I’ve been reading The Faithful Spy to my son recently, the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany. Hindsight lends a lot of clarity on his moral decision-making. Bonhoeffer had a difficult lesson to learn: was his allegiance to Jesus one and the same as his allegiance to Germany? It seems so obvious in hindsight—but it is not obvious to a fish that they live in water, when it is all they have ever known.
The tension is all over the Bible. Moses, Daniel, Joseph, the prophets, the Apostles, Jesus Himself: would they submit to the government or the religious leaders, or would they pay whatever price had to be paid, and submit to God alone? (For that matter, often the question was whether they would choose to submit to their own desires or submit to the King?)
Tim Keller said (the poor paraphrase is mine) that Jesus’ proclamations did not fit neatly in a right or left political ideology. Jesus doesn’t fit in a box. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: how can we imagine that any of our systems contain Him? Often, the way of the Kingdom is just plain different from any of the boxes people try put us in. It is the straight and narrow way that can be fallen off, either to the right or the left. (I don’t imagine Jesus had our political stripes in mind when He said that, but it is still surprisingly appropriate.) And, as Russell Moore has often observed: Jesus’ way is always the way of the cross.
Have there ever been a time in which a Jesus follower could, in good conscience, be content with the culture and government around them? I don’t know—though I sincerely doubt it. Whether or no, the necessary direction of a Christian’s life is clear: whatever the cost, holding nothing back, give everything for the sake of following Jesus.
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