catapult magazine

Depending what channel you’re tuned to, you may be hearing a lot of chatter about Nixon/Watergate and Clinton/Monicagate in relation to Bush/WMDgate (yes, the names for these things keep getting worse and worse). Occasionally the word “impeachment” even pops up.

It seems to me that with all the apparent contradictions between the intelligence and the public assertions that brought us war as well as the indications that the administration pressured the intelligence agencies to “find” support for their position, at the least an independent, public investigation is in order.

Surely this is a much more serious issue than the circus around Clinton?

How ’bout Moses coming into the promised land?

The Allies invading Germany in WWII?

I think BBC has hit it on the head up there. I don’t think this discussion is as much between people who think we should live by reason alone and those who think we should seek God’s will. At the risk of repetition (in the hopes of further clarification), these are some of the unresolved issues that I see in this discussion:

1.) What do we do when two genuine, well-meaning Christians, both honestly seeking God’s will, come up with opposing ideas of what God’s will is? (So Jason, I think your question “how do we know and how do we ensure that we do what is right?” is a critical question, but I don’t think you’ve answered it fully.)

2.) Is it appropriate to try to accomplish something good with immoral means and claim that you are doing God’s will? (In this case, the results are as of yet far from what I’d call good, but for arguments sake….) If you answer yes, please also indicate whether you think it’s appropriate to shoot abortion doctors, or crash hijacked planes into crowded buildings.

3.) Part of the issue, too, is the carte blanche that many people seem to be willing to grant people who say they are doing God’s will. I think too many people are willing to close their eyes to the evil that Bush has done because “he’s a Christian” or “he’s trying to do God’s will.” That doesn’t negate the fact that he’s human.

I would like to add Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the list of people who models a desire to do God’s Will in the political arena. As I was watching a documentary on Bonhoeffer’s life, I started to think that there is a difference between those who are trying to justify themselves by saying they’re doing the Will of God and those who still struggle and question whether or not they’re doing God’s Will (Bonhoeffer, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Moses, even Jesus). It strikes me that Bush uses the belief that he’s doing God’s Will as a comfort and ought to struggle a bit more with it. But, how do I know…maybe he does struggle with it. Or, if he doesn’t, maybe he will struggle. Unfortunately, the press chooses not to dwell on Bush’s spiritual struggles too much.

And, in response to dan, I would like to protest the use of history (as a scientific study of past events) as a locator of examples of church and state working well. History as a science is not the place to find such examples because it is biased toward the State and is one of the reasons we think of the church as a fallen institution. Western Modern History doesn’t tell the story of the Church, but chooses instead to focus on those who have helped on the way to “progress”. So, the State becomes the hero of Modern History (this practice of telling the story of the new victor goes back to Roman times, when historians were hired to write vanquished rulers out of the story and to immortalize the newest tyrant on the throne).
Through the biased eyes of Western History, the church has fallen to the “progressive” powers of modern civilization and therefore could not be a “major player” in the story history has decided to tell. All of history’s characters have to fit this “historical” criterion if their stories are going to be told, so it’s unlikely you’ll find favorable accounts of the church in the pages of Modern History.

And I still vehemently insist that we come to an understanding about the idea of a separation of church and state or separation of religion and state. There is no separation between state and religion. The separation of church and state is a religious conviction. Do we all agree on that? We can’t look for examples where “church and state” worked well together if some people mean “religion and state” and some people mean “the institutional church and the state”. If we come to an agreement, then we could start throwing out types of examples like Kuyper’s prime ministership in Holland and Calvin’s attempts in Geneva, Amish communities etc. But these examples of attempts at Christian governance only show that we are still a long ways from the Kingdom of God fully come (not that trying to rule people Christianly has been tried and will always fail, as scientific history suggests).

The Will of God is God’s Will, not ours. Like I’ve been saying, we have to avoid falling into the trap of attaching possession to God’s Will. That’s where we are running into trouble. It doesn’t matter what Bush or Bin Laden BELIEVES—their belief doesn’t change the Will of God. God will have His way if it truly is God’s Will, no matter what Bush thinks. The question we’re asking, though, is if Bush’s actions are done in accordance with the Word of God. If God’s Will is no longer kept secret from us after Christ, if it is revealed throughout Scripture and can be seen in the creational action of His people, then why are we still scratching our heads? If we can’t say for sure what God’s Will is, then we have not been good students of the Word of God.

Yikes.

