The Death of God in the Death of Kingship

There is one idea that I believe, if we properly understood and embraced it, would illumine much of what we don't understand about Scripture and enable us to accept much of what we don't like about Scripture.  This idea is one that has gradually but steadily been leeching out our consciousness for quite some time, beginning with the French Revolution.  The idea creates a whole category of understanding that we are, for the most part, completely lacking today.  And because we don't have this category in our minds, much of what the Bible says does not make sense to us and cannot be embraced by us, because we have no way to process it.

The concept I am referring to can be named by many names, but for our purposes I will call it Kingship.
The notion of Kingship, generally, is the idea that a person in an office of ultimate authority and power has the sovereign right to rule over all in his domain.  Everything in the kingdom is owned by and is to be used in service to the King.  Now to be fair, never in the history of the world has Kingship been exercised in a perfectly noble way.  That is because there has never been a completely noble king.  In fact, history probably gives us many more examples of unrighteous kings than of righteous ones.  And even the righteous ones were known to have a bad day or two (think of King David taking Uriah's wife Bathsheba, impregnating her and then murdering Uriah to try to cover it up).

But like everything that is based on an ideal, the ideal is based on something even higher: the nature and character of God.  For example, we think of marriage as instituted by God as a helpful arrangement  for the purpose of securing the procreation of the species, the rearing of children, the providence and ordering of society and the felicity of humankind.  While that is true, there is a deeper meaning, origin and purpose to marriage that Scripture teaches us about: "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church." (Ephesians 5:32 ESV)  Thus, marriage, primarily is not about humans at all - it is, first and foremost, a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. [this is actually the great travesty of the modern effort to redefine the marriage relationship - but that's another article]

So it is with Kingship.  The human institution of Kingship is based on the ideal of Kingship and the ideal of Kingship is based on an aspect of the nature of God.  If we want to understand the universe rightly, in all its beauty and grandeur and truth, we must have a category in our hearts for Kingship.  Or, stated negatively, if we don't have a concept of a being of power and authority whose right it is to sovereignly rule all things according to his own will and pleasure, we won't be able to make sense of God and his world.

O.k., big deal.  Right?  Who doesn't understand Kingship?  Well, to put it bluntly: we don't.  Modern society is experiencing a Crisis of Kingship.  It is beyond the scope of this article (or the reader's attention span, no doubt) to go into the history of the erosion of the concept of Kingship.  Suffice it to say that, beginning roughly with the Enlightenment, modern culture has all but completely jettisoned the idea of royal rule.

We live in an era where every man is the king of his own kingdom.  Human rights ordains that no person may own another person.  Human equality tells us that no person is above another person.  Democracy dictates that no person may rule another person.  Postmodernism decrees that no person may judge the beliefs of another person.  And humanism preaches that there is nothing of higher value than a person.

So it is with this backdrop that we humans then sit down and read our Bibles and try to make sense of a story in which God, by virtue of his character, owns all people, is far superior to all people, rules all people, judges all people and is of infinitely greater worth than all people.  In fact, the story goes on to say that though humans owed all their allegiance, service and worship to this God, they rebelled against him and are guilty of the highest crime of treason which God will punish in the most severe manner imaginable.

Can you see why many people who read the Bible today experience a huge disconnect between that story and theirs?  They have no category into which to put this kind of narrative.  In reality, a story like this can't be anything but a myth from a bygone era.  

Why?

Because, since Kingship no longer exists, neither does God.

Chick-fil-A: It's No Longer Safe To Be A Christian In America

BULLETIN: Never has something so accurately encapsulated the culture war that is being waged right now against Christians and the teachings of the Bible as the furor surrounding the personal comments made by Dan Cathy, who happens to be the head of Chick-fil-A in support of traditional marriage.

For the record, here are the ACTUAL COMMENTS that have outraged the militant gay community and their willing accomplices in mainstream media and politics. When asked about his company's support for the traditional family he replied:

"Well, guilty as charged," said Cathy when asked about the company's position.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized.

"We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles." (from an interview with Baptist Press)

Did you hear the anti-homosexual hatred in that statement? Neither did I. But apparently the pro-gay militants heard it - and they've issued a fatwa against Chick-fil-A. Look at some of the vitriol that is being spewed at Cathy and Chick-fil-A.

A Chicago politician, Alderman Joe Moreno, who represents Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood, said he will use his aldermanic privilege to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in his ward.

