should worship? You see this with Peter’s first sermon at Pentecost. He is rightly connecting Christ to the history known well by all Old Testament Jews, all the way back to the beginning in Genesis. You see this also with the genealogies in the New Testament. Jesus isn’t new isolated incident. He is connected to the Jews and their God is connected all the way back to the beginning. He is the creator. But after Jesus you have two religions, Christians and Jews. The Apostle Paul went from attacking the Christians with physical violence to attacking the Jews with the truth. Not some new truth, the truth of the Old Testament. He praised theBereans for going back to the Old Testament and realizing that Paul was correct, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t invent something new, he removed the blindness of the Jews. We see the picture so well in the conversion of Paul. Paul wanted the Jews to take their proper place as priests to the rest of the world not as political overlords to the rest of the world. Faithful Old Testament Jews became Christians. They followed Jesus’ reading of the Old Testament and not that of the Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees. And this division continues down to this day.

So what is a Jew today? It is someone who read their Old Testament the wrong way. It is someone who missed the whole point of their Old Testament and rejected it’s prophesied Messiah Jesus. Is it any wonder that this group was in conflict with the other group, the Christians for this 2000 plus years? There are possible resolutions, the Christians could become Jews, which isn’t going to happen because Christians are right. Or the Jews could become Christians, which isn’t happening, because they are a stiff necked people Exodus 32:9, as God says. And so after the initial persecution by the Jews, during the Middle Ages, Jews were banned from many Christian kingdoms. There were various other skirmishes and it all came to a head in Nazi Germany. This event rings so loud in our ears that we don’t think clearly on the issue at all. We go back and rewrite history to say that Martin Luther was an anti-semite in is old age. We even go back and ignore many verses in the Bible which put the Jews in a bad light, because hating the Jews has become the greatest evil in our minds. It’s not, the greatest evil was not the murder of 9 million Jews, it was the murder of Jesus the Christ. This is what it means to be a Christian, this is what we should believe. We have allowed the holocaust to give birth to multiculturalism, and that beast has become more sacred to us than our Christian faith.

So how should we treat Jews today? Of course we should love them. We should help them when we see them in need. We should be gracious, kind and compassionate. But we don’t get our theology from them. We don’t even ask them how they read the Old Testament, because they read it wrong. And ultimately we don’t want them around, we want them to become Christians. Every last one of them. Diversity in this situation is bad. Sure we can eat their food and share their stories over a peace pipe, but we don’t follow their religion. Which is why the term ‘Messianic Jew’ is so disturbing. Why do you want to be associated with that stiff necked people? Should I and my Nordic brethren start calling ourselves Messianic Pagans? Why isn’t the term ‘Christian’ enough? I think it is. We shouldn’t want to keep the Jews around so we can feel good that we aren’t a Nazi. We shouldn’t keep them around so we can have diversity. We should want them to become Christians so we can all be at peace on this earth and share eternity with them.

It’s also strange to note the various attacks on Christianity that have come from Jews in modern times. The two foremost being Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. But that’s a story for another day.

So how does Islam fit into this picture? Muhammed saw the need to connect his new tribal cult to the past as well. So he mixed together a bunch of Arab cultural history, with parts of the Bible, Old and New Testament. This becomes even more obvious when you compare what he did with what Joseph Smith did. They were like Simon in the Bible using the system of Christianity for their own ends. Simon wanted to make money, they used it for political power. And so Islam has historically been seen as a Christian heresy rather than mere paganism. Satan headed off the spread of the Gospel by stealing it’s tactics, in this new world made by Christ. And so as Tertullian said “the devil is an ape of God”.

The problem with Islam isn’t that it didn’t evolve the way Christianity did, it’s that it can’t evolve, because this type of rebirth is a Christian exclusive. It is the point of Christianity. Christ came back from the dead, Muhammed did not. We all share in his baptism into death, and become reborn. Old things are made new, including Rome and the whole world. Muhammed resists this. The whole idea that our culture is progressing, evolving, changing for the better has it’s roots in Christ. Of course it has become an idol in many ways, but this is the opposite of Islam. Anyone who has spent a minute in the middle east knows this well. There is no humility in Islam, which is why it is so resistant to changes for the better. There is no science in Islam because science is about systematically admitting your mistakes. Islam is a stick in the mud and the mud is as dry as the desert sand of the Middle East. And if you try to move the stick they kill you. Joseph Smith’s tribal cult has been able to progress better because it was built on American cultural history which was built on Christianity, rather than Arab paganism. Plus it always remained a minority in a greater Christian America. Islam headed off the harvest of the Gospel by telling people what they wanted to hear and the benefits of grift led to a significant tribal fighting force which began subduing people by force. Nearly every country on the earth today which is Islamic, became that way by the sword. This is Islam.

So how do we treat Mohammedans today? As with Jews, or any group, we love them. We ultimately want them all converted. But we don’t convert them by force. I heard Baroness Cox lamenting that Islam didn’t allow converts away from Islam. She said we needed to preserve the concept of peaceable conversion. But who says? That is a Christian idea Matthew 26:25. To ask Islam to convert people peaceably and to stop persecuting converts-away-from-Islam, is to ask them to become Christian Gen 27:40.  Live and let live is a Christian idea Romans 12:18, and it’s not even the whole story, for as I said we want the whole world on our side. Only then can we have peace. Why would we want Muslims around? So we can fight over things with them? Emmanuel, God with us, came down to earth to make peace between God and men Ephesians 2:14. That is the only way. Men at peace with God and Men at war with God, are going to be in conflict Matthew 10:34. Expect it. That’s what Christ promised us. They hated you because they hated me first. I came to bring the sword to turn father against son. . . That’s how it works. We should not seek some sort of cobbled stalemate with false religions. That will not make World Peace happen. And by wanting it to happen in that way, we are suggesting that things can be fine without Jesus. Of course pagans not killing you is better than pagans killing you. But our ultimate goal should be all pagans becomming Christians. We don’t measure success by a lack of body count, or a suspension of violence. We don’t worship peace, or life, we worship God.

