Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Did God Vote Democrat?

by Dave Wilkinson

Romans 13:1-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-1-3

July 23, 2000

It is possible that this will be the most pointless and irrelevant sermon you ever hear me preach. In fact, I really hope that that is true — not just irrelevant for today but irrelevant for the rest of your life and those of your children and your grandchildren as well. I hope that you always see this morning as a rather lame exercise in dealing with issues that are only hard for other people in other places and at other times.

The reason I hope this is because that will mean that we will be free from those crises that call people to decide — do I follow my faith or my flag? Do I obey my God or my government?

But if it turns out that history doesn’t break that way -- if you ever do have to make up your mind -- I hope this sermon comes back to you with total clarity. I hope you will remember that God said something to you here this morning. That is my prayer.

Listen to God’s word to us from Romans 13:1-7:

(Romans 13:1-7)

In the early and mid 1960’s, a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram conducted a well publicized series of experiments. Milgram placed an ad in the New Haven, Connecticut newspaper for people to take part in an experiment. As each person arrived, he or she was introduced to the experimenter—a young man in a gray laboratory coat—and to an overweight, middle aged man -- who was a trained actor.

The two were told that the experiment was to test the effect of punishment on learning. A series of word pairing questions would be asked. For each incorrect answer, the learner was to be given an electric shock. Lots were drawn to determine which person would be the learner and which would be the teacher. By rigged lots, the actor always ended up being the learner.

The "teacher" was taken to the impressive looking console of an electric generator and the learner was strapped to a kind of electric chair. On the command of the experimenter, the teacher asked the learner the first question. Receiving an incorrect answer, he administered a slight shock of fifteen volts. For each additional incorrect answer, the teacher administered a shock fifteen volts higher in intensity -- from thirty volts all the way up to 450 volts. The switches were placed in groups of four marked "slight shock," "moderate shock," "strong shock," "intense shock," "danger, severe shock" and finally, a simple but effective "XXX."

Before the experiment began, the learner and the teacher were both told the shocks might cause pain but would not cause permanent tissue damage. Before the test, the actor would complain of a weak heart.

The actor proved to be a poor student. He got three out of every four questions wrong and received his shocks from the various teachers. As the teacher pushed each button, he heard a realistic buzzing sound and the clicking of various relay switches in the generator.

Actually, the learner received no shocks at all. But he acted like he did. At seventy-five volts he grunted a low protest. He shouted his protest at 120 volts and at 150 volts refused to answer any more questions -- demanding released from the experiment. At 270 volts he gave what the experimenters described as an agonized scream. At 300 volts he shouted desperately. After 330 volts he did not respond at all -- he just hung in the straps of the chair.

If at any time during the experiment the teacher tried to stop, the experimenter would prod him on with statements like "Please continue," and finally, "You have no other choice, you must continue."

In the course of his experiment, Milgram reports that half of the subjects inflicted the harshest punishment. In a variation on the experiment, 30% of the subjects inflicted the harshest punishment even when they had to force the unwilling victim’s hand on to the shock plate.

Now this experiment raised some very important questions about obedience to authority and makes it easier to see how things like concentration camps get going. I mean, Adolph Eichman got physically ill when he toured the death camps but all he had to do was sit at a desk and shuffle paper. Those who were doing the actual killing could tell themselves that they were just following orders and obeying authority. The teachers in Milgram’s experiment could justify their behavior by telling themselves that they were just doing their jobs.

But the frightening thing for us is that many self-avowed Christians and church members took part in the Milgram experiments. And there was no difference in their response as a group and the response of other members of society. There were a couple of exceptions, which Milgram noted. One, a thirty-two year old engineer and member of the Dutch Reformed Church, responded to the experimenter’s final prod, "You have no choice!" by saying, "I do have a choice—I can’t continue. I’ve gone too far already, probably." Another subject, an Old Testament professor at Yale Divinity School stopped at 150 volts and refused to continue saying, "If one had as one’s ultimate authority God, then it trivializes human authority!" But these persons were few and far between. For most believers, it was very easy to subordinate their awareness of God’s law of love to a human authority.

