Civic Order, Foreign Affairs, and Biblical Subjection: A Soldier’s Appraisal
Essay by Nathan Trimble
The United State of America: The name is known across the world for many reasons, some excellent and some terrible. Nevertheless, it is known in part because of its military influence. Throughout America’s stormy past, the U.S. President and Congress have used the military to defend the nation, to rescue the politically oppressed, and most recently to conduct “counterinsurgency and stability operations in Iraq and Afghanistan” [1].
Yet how does God desire that we as Christians respond to our nation’s leadership? How do we respond when it sends America’s men and women into controversial wars, especially when some of those nations begrudge America’s presence? While I will try to give some answer to these questions throughout this essay, they are nevertheless difficult ones. I believe that God explicitly calls Christians to serve and support their country in different ways—some by governmental leadership, some by military service, and others by offering support through obedience and prayer.
Yet what does such support look like for America, especially in the context of military action? In order to answer these questions, we must first consider a basic feature of America’s governmental structure: namely, its balance between civilian leadership and military action.
A Delicate Balance
Since its inception, America’s leaders have come from diverse careers and backgrounds, including business, law, medicine, military, and even religious ministry. Yet all have been civilians during their terms of office [2]. Consider the Executive and Legislative branches: (a) a civilian President serves as the Commander-in-Chief of the military, who leads the country; and (b) a civilian Congress enacts policies, controls internal and external threats to freedom, and makes discretionary decisions about the uses of the nation’s military.
What is the significance of America’s civilian leadership? It is significant because of the separation of powers doctrine. America’s military is not simply controlled by a military leader, pursuing his own agendas as he sees fit. Rather a civilian Congress and President control the military jointly. Congress declares war and holds the military’s purse. The President directs the military and its assets. The delicate balance between civilian leadership and military action is what gives America its best characteristics. This fragile equilibrium enables America to live in peace with other nations, especially after times of war. It enables it to neither overreact nor under-react in given situations—at least in theory.
Yet what should we do when we feel pulled between our country and our God? While we certainly don’t experience the tension that Christians experience in third-world countries with oppressive dictatorships, we nevertheless experience tensions of our own—be it our laws, our leaders, or their leadership. Over and over, we hope that a political leader will emerge as the answer to faith and moral discretion. Yet over and over again, political leaders rise, and inevitably they disappoint us. Promises are made, yet go unfulfilled, especially concerning military action and those serving in the military. So what do we do with these tensions? Before attempting to resolve these tensions further, we’ll consider the broader, biblical principles of earthly governments and their leaders.
Government Leaders Derive Their Authority From God’s Authority
Having reviewed the relationship between the American government and military, we’ll now consider a biblical attitude toward national leadership. We must remember that government leaders derive their authority from a higher power than the federal government, whether they realize it or not. They derive their authority from God to establish order, justice, and peace. Of course, this doesn’t mean that human authorities always use their God-given authority properly, but the fact remains that they derive their authority from God—what theologians have understood to entail the cultural mandate [3]. Upon assuming political leadership in a given country (in America’s case, upon being elected by the people), God entrusts leaders to uphold the cultural mandate nationally and abroad.
We see America’s efforts abroad through nation building in third-world countries by building critical infrastructures, humanitarian reinforcements during natural disasters and conflict relief efforts, and global health initiatives. For example, America provides aid in countries like Afghanistan, Indonesia, Libya, Somalia, and sub-Saharan countries to provide a civil government in which these countries may exist without the perpetual threat of disease, famine, and warfare.
More controversially, America has been and is a country with influence across the globe, having undertaken numerous, complex situations. For more than ten years, America has been at war on at least two fronts—arguably more. Countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq have been household names about which everyone has an opinion concerning how we should or should not conduct ourselves.
You may say, “What if we as Christians don’t agree with America’s international efforts such as these?” Again, there are never any easy answers to questions concerning the international community. No conflict is ever unanimously popular, and many understandably express great dissatisfaction with leaders during conflict. Warfare is taxing, undesirable, and may be the truest expression of the Fall and sin.
Yet despite our difficulties and our leaders’ politics in many cases, we must trust that God has placed capable leaders in our Executive and Legislative branches to handle these complex situations. Yes, we elect our leadership, yet at the same time, God is in control. And remember, whatever our difficulties, the military is not to blame, for it is a tool. It does not do as it wishes. Rather, America’s civilian leadership as represented by the President and Congress delegates to the military assignments to carry out with direct, immediate action.
We Should Support Our Leaders By Obedience and Prayer
Despite our understandable difficulties with topics such as these, what does the Bible ask of us? Unequivocally, the Bible commands us to respond in different ways, depending upon our positions within the God-given authority structures. If we’re governmental leaders, the Bible tasks us to establish order, justice, and peace. It tasks us to make sound decisions, to enforce the law by “not bear[ing] the sword in vain” (Rom. 13:4), and to punish those who are not obedient to the civil law. Leaders in authority bear great responsibility before God for their decisions.