So we don’t have three great faiths in a wonderful mix of diversity. We have one faith corrupted long before Jesus, leading him to judge them by their own promises. They entered into a covenant with God through Moses, then they broke it, so he judged them. But then God bailed them out and blessed them by sending his son, a Jew to be a real Jew and a real man. As Paul says those who follow him and become real Jews are now Christians, Romans 2. That is the only great religion. Then around 600AD a false prophet came along and corrupted this great religion for his own ends. He began waging war on Christendom. Millions are being slaughtered and enslaved to this day. As a pastor once said “if sin worked it wouldn’t be sin”. And Islam doesn’t work, even the non militant kind. At best it is a cheap copy of Christianity. What are we clinging to here?

Even Kanye west says Jesus is King. We hang up banners in our churches and sing songs to the same effect. Yet we hate kings. This is understandable given George III’s abuse of power. And there is a lot of American tradition trying to avoid Catholics and the post Reformation bloodshed that took place in Europe. We love our Republic in the shape of Rome with a few twists. But we have allowed these views to alter the words and meaning of Scripture. We sometimes get the idea that other religions are like other political parties. And the worst thing is being a partisan. We have been lead to believe that the middle of the road man, or the man who makes up his own mind, is the highest good. As if Jesus didn’t say that thing about being lukewarm Rev. 3:16. But it’s not all about our choice. It’s not about campaigning. And disturbingly many evangelicals are taking the evangelism out of evangelical. Because imposing your beliefs is judging, another false god. But God doesn’t need us to put up posters and hand out campaign ads called tracts. The whole message of the Gospel is that Jesus is reigning on high. Through his humility he became exalted to the highest position Romans 8. It’s true whether you believe it or not. And God used the image of a king, he has a position of authority. And until all the skirmishers admit that, there will be conflict. But we should want everyone under this authority. We should want every knee to bow Philip 2:10. We should want his will on earth as it is in heaven. Which is very close to that term ‘theocracy’ which is thrown around.

While God doesn’t need us, he has chosen to use us. We are his body on this earth I Cor. 12:27. We act out his will. Christians who mock Mike Pense, or anyone else, for trying to govern as the Bible instructs are heaping judgement on themselves. This is what Christians are supposed to do. There does seem to be a lot of benefits from spreading power over a body like congress or a church board rather than a single leader. But there have been good kings and there have been horrible church boards. These are aspects that we are free to work out and explore as the Pilgrim did when they rejected a form of collectivism in favor of a free market system. Relations between men are what it’s all about, but men who have bad relationships with God are always going to be a problem. These are realms within Christendom we are dealing with. Christians were to preach to all men, this includes leaders, Christians must figure out how to govern/organize.

The term theocracy seems to be an attempt to describe what took place in Israel before the kings. It was a thing it had characteristics. Samuel says the people rejected God because they wanted a king. Deuteronomy 17 set up rules for a king long before this so, having a king is not the problem. The problem was they wanted a king like other nations. But what happened to Saul? If this shift from ‘theocracy’ to ‘monarchy’ was such a paradigm shift, who got rid of Saul? Why wasn’t Jonathan the next king? God lamented that he made Saul king I Samuel 15:11. God was still in charge, all these men were his agents. Samuel had real authority. And God used Samuel to appoint David. The difference between ‘theocracy’ and ‘monarchy’ here at the beginning where the terms derive, has nothing to do with wanting to please the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And people who want to please God today can do so in all sorts of different kinds of governments.

If applying your faith to a situation is not your first step then whatever your first step is, is really your god. But today God doesn’t send us people like Moses to give us direct words from Him. He doesn’t have to, he already sent us Moses and he wrote everything down. He also sent us all the other prophets, and his Son, Jesus the Christ. And they wrote a bunch more stuff down. Applying these writings, the Bible, to how we handle relationships between other people in communities, does not make this a theocracy. Reading God’s word and applying it to government, is not a bad thing. It is not the source of war, it is the only solution to war. It is the only thing Christians should be doing. To invite other sources in, is to be demonic. What other sources are there? He who is not for us is against us Matthew 12:30. It doesn’t mean we kill those in opposition, it means we convert them Matthew 28. How dare you lament when God’s principles are implemented at any level of government. The world has sadly convinced many Christians to hide their light under a bushel Matthew 5:15.

So to end with the beginning, let’s define government. Government is the exercise of authority. Who holds ultimate authority? Is it the people, voting? Is it the smart people dictating? Statistics?  Your FB friends? No it is Jesus King of Kings. And he didn’t hide his will, he gave us his Word and he delights in us working it out. From his word we can see that God sets up various forms of government. Kings, Church Leaders, Fathers. Each submits to others in different ways. Each has their own realm. Separating them does not exclude any of them from the ultimate head that is Jesus. Paul makes it clear in Romans 13 that God set up civil governments to hinder evil by punishment(that is their only job anything else is them trying to be God). Judges are to work these things out. And Christians make the best judges as Paul says in I Corinthians. And this has proven itself in human history. Our system of law has created the greatest human flourishing the world has ever known. Look around. And it was based on British Common Law which was basically based on Old Testament Law. It works. The separation of church and state didn’t mean that Biblical principles have no place in the State. It meant that the civil government didn’t punish people for which church they went to. But most common was the requirement that you attend a church before you could become a civil servant. And your place in church leadership was based on your home leadership. These are all things which have been sorted out for generations. Why do we reinvent the wheel, creating more problems? Why do we want some other source of authority to come in? Whose side are you on?