In Romans 13, Paul says that we are to be in subjection to the governing authorities for they are placed there by God. Now Paul is not talking about lab-coated scientists here. He is talking about human government -- an institution that history shows is also capable of inflicting much suffering.

How do we understand this passage?

It might be possible to concede that God voted Democrat in the 1996 election and that Bill Clinton is our President by God’s choice. Possible. But what about a Hitler or a Stalin?

The reality of human government for the early church was the Roman Empire -- especially the Emperor. The letter to the Romans was written around 57 AD during the reign of the infamous Emperor Nero who persecuted the Christians. Nero had succeeded to the throne after the murder of the crafty Claudius who had followed the depraved Caligula as Emperor. Paul could hardly have had a high regard for the quality of the rulers of Rome.

And yet, Paul counsels Christian obedience. We are to support the government, pray for the government., and pay taxes to the government.

This is because government is necessary. It is necessary because of human evil.

In chapter one of Romans, Paul describes the results of human sin run rampant. Without government, there would be anarchy -- the weak becoming prey for the strong. Our support as Christians for human government is a part of our concern for human life -- for without the restraint of law, human life is of no value. We see this in places like Bosnia and Rwanda. We can see the potential in the rising violence of our own society. We cannot afford to dissociate ourselves from our community. Our love will not permit it. And we are called to support those in authority.

Law isn’t new. God imposed law upon Adam and Eve from the very beginning of creation. But there were no lesser authorities under God. There are no governors, kings or sheriffs in the Garden of Eden.

But as soon as Adam and Eve disobey God, the subordinate authority quickly appears. God places an angel with a flaming sword at the entrance to Eden to guard it from Adam and Eve and their offspring. The first law enforcement officer who appears in Scripture is an angel, a minister of God, sent from heaven with an instrument of force at his command. That’s government.

However.

The obedience that Paul counsels in Romans 13 is never absolute and never unquestioning. As Earl Palmer points our in his commentary on Romans, we need to read Paul’s words as a part of a formula and pay attention to the plus and minus signs that come before and after them. I’ve given some of the plus and minus signs in the other scripture passages today. (Exodus 1:8-10, 15-21; Acts 4:1-20).

This is essential because the misuse of this passage is full of danger. In the nineteenth century, we saw Romans 13 used to support the institution of slavery. In the seventeenth century, Romans 13 was used to support the despotism of the Stuart Monarchs in England under the doctrine of the "divine right of kings."

In the century that just ended, millions of good German Christians give unquestioning support to the Nazis partly because of a faulty understanding of this passage. They justified obedience to Adolf Hitler through Luther’s interpretation of this passage. Luther had written: "Christians should not refuse, under the pretext of religion, to obey men, especially evil ones."

This last week on TNT was the recreation of the Nuremberg Trials. One jarring image was the group of top Nazi war criminals gathered in their prison to worship the Prince of Peace at Christmas. Obviously they had their lives broken into compartments where their faith and their actions didn’t connect.

Here is the key question. Does Paul place on Christians the obligation to obey all edicts of whatever government happens to hold civil power over them? Does every government, however established and however maintained, have equal claim to divine approval?

We must realize what the passage does not tell us. It does not directly say what we ought to do when a government departs from the role God has given it. It does not specifically explain what to do when our government is committing a moral wrong. Neither are we told what to do in the midst of revolution. It also does not show us which form of government is best.

Paul does not answer a lot of our questions. For example, when is a government a legitimate government, and when isn’t it? When is it right to rebel against an unjust or tyrannical government, or isn’t it permitted at all? What about our own American War of Independence -- called by the British Parliament a"Presbyterian revolt"? If we had been living then, what side should we have been on? These are the kind of questions this passage and our own history pose for us.