If we are citizens not serving in a leadership capacity, the Bible tasks us in different ways. It tasks us to support our leaders through obedience and prayer. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God,” writes the apostle Paul (Rom. 13:1). In the verses following these, Paul even says that we’ll “incur judgment” if we fail to be subject to our leaders [4].
Paul also writes, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1Tim. 2:1-2). This means that we must pray for our leaders. This includes the President, congressmen, military officers, and soldiers. And as prayerful Christians, this means that we stay informed concerning our leaders and their actions, domestic and abroad. Staying informed in world events is not difficult in a country that has so much access to news.
What if we don’t agree with our leaders’ policies and politics? Even if we didn’t vote for those in office, and even if we don’t agree with their domestic or international policies and decisions, we must still support them through obedience and prayer. Especially in the heat of controversial military conflict, we must remember to pray daily for our leaders and for our military, despite our own personal feelings or political ideology. To the extent that leaders and lay citizens are unfaithful in their tasks, rest assured that God will hold them accountable.
Fortunately in America, if we disagree with our leaders or their politics, we have the capacity and prerogative to vote for other leaders to take their place. As a matter of civic duty, we can campaign for our preferred leaders and vote for those who we see fit to lead our great nation, and who we believe will establish proper domestic and international civil authority. And in the case of elections during military conflict, we may pray that we won’t dispense with one leader just to turn to another who is less likely to help other countries in need. We may vote with confidence that God will use the leaders in place to enable appropriate international policy in assisting the world’s needs. As Christians, we are responsible for helping the nations of the world, despite our nationality.
Conclusions
As Christians, we know that God calls us to sacrifice ourselves in love for others. Yes, we show Christ’s love in our personal relationships and through service in the church. But we must also show Christ’s love for our government and its leaders, especially during difficult seasons of military conflict. And Scripture’s prescribed method for doing this is through obedience to and prayer for the authority that God has put in place.
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[1] Barak Obama, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for the 21st Century Defense, Department of Defense, January 5, 2012.
[2] In some cases throughout American history, government leaders have actually transitioned from military to civil roles in the federal government due. Yet the fact remains that their status as commander or soldier does not follow them once they assume political roles. To state it another way, they continue to serve, but only as the role of policy maker, leaving behind their martial position (e.g., Washington, Jackson, T. Roosevelt, Grant, and Eisenhower)
[3] Biblical scholars derive the cultural mandate, or creation mandate, from Gen. 1:28: “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over [or have dominion] the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The cultural mandate then refers to the task of procreating, filling, subduing, and ruling the earth. Governing authorities and its actors fall under this broad understanding of cultural mandate.
Besides cultural mandate, another category under which government falls is common grace, which “curbs the destructive power of sin, [and] maintains in a measure the moral order of the universe” (Louis Berkhof, Common Grace). Additionally, it delineates for Christians an obligation to establish God’s holy ordinances “in the State for the good of the people; to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to him” (Abraham Kuyper, The Stone Lectures of 1898).
[4] Yes, occasions for civil disobedience will arise, but these are rare—the exception rather than the rule [4]. See Martin Luther, On Secular/Temporal Authority: How Far It Should Be Obeyed (1523) and Whether Solders, Too, Can Be Saved (1526).
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About the Author: Nathan Trimble is a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army. He is currently a Ranger Stryker Platoon Leader in Fort Hood, TX. He is an alumni of Vanderbilt University, and will start his graduate work in International Relations at Saint Mary’s in Spring 2013. He and his wife Delaney work in ministry in Belton, TX as Younglife Leaders, who love sharing the Gospel with high school students.
September 3, 2012
God has granted temporal authority to human institutions such has governments. Using that authority to protect the common good against aggressively predatory special interests instead of to empower special interests at the expense of the common good is what determines whether that government is legitimate or not. Since, as Luther taught, we are all individually (and, therefor, collectively) “saint and sinner” simultaneously, the question is not whether a human institution deserves obedience because it’s actions are legitimate 100% of the time; but whether or not it has reached the tipping point where it has become illegitimate or not. Hitler’s Third Reich was recognizably illegitimate; but it is rare when the question of legitimacy is so obvious.
The relatively recent creation of a Military/Industrial Complex in the Western Nations (See Eisenhower’s Speech) has made discernment even more difficult.
I know men who served with honor and courage, and, yes, justifiable pride, in the military during WWII. They recall when military decision-making involved a balance between what it would take to get the job done and keeping casualties (both military and civilian) as low as possible. They have nothing for contempt for the growing number of military brass who conduct war from the safety of a computer desk and with more ambition for a second career in the civilian armaments industry than concern for their troops on the battlefield.
Our advanced technologies have made both our domestic and our international socioeconomic political policies much more complex than they have ever been before in human history. Christians (unlike the secular humanists who share our common human values; but have an overly optimistic faith in human nature)know that there are times when human authority must be opposed, even when opposing institutionalized authority puts us at great risk for the “white” martydoms of social marginalization or even the “red” martydom of death.
The complicity of both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches in Hitler’s Germany who produced few citizens with the courage to bear witness publicly to their opposition to the Third Reich stands as a caution to the temptation to put all of the responsibility for controlling the authoritarian corruptions that institutionalized power evokes upon God. Since the Ascension, the Church has been called upon to become the body of Christ, the sacramental Presence of Divine Wisdom, Mercy and Compassion on earth, always remembering that the power of the Gospel, unlike that of secular human institutions, is suasive, never coercive or manipulative.
