33 Chapter 3: Thinking About God and Government Mark Caleb Smith I am a Christian. I am also a political scientist. Putting those two facts together causes many people to break for the intellectual “EXIT” signs that surround any discussion. The specter of combining religious faith, which is in some ways so personal, with government, which touches us all, feels ominous and foreboding. But, for the orthodox Christian, who is convinced that we are to hold “every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5)1, we have a responsibility to understand the contours of the relationship between God and government. In some ways, the Bible has remarkably little to say about government. There are no books of 1 and 2 Politics, and there is no Paul’s Epistle to the Legislators.2 There is very little focused discussion of political issues and no discursives on the appropriate forms of government. There is no blueprint for political effectiveness and no blanket endorsement of an appropriate, Christian ideology. This can be frustrating, especially when we approach specific policy questions. What is the optimum rate of taxation? How much government regulation of the environment is appropriate? How long should prison sentences be? The Bible may provide principles that will help us think through these matters, such as the Christian attitude toward taxation, stewardship, and justice, but it rarely yields concrete answers to pointed policy questions. In other ways, the Bible is full of government. Obviously, the Old Testament focuses on the nation of Israel, which was ruled by an array of good judges, bad kings, and ugly violence. Many of the world’s great empires rise and fall across the pages of Scripture. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans all figure prominently in the Bible’s narrative. Christ’s ministry took place against the backdrop of Roman occupation. The Apostle Paul was a Roman citizen, and he used that status to serve his purposes on occasion. Perhaps most interestingly, the Bible portrays some children of God as they lived in hostile societies. 1 All biblical quotations, unless otherwise noted, come from the English Standard Version (2001), published by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 2 Granted, there are 1 and 2 Kings, but these are historical books that recount Israel’s struggles (akin to 1 and 2 Chronicles). There are many political lessons in these books, but they are not necessarily normative. Instead, they are descriptive. Drawing firm political inferences from them is difficult, especially when we move beyond the fact that Israel had a unique history with God enjoyed by no subsequent nation.
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