The questions are also more immediate. What do you do when the government is involved in a war you are convinced is wrong and immoral and wants to make you take part? Some men here wrestled with exactly that issue thirty years ago.

Paul’s words need to be read in context -- as part of a formula with the plus and minus signs -- and the full context shows us that our obedience to human authority is not absolute but limited. Jesus said in Mark 12:7 that we are "to give Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to give God the things that are God’s." Paul speaks in our text of the civil authorities as being "God’s ministers" for keeping the peace, but in 1 Corinthians 2:8, he refers to them as being "without wisdom." In the book of Acts, Peter and John are brought before the ruling body of the Jewish nation and ordered to quit preaching the gospel. To this order Peter replies: "We must obey God rather than men."

This means that in certain circumstances disobedience to the command of the state may not only be a right but also a duty. As Christians, we have two citizenships. We are citizens of the nation where we live and we are also citizens of heaven. We live in a tension between two competing claims.

Granted that the authority of rulers is derived from God. But what happens if they abuse it? What if they reverse the definition of God-approved government? What if they commend those who do evil and punish those who do good? Does the requirement to submit still stand?

No. The total biblical principle is clear. We are to submit right up to the point where obedience to the state would entail disobedience to God.

Whenever laws are enacted which contradict God’s law, civil disobedience becomes a Christian duty -- just as believers were the driving force in the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's.

There are many notable examples of disobedience in Scripture. When Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill the newborn boys, they failed to obey. ‘The midwives -- feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.’ God rewarded them. When King Nebuchadnezzar issued an edict that all his subjects must fall down and worship his golden image, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to obey. When King Darius made a decree that for thirty days nobody should pray ‘to any god or man’ except himself, Daniel refused to obey. And when the Sanhedrin banned preaching in the name of Jesus, the apostles refused to obey. All these were heroic refusals, in spite of the threats, which accompanied the edicts. In each case civil disobedience involved great personal risk, including possible loss of life. In each case -- and this is vital -- its purpose was to demonstrate their submissiveness to God, not their defiance of government.

As F.F. Bruce points out: "When the decrees of the civil magistrate conflict with the commandments of God, then as Christians, we ought to obey God rather than men; when Caesar claims divine honors, the Christian answer must be "No". For then Caesar (whether he takes the form of a dictator or a democracy) is going beyond the authority delegated to him by God, and trespassing on territory which is not his. But," Bruce writes, "Christians will voice their "no" to Caesar’s unauthorized demands the more effectively if they have shown themselves ready to answer "yes" to all his authorized demands."

In any time of decision -- if one ever does arise -- we need to realize that we are not out from under subjection to authority. We are not creating anarchy. We are subjecting ourselves to the law of a higher authority, not our personal preference. We aren’t here to avoid authority. We are here to obey the right authority.

We must disobey our government when it asks us to violate a commandment of God, commit an immoral or unethical act, or go against our Christian conscience (a conscience which is informed by Scripture and is in submission to the Spirit of God). But we are not to resist the legitimate functions of government. We are to accept government, support government, and participate in government as a gift from God. Since we are a democracy here we have the vote, we have the obligation before God to be informed and regular voters. We are to pray for those in places of authority. Have you prayed for Chris Evans in his role on te Moorpark City Council. I’m not asking if you always agree with him have you prayed for him. God tells you to.

I thank God that we live in a nation that is responsive to human need and which respects personal freedom. We must help that continue, so that our response to government can continue to be only "yes".

Was that irrelevant? I hope it stays that way. I hope that we will always live "tranquil and quiet lives in all godliness and dignity" Paul says in 1 Timothy 2 that living such lives is the goal of our prayers for our leaders.

We need to pray for our government leaders, We need to prepare ourselves to vote faithfully, intelligently, and well. That’s the way to keep this sermon irrelevant. And since we are a democracy where we share in the government, let us pray for ourselves as well.