We can even be humble enough to learn from other Religious Traditions. If God can speak through Balaam’s Ass, he can speak through anyone. Compare the Christian Just War Theory, which can no longer support a “just war” in light of our advanced WMD technology, to the wisdom of the Tao:
Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.
Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.
Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral.”
–Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology.” —Edward O. Wilson, esteemed Harvard biologist
“The appeal of which Jesus Christ in person is the living embodiment, the distinctively Christian reality, must be the criterion everywhere. Christians may never identify themselves totally with any party, institution, or even Church. Only totalitarian systems demand total identification. Christians may never join uncritically in every cry of the age. Only partial identification can be justified: insofar as this party, institution or Church corresponds to the Christian criterion or at least does not clearly contradict it.” Hans Kung, On Being a Christian
Christians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God’s radical demand that we be holy. –Jacques Ellul
September 3, 2012
First of all, thanks Carol, for the reply. I appreciate your conviction on the subject.
It seems, by your remarks, that you are trying to encapsulate the idea of “righteous disagreement” with the government. There are many times as Christians that we do not agree with the ordinances/policies of our governing leaders. The same could be said across the world, where Christians suffer under extreme persecution in addition to subjection to harsh treatment as citizens of oppressive governments. Regardless of what citizens we belong to of any number of kingdoms of man, we first and foremost belong to the kingdom of God. Luther address this in a letter I believe you are addressing in your comment, “On Secular/Temporal Authority: How Far It Should Be Obeyed (1523).” But he goes further than to relieve the tension of the spirit of the Christian whose desire is to disagree with the government of “mad rulers” and papists. He instead reveals that we are also a part of the kingdom of man, which institutes “laws for the lawless,” also referencing Paul’s letter to Timothy in 1 Tim. 1. The law is there for those who need it, just as the old covenant was given to the Israelites before the Gospel of Christ. The law was given for civic order, the law was given to establish leadership of rulers in their civic duties.
In every country, people have their own set of laws, and it is protected by the governing policy, in our case, the United States has the Constitution. It is the manual of policy in our country. Every law functions by its existence. We, as a nation, have done this through the implementation of Democracy. Originally, by a Republic, but nonetheless, a system of government which binds the hands of politicians. Democracy is inefficient, slow, and methodical. It’s this way on purpose to protect against the abuses of man in government, which you spoke of in the example of Hitler. I am afraid that though the abuses of man were not checked by the Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany in his day, that our system of government is useful for this purpose. Churches are protected by being separate, and men cannot collectively abuse a nation because of checks and balances. But regardless of the country, the historical context, or even system of government, Christians are still to represent a dual citizenship. The kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. It is the Christian’s job to obey the governing authorities, and if their positions of leadership are abused, as per the system of government defines as “just leadership,” then it is their responsibility to not only disagree as a citizen of this world, but the next. Otherwise, you are simply just being disobedient to Scripture.
The question is not whether you will agree or disagree with the current political culture or governing bodies, because it stands that it really does not matter. The question is whether you will be obedient (or not) to God’s Word.
September 3, 2012
We all write/think from the individual (and limited) perspective of our own experience and circumstances of life. I come from the perspective of a civilian citizen, you as a military civilian. For a member of the military to to “disobey” the authority of our Nation’s government would be to encourage a “military coup.” I certainly would not encourage that, whatever your conscience dictates on the Government’s decision to resort to war as a means of defending our national interest. As a civilian citizen, I would like to see a reinstatement of the draft, with the difference that conscripts should be given the option of choosing to serve in either military or humanitarian governmental institutions, VISTA, for example.
A professional army leaves the civilians to detached from the social costs of war that are now being bourne almost entirely by our military personnel and their families while the rest of us (those who still have disposable income)go shopping and engage in other pleasureable pursuits as though our Nation were not at war.
A non-professional citizen army under the leadership of military professionals would also be less likely to fire on their fellow civilian citizens should the military professionals be tempted to execute a coup.
To our collective credit, though, the military personnel, who by conscience are compelled to carry out the policies of our Nation’s civilian political leaders, are being honored for their service, not blamed by those who oppose war as anything but a “final option” foreign policy and not spat upon like the surviving Viet Nam vets. Patriotism, like any other passion, can become disordered and blind us to justice. Whatever our political convictions, we are all–as citizens and christians–responsible for seeking through prayerful reflection the wisdom to remain faithful to the Gospel and not let our sincere, but undiscerning, patriotism degenerate into jingoistic nationalism.
I do not interpret God’s Word as requiring unqualified obedience to temporal governments. ISTM that, if that were the case, then taking out Saddam Hussein would have been contrary to God’s will. A fatalistic belief that “what is, is right” is where the Gospel of Christ differs from the deterministic beliefs of certain secular existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre.
No general principle can decide each concrete case; always secondary principles and special circumstances enter into consideration. –David Spitz, The New Conservatives