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BUSH & GOD
By Franklin Sanders
“It is an odd thing, Mr. Ireton, that each
man wages war believing that God is on his side. I wager that he is
on neither.”
-- Oliver Cromwell,
Lord Protector of England (1599-1658), to one of his lieutenants
before the 1645 Battle of Naseby, in which Cromwell’s “New Model
Army” (“Iron Sides”) utterly defeated the Royalists
No, I’m not talking
about the burning bush, I’m talking about George Bush,
the president. There he was praying on the cover of Newsweek
(March 10, 2003) under the headline “Bush & God.” Subtitles said,
“How faith changed his life and shapes his presidency” and “Why his
`God Talk’ worries friends & foes.” (Silly question, that –
everybody already knows why the name “God” worries folks in
Washington.)
As you might already
have divined, I do not set much store by Newsweek for
theological acumen, insight, or orthodoxy. Still, I was interested
to see how they would spin this one – all the more interested
because the evangelical Christian community seems to be wild about
Bush, claiming him as one of their own while ignoring the brightly
blinking neon signs that point in the other direction. You know,
little things like inviting Muslims to the White House to
celebrate a Muslim holiday, or participating in worship services
that pray to the globalist “God of a Thousand Faces” or failing to
end abortion. Bush’s behaviour keeps on reminding me that Jesus
recommends “judging a tree by its fruit.”
The Newsweek
articles show Bush speaking, Bush as a child coming out of church
with his family, Bush as an Andover school chum, etc.
Newsweek recounts how Bush came to faith through a
non-denominational, para-church Bible study group. This program in
1986 helped him quit drinking, which, obviously, must have been a
problem. Then there is the predictable discussion of Bush mixing
religion and politics, slanted to make you wonder whether he means
any of it or he’s just posturing for political effect.
THE SORE
Frankly, that
possibility is not precisely what bothers me. Kenneth Woodward put
his finger right on the sore place in a short article, “Gospel on
the Potomac.” Woodward reviews past presidents’ religion, then
observes that for the past ten years America has been led by “white,
Southern, churchgoing evangelical Protestants – Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush.” Of course, that got my attention
because I am a “white, Southern, churchgoing evangelical Protestant”
but I have never before been numbered in the same category with Bill
Clinton on anything. Woodward then writes,
“Like the current
president, Jimmy Carter is a born-again Christian. But his
spiritual re-birth was an adolescent rite of passage built into the
socially constructed rituals of southern Baptist culture. Everyone
(except some folks in the media) knew where this Sunday-school
teacher in the White House was coming from. In contrast, Bush’s
spiritual transformation occurred outside the conventional church
context. [emphasis added] It emerged from the self-confessing,
testimony-giving intimacy of a Christian support group. This makes
Bush’ understanding of faith different from other presidents, but
hardly unique. According to Princeton's Robert Wuthnow, four out of
every 10 adult Americans are involved in what he calls `the
small-group movement’ – 12-step programs, prayer circles and Bible
study groups.
“There is, however,
nothing in the personal piety of small-group Christianity that can
ground a faith-based vision for governing the body politic.”
[emphasis added]
This flash of deep
insight grabbed my mind. Whatever Woodward’s religious background,
he went to the heart of the issue with George Bush and atomistic
para-church Christianity. Small group Christianity’s personal
piety cannot yield a blueprint for godly government. It
dead ends with the individual believer.
WHY IT WON’T WORK
What is the theological
horizon of “small-group Christianity”? Self-centeredness and
introspection. By their nature twelve-step programs and small-group
para-church Bible-studies look inward asking, “What can Christ do
for me?” As a first step that may be great; as a life-plan it
scrapes bottom pretty quickly. Veterans of these programs have a
hard time taking their eyes off themselves long enough to look up at
the hills, “From whence cometh our help.” John the Baptist had a
right grip on the Christian life when he said, “He must
increase, and I must decrease.”
THE ATOMISED SELF
Small group Christianity
is the twin of secular modernism, the child of the Revolution’s
extreme individualism. It atomises and isolates the individual from
all the natural and organic relations which might guide, protect, or
educate him. Necessarily it denies the universality (catholicity)
of the Church and the fellowship of the saints – through time and
space. Necessarily it truncates the individual’s growth in Christ.
