Thinking about theocracy

A lot of Christians really struggle with the Old Testament. It doesn’t get the same emphasis in the church that the New Testament does, it is full of strange events and it is pretty confusing to someone who is only familiar with our cultural Christianity. This makes it doubly hard to understand a lot of the New Testament, especially in places like the book of Hebrews which many Christians find very difficult to understand and interpreting the foundations of the Lord’s Supper and the cross in light of the Old Covenant. Because of this, there is an inconsistent application and misunderstanding of a lot of what we read in the Old Testament. For example, how many times have you seen this verse…

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

…applied to America, often shown festooned with a bald eagle and the American flag? Of course, like so many verses plucked out of context, when you look at it in context it seems silly to apply it to America:

Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord and the king's house. All that Solomon had planned to do in the house of the Lord and in his own house he successfully accomplished. Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, ‘You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.’

“But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and to this house?’ Then they will say, ‘Because they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.’” (2 Chronicles 7: 11-22)

What is being spoken of here is specifically directed at the nation of Israel and the land given to them by God and the temple built to honor Him in that land. Verse 14 is talking about an actual drought, plague of locusts and disease on the land. It is not talking about American citizens voting for Barack Obama or banning government sanctioned prayer in secular schools.

The Old Testament contains moral precepts and commandments and it also contains a number of laws that are applicable to the nation of Israel. While the moral precepts of what constitutes sin are eternal, the response to them is not.

For example, the Bible consistently and especially in the OT is clear that homosexuality is an abomination, a perversion of the natural created order and purpose of men and women: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination (Leviticus 18:22). As a response to that, the civil law of the nation of Israel set forth punitive measures in response to this behavior that include capital punishment: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13). Sexual immorality like homosexuality and adultery and other perversions of naturally ordered human sexuality are both a violation of God’s law and a reflection of the immorality of the people who are being supplanted by the Jews. As such, God commanded His people to purge this immoral behavior so that this nation would remain pure and set apart. By purge I mean put to death. The dividing line between Jew and everyone else was clear and bright and inviolable, in fact the sins of His people throughout the OT are often associated with the Jews adopting the practices of the people of the land (worshipping false gods, burning their children, immoral behavior).

All well and good but here is the problem. The New Testament is clear that by the cross Jesus has shattered the dividing line based on ethnicity and nationality. No longer are we Jew and Gentile, divided, but one people united in Christ:

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. (Ephesians 2 :14-16)

Under the New Covenant, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28). In America (or any other country) we are not “God’s people” by birth and nationality who need to return to God. We are a mixed nation of believers and unbelievers, elect and non-elect. No amount of legislation or school prayer or GOP congressional victories are going to make the unbelieving majority of Americans into God’s people and unbelievers, by their very nature, don’t seek the face of God. That is why they are unbelievers and that is how they stay until acted upon by God.

Thus we have the problem with some of the fringe movements in the “Christian Right” who espouse dominionism or other forms of theocratic rule. God sends us to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, not to conquer or rule over those nations or institute some sort of new model of ancient Israel in a secular state full of unbelievers. I have been doing some reading on this topic today and I am concerned because some of the advocates of this sort of thing run in the same circles I do and I think these advocates are dangerously influential on homeschoolers and others. I don’t homeschool my kids to turn them into some sort of conquering army to take over the culture and the halls of power in America, I homeschool them out of obedience and because I want them raised in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I don’t see that Calvinism taken in its most basic form leads us to seek theocracy, just the opposite in fact.

God is not calling His people to conquer and reign. His Son already conquered sin and already is reigning at the right hand of the Father. Let’s be sure that we don’t use patriotic fervor and misapplication of the civil laws of Israel to advocate what God has not commanded us to do.