Yikes? Yikes what? What yikes? Give me something to work with here.

by the way, are you coming to the camping trip in WV? Or is it too far? this is a good conversation and it would be nice to have it face to face.

I can’t make it to the camping trip because I’ll be on Vancouver Island during that time. Wish I could.

Yikes, because it’s obvious that even people on cino who share the same basic theology disagree on what might constitute God’s will. You, for example, agree at least in part with Bush that invading Iraq was according to God’s will. SARAH on the other hand, might think he was disobeying God.

According to your view then, one of you isn’t a good student of God’s word. But then again, your definition of God’s word would include pretty much everything, right? So one of you then has drawn incorrect conclusions from the life you have experienced so far. If you and God are on the same wavelength here, there’s a lot of people who are out in the cold.

Instead, I think that the conclusions we’ve drawn and the beliefs we hold are at least in part a result of what we’ve experienced (God’s Word as defined by John). Wouldn’t it be nuts if we all came to the same conclusions about everything, having experienced different things? Wouldn’t it be boring if we all experienced the same things and believed the same things? And wouldn’t it be scary/yikes if one person in a very powerful position said that God told him to do something which so many of us find so repugnant?

But most people do BELIEVE the same things in this day and age! That’s what’s so boring about it. I wholeheartedly disagree that if the whole world becomes Christian tomorrow, it will be one big boring planet with people all doing and saying the same things. That just doesn’t ring true. Right now, I’m a member of an inter-racial church with all kinds of people sitting, standing, clapping or folding their hands in the pews. They all believe in Christ, but that doesn’t mean they’re all the same kind of person with the same perspective on things.

And I didn’t mean to suggest that any one of us is more studied when it comes to knowing God’s Will. I meant it as a sad commentary that we’ve strayed so far from knowing the Word of God…and as an encouragement for the body of Believers to study the Word, as it is revealed in Creation and by reading Scripture. The more I read the Bible, the more I realize how silly many of my philosophical questions are. Though I may think I’m on to some major new question for this day and age, I often end up discovering that Paul already dealt with it in AD 57. Through our biblestudy, I’ve come to realize that much more is revealed in Scripture than we think. And so much more than that is evident in everyday creation.

The ideal of Paul is that we will be able to eat the meat of the gospel, that we will become as “imitatable” as him. And the Christian community is so far from it, which is evident by our disagreements here on *cino. I’m not bothered by the fact that we disagree, but am concerned when some of the things that are said don’t resonate with the message of the Gospel. Yet I am infinitely encouraged when we all agree how important it is to try to conform to the Word of God. That’s the important step of CONFESSION that is necessary to even start down the path of living according to God’s Word. There certainly is much mystery surrounding the doing of God’s Will, as Bonhoeffer attests in his Ethics, but that does not mean it’s impossible! And there are certainly many places to go to see the Word of God in action (where can you go without seeing it?!), so we ought not be too exasperated about finding a “universal” understanding of the Word of God, since it really is THERE to be found.

Well I would hardly say that everyone today believes the same thing. For example, I could agree with a lot of people in saying that artists should have the freedom to express what they consider to be truth. On the other hand we might disagree about what is good art and what is bad. Our agreement on the point of non-smashing hardly constitutes a boring monotony of beliefs. I’d call it civilization, and a preference for dialogue.

Sarah, I’ll try to address some of your issues

1) The main reason (or root cause) people disagree on things is because of sin. Satan brings confusion into the world. He tried to make Eve confused about what God really told them and has been doing the same thing ever since.
One maddening thing to humans is that God is not a God of mindless repetition. In the Old Testament, he would tell Joshua to attack from the left, the next time he told Joshua to attack from the right, the next time he told him to lay an ambush. God always desires to keep us from getting trapped in “forms of godliness”.
So we have Satan bringing confusion into the world and we also have our own sinful nature. Our pride and selfishness get in the way of submitting to God’s truth. Our sin is an open door for Satan to bring confusion.
But, like Grant said, we have the Word of God, which is truth. God also gives us discernment, or “distinguishing between spirits” (I Cor 12) as some translations call it.
Although I am neither a political expert or an expert on declaring God’s Will, I do know that we can’t figure things out without God. Why would we want to? If we already knew the answers to everything, we wouldn’t need God, we would be God.
I will never have all the answers, but that’s ok. God gives us what we need to know.
And if disagreement or confusion forces us to press into God more, great. That’s what’s life is about anyway.
The second issue connects with it.