Necessarily it isolates the immature believer from his mature
brothers in Christ and the enjoyment of subordination to their
wisdom, protection, and teaching. Necessarily it fractures and
undermines the Church of Jesus Christ. The visible Church
becomes irrelevant. Nothing the Church has decided in the past
decides anything because the individual must re-invent every
doctrine for himself.
Ahh,
you may rejoin, but aren’t they bringing
people to faith? I can only answer, “Maybe – and maybe not.”
Revivalism is justified by the same argument, but a few years ago a
student at Mid-America Seminary told me about some astonishing
research. As measured by church attendance, how many converts of
Billy Graham crusades are still “Christians” one year after their
going forward? Less than one percent. The fire burns out in
a short twelve months.
Isn’t the danger
obvious? Tender young believers – or non-believers – are given
false assurance. Either they deceive themselves with that false
assurance, or they become disappointed and revulsed by
Christianity. The Puritans used to call those guilty of marketing
such false assurance “butchers of souls.”
WHAT IS TRUE?
For small group
Christianity the standard of truth tends to be ‘feelings.” If it
feels good, if you feel good “down in your soul,” then it
must be true and right. Feelings motivate, confirm, and
validate – not the objective Word of God. Unfortunately, feelings
are notoriously changeable, subject to every whim of weather,
hormones, and indigestion, and can offer no logical, consistent plan
for making decisions and guiding life. The outcome lurches from
aimless wandering to sudden about-faces.
Generally these programs
lean heavily on touchy-feely interpersonal relations with very
little understanding of the Law of God and its use. Does that make
any difference? Absolutely. Without understanding that
God’s Law sets the only standard for holiness and righteousness,
there exists no possible or permanent foundation for ethics (the
science of human duty that teaches us how to behave righteously).
WHERE IS THE VISION?
Since small-group
Christianity is not founded on the Law of God, it gives the
individual no comprehensive vision of conforming himself to Christ
in righteousness, holiness, and obedience. Lacking that vision for
himself, he must also lack a vision for conforming society
to Christ’s image. He cannot conceive that the Gospel’s
leavening works its way first through believers, and then through
society and civilisation. He has no vision of how a Christian
commonwealth should look, so he can’t possibly work toward that end
point. In the end, even his vision of “personal piety” becomes
arbitrary and self-defined, rather than Biblical or orthodox.
Small-group
Christianity’s envisions God as “Jesus the Helper” or “Jesus the
Social Worker,” straightening out lives. Of course this is true,
but only the tiniest beginning part of the truth. What
happens next? Where is the God that Christianity has beheld
throughout the ages, the grand sovereign ruler of the universe, by
his people working out his gracious plan through history,
unstoppably building his kingdom over the ruins of every rebellion?
A Christian man doesn’t
think in terms of a year, or two years, or even ten years, but in
hundreds of years, and thousands. This same mind built cathedrals
over a hundreds of years and nations over thousands. They built
with a common concrete vision before them, in covenant across ages
and generations.
WHERE IS THE COVENANT?
Small group Christianity
has no theology of God’s covenant or God’s people, the Church. The
Body of Christ consists only of unrelated and unarticulated atoms,
individual brands snatched from the fire before burning, but for no
particular use or reason – the feckless Church Invisible. Missing
is the Bible’s view of God’s gracious covenant, irresistibly working
through families and nations over the millennia, to “purify unto
himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works,” the vision of the
promise to Abraham and to his seed forever.
Lacking a theology of
covenant, small group Christianity must also lack a theology of
history. If God is doing anything in history, it is so arbitrary or
random that we can never grasp or co-operate with it – if he isn’t
downright losing to evil. In common with much of evangelical
Christianity, small group Christianity shares a pessimistic
expectation of history. In the end, God helplessly loses to evil –
a novel doctrine born in the last 150 years, one that the church
never before taught or countenanced.
WHERE DOES THE RUBBER
HIT THE ROAD?
The failure to know or
follow a blueprint for godly government -- the lurching ethical
bewilderment of small group Christianity -- can be seen in Bush’s
behaviour toward Iraq and the evangelical world’s cheerleading for
his war.
