A Tale of Two Kingdoms

House Resolution 1913, commonly known as The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, passed the U.S. House of Representatives on April 29, 2009, by a vote of 249 in favor and 175 opposed, with ten members not voting. This proposed legislation was received in the U.S. Senate on April 30, 2009 and assigned to the Committee on the Judiciary. A separate but related piece of legislation, Senate Bill S. 909, was introduced by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Majority Leader, on behalf of Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). As of yet, Senate Judiciary committee hearings for these two proposals have not been scheduled. There is little doubt that this bill will pass and the President will sign it into law. If you wish to track the legislative action of this bill, I recommend using http://www.govtrack.us/.

Several conservative and Christian organizations have expressed their concern that this legislation poses a significant threat to the personal and religious freedoms of citizens, particularly to those of teaching and ruling elders, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. While I am not a lawyer, much less a constitutional lawyer, I think their concerns are well founded. As I read the submitted bills, I can easily conceive a situation in which a overzealous U.S. Attorney would argue that a criminal defendant was induced to commit violent actions because of the faithful Biblical preaching of a preacher who explicitly declares that homosexuality is a sin which violates the Person of God and His Holy Word. Some consider the proposed legislation as a thinly veiled attempt to silence the faithful preaching of the Word of God. Well, it has been tried before, and it has failed before as it will again this time.

The gospel of Jesus Christ has always had well organized, ruthless men who have made it their sole purpose in life to silence the Good News. Think back to Noah, Abraham, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, to name a few saints of the Old Testament, who resisted and refused the demand of every Sanballat that confronted them, choosing instead to obey God as He had revealed himself. Remember Peter, John, Paul, and faithful Stephen, all of whom refused to listen to the rulers of their day, and they too chose to obey God. Remember also the saints of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who, for the honor and the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, forfeited their lives to make good their profession of faith in Him. Despite wicked men doing their best, the Church continued to proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Lord of all.

Why do men vehemently offer such an opposition to the gospel? The answer lies not simply in their unbelief. Unregenerate men are not simply ignorant of the gospel; they oppose it with every fiber of their being because they have established themselves as god. The conflict has always been between two kings and two kingdoms. The kingdom of the civil state, on the one hand demands the absolute allegiance and loyalty of its citizens. The state will tolerate the worship of any god, as long as the state has the preeminence among the pantheon of gods unregenerate man creates. The state appropriates infallibility and ultimate authority to itself, and thus demands absolute obedience.

On the other hand, God has established his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords over all men and all their institutions by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at his right hand. God is infallible and exercises ultimate authority because of his attributes of self-aseity, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. God will not and does not tolerate any competitors to his rule.

In this matter, the Church of Jesus Christ is confused and muddle-headed because its pastors and theologians are confused and muddle-headed. Several theologians have unwittingly advanced the kingdom of the state over and against the Kingdom of Jesus because they teach that the civil government is merely an institution of common grace, and not particularly God’s minister for the promotion of righteousness and the restraint of evil. Such men have demonstrated their irrelevance and should be ignored.

Other men argue we must appeal to the state for the protection of our civil liberties. Holding forth the example of Paul and his appeal to Caesar as precedent case law, these men forget that at every turn, Paul called men, governors and centurions, to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Herein lays the solution to our current problem. Only to the extent that pastors humbly and faithfully declare to the civil magistrate, and to all men, that God is angry with sin; that His wrath rests upon the head of every impenitent man, woman, and child; that He calls all men everywhere to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; that all men owe their allegiance and fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ, will our civil liberties be preserved.

Some of us may be arrested; some may be imprisoned; some may be beaten; some may lose everything, including life itself. However, we are to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness. Only then will we preserve and enjoy our civil liberties. Apart from Christ, we will descend into the pit of tyranny and destruction. May God grant us, his people, the grace to faithfully endure to the end.

Memorial Day 2009

Today is Memorial Day. At eight o’clock this morning I went to the flagpole in my front yard, and I lowered the national ensign to half-mast as a token of respect to our nation’s war dead. When I looked around at my neighbor’s home, those people who display flags had not lowered them. I also noted that there were fewer flags flying than last year, and far fewer than after September 11, 2001. At noon, I closed-up the national ensign, just as Memorial Day requires. I was disappointed that, as far as I could determine, I was the only person in my neighborhood who flew his flag at half-mast during the prescribed time.

I was also disappointed yesterday afternoon when I attended a Memorial Day worship service at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. After the service, my sons and I strolled through a small portion of the graveyard looking at several headstones. Twenty-three Medal of Honor awardees are interred in the cemetery, including Master-at-Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, U.S. Navy, who gave his life in Ramadi, Iraq, on September, 29, 2006. After looking for a while my younger son remarked that many of the dead were so young when they died. Yes, they were; and so is he.

My disappointment came when we were returning to our car to leave, and we walked through the chairs that had been arranged for this morning’s ceremony. All the chairs around the rostrum were to be filled with dignitaries and politicians (not to distinguish them from the dignitaries, at least as a class), veterans and chaplains. The main body of chairs for the audience had several rows whose seats were reserved for representatives of veteran organizations. But, in the third row, on the left side, on the aisle were six chairs reserved for Gold Star Mothers. I shook my head. I remember a day when these mothers, who had lost their sons in the line of duty (this is before the reprehensible and sinful military policy of women in combat) were given THE place of honor.

Traditional observances on national holidays are important, I think. It reminds us of who we are as a people (E Pluribus Unum, or so it was at one time), and of our history as a nation. However, it has been a long time since our observances of national holidays have served to remind us of what sort of people we can become as a nation. I have grown weary of the speeches of politicians, generals, and admirals who merely rehash Pericles’ Funeral Oration and offer no hope of a future when wars will cease. Thus, I avoid parades and Memorial Day commemorations. Except for the annual Memorial Day worship service.

As our nation sinks deeper and deeper into the pit of pagan idolatry and perversion, I have grown cautious of those who seek to return our nation to the time when the Christian faith flourished at its founding. I think I understand what they mean. Any cursory reading of Scripture reveals the longing for righteousness of an exiled people certainly resonates with the longing for righteousness in our land which most, but not all, Christians seek. However, my caution is based on a refusal to participate in sentimentalism. However, if Christians desire to study the history of this nation with a mind firmly rooted in the Word of God and of His providential care for us, then I am most hopeful. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is always forward looking.

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Matthew 28:18-20

If we desire to return to a time when righteousness was a national characteristic, then we, as God’s people, are going to have to seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness first. We must seek God’s righteousness in every area of our life, from economics to health care, from diplomacy to education, from justice to the care of the poor. As Abraham Kuyper once stated, "Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'" Apart from this, we have no hope. But, do not fear. The Lord Jesus Christ has overcome the world.