The rules for declaring
and waging war are not unclear. Over the past two millennia the
best minds in the Christian world have applied themselves to this
problem. The principles are quite well established.[1]
The “just war”
·
Can only be waged as a last
resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted first.
·
Must be waged by a legitimate
authority. Self-appointed individuals and groups cannot wage
war.
·
Can only be fought to redress a
wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed
attack is always a just cause, but the war must be fought with
“right” intentions, i.e., to redress the injury. In other words,
wars are not tools of proactive policy, they react to
wrongs actually experienced.
·
Must have a reasonable chance of
success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not
morally justifiable.
·
Must ultimately aim to
re-establish peace, a peace preferable to what would have
prevailed without the war.
·
Must use violence proportional
to the injury suffered. No atom bombs to retaliate for
smuggling, for example.
·
Must discriminate between
combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible
targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing
civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are
unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
Carefully note that
these aren’t Franklin Sanders’ Recommendations For Just War, these
are the principles developed by the best Christian minds over 20
centuries. These represent the established rules of international
law.
Apply them to George
Bush’s proposed war on Iraq.
·
Have all non-violent means of
resolution been exhausted? Most of the world outside the Bush
administration thinks not.
·
Is the war to be waged by
legitimate authority? Not according to the US constitution, which
requires that only congress, not the president, can declare war.
Nor can congress grant Mr. Bush this authority, any more than it can
grant me the authority to shoot my wife.
·
Does the war address a wrong
suffered? No, repeatedly Bush proclaims that it is a proactive
war to prevent Iraq from anticipated mischief.
·
Does the war have a reasonable
chance of success? That’s not clear, because the objective
of the war is not clear. Is it to eliminate potentially dangerous
weapons of mass destruction? Is it to oust Saddam Hussein? Is it
to seize the oil fields? For how long must the US occupy Iraq?
·
Does the war aim to re-establish
peace? Will that peace be preferable to what now prevails without a
war?
·
Will the war use violence
proportional to the injury suffered? No injury has yet been
suffered, so who can tell?
·
Will the war discriminate between
combatants and non-combatants? If the last war, and the cold war
since, are any criteria, Iraqi civilians – among them a
substantial Christian minority – will suffer the most.
Finally, consider how
Bush intends to breach the principle of national
sovereignty. According to his thinking, the United States has a
right to attack any country, any time, when the US does not approve
of its ruler, regime, or weaponry. Heaven knows, I am no fan of
Saddam Hussein, but how would Americans feel if Germany, Portugal,
and France got together and invaded the US to replace “the evil
George Bush regime and establish [their version of]
democratic government in the United States”? I don’t need to tell
you that 99% of Americans would grab guns, grenades, and butcher
knives and fight them every inch of the way from Miami inland.
IT’S ALWAYS RELIGIOUS
In the end, there is no
such thing as a “non-religious war.” Every war employs the ultimate
argument – raw, brute force – to impose some moral, i.e.,
religious, solution. In the case before us, Bush’s deficiencies
in the Christian religion and theology are contributing the basis
for his war efforts. He doesn’t need congress to declare war
because his Christian experience has taught him that through his
feelings and impressions he connects directly with the will of God.
Since his feelings are presidential, commander-in-chief feelings,
they trump everybody else’s.
IT’S NOT IRRELEVANT
In the explanation above
I have been at great pains to show that theology is not
irrelevant, but determines how we act. I have shown that “small
group Christianity” must fail to produce any practicable, consistent
ethics for individuals or civil government, or any vision for a
Christian world. Finally, I have tried to show how Bush’s deficient
theology is producing very real moral wrongs and failures in his
acts and policies. Rather than uncritically continuing to accept a
“Christian” label that someone has slapped on things, we ought to
obey our Lord Jesus and judge a tree by its fruit.
n
F. Sanders
© 2003, The Moneychanger. Reprinted
with permission. The Moneychanger is a monthly newsletter to
help “Christians prosper with their principles intact in an age of
monetary and moral chaos. Subscriptions are $95/year from P.O. Box
178, Westpoint, Tennessee 38486, or from
www.the-moneychanger.com.
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