"I don't believe a company that speaks out against gay rights in our country today...should have the opportunity to operate in the city of Boston." - Thomas Menino, Democrat Mayor of Boston

Commenting on alderman Moreno's plan to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant in the city, Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel offered his support: "Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values," the mayor said in a statement when asked about Moreno's decision. "They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty."

Then on Friday, on Fox News' Bill O'Reily show, Laura Ingraham interviewed Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, a gay rights group. I encourage you to watch the video of this interview because it's hard to believe what is being said.  Here's a link to the video

Here are some highlights:

"They have given millions of dollars to anti-gay organizations and I find it incredibly hypocritical that they would complain about not being able to open up a store. One of the groups they gave money to, the Family Research Council said it's the government's moral duty to legislate morality, and now they're complaining that morality's being legislated in the way they don't like."

REALITY CHECK: What these government officials are proposing to do is NOT legislating (writing laws), they are are threatening to illegally misuse their position of power to oppress a private company because they hate the fact that the company's leader believes the Bible is true.

Besen calls Cathy's statements in support of traditional marriage, "horrible", "bigoted", "nasty", "horrible" (again), "nasty" (again), and "controversial".

REALITY CHECK: Well, I'll give him the last one, but let's remember that what he's calling "horrible", "bigoted", and "nasty" is God's clear teaching in Scripture that homosexuality is an evil perversion.

Laura then asks a BRILLIANT QUESTION. She says, "Can you be a practicing traditional Christian in the United States today and speak your mind and not be branded a hater? Can you be - and not be ostracized?"

The answer to that question is, for the first time since this country's inception, in question. In case any of you were paying attention, this is STEP 5 of 6 in the homosexual militant's manifesto of how to defeat the taboos against itself and gain protected status as a minority. STEP 5 says: Make the Victimizers (people who don't believe homosexuality is acceptable) look bad.

Do you think they are succeeding?

What this means on more of a spiritual level is that "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."  (2 Timothy 4:3-4 ESV)

Why Did The King Throw A Party?

Do you ever hear something that you've heard many times before, but for some reason you hear something in it that you hadn't heard before?  That happened to me the other day when I was reading in the Gospel of Matthew.  In chapter 22 Jesus is telling a story in which he compares God the Father to a king who throws a feast in his son's honor.  The nation of Israel is compared to people the king invited to the feast, but who refused to come (caring instead for their own concerns).  We Gentiles, in this story, are the rag tag bunch who end up attending the feast.

Now, one of the rules of proper biblical interpretation I learned early on was that parables typically have one or two main ideas, and that one shouldn't try to allegorize each element of the parable too closely.  I've always understood the main point of this parable to be the story of how God first chose Israel to be his people, but that when they rejected him he rejected them as well and chose for himself a different people from all the peoples of the world - and I think that this is the right way to read this passage.


However when I re-read this passage the other day it was something else that struck me.  It wasn't so much the main text of the story, but the context of the story.  It hit me hard that there is something that is assumed by this story that we cannot assume in our day.  


What I'm talking about is the theme of this party.  Why did the king throw a feast for his son?  What was his purpose, his motivation?  Why was he so angry with those who ignored his invitation that "he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city"?  Why was it so important to have the feast full of celebrants that he had his servants go out and gather anyone and everyone they could find from the highways and the byways to come to the feast?  Why, when the king found one hapless fellow at the feast without proper wedding attire did he have his servants "'bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness.’"


You see, we hardly know how to answer these questions today.  Because we've been taught - and we love hearing it - that the feast was for us!  That God went out looking for us because he wanted us at his party.  That those mean old ungrateful Jews weren't worthy to be God's people, but we were.  That there was no way God could enjoy a party without his favorite peeps (you guessed it) - US.


And THAT'S what hit me right between the eyes.  The passionate purpose behind the party was that the King was deadly earnest about seeing his SON honored!  This was so important to the king that those who thumbed their noses at the invitation were rewarded with the death penalty.  When the king sent his servants out to gather anyone they could find to attend the feast, it was because it would have been a travesty for the son of the king to show up to his own feast and find no one there to celebrate him.


What's sad about this, to me, is that many in the church today are like the guy at the feast in his swimming trunks and Hawaiian shirt thinking the party is for him because the king thinks he's a great guy and is just so pleased that he would honor his majesty by showing up and gracing him with his presence.  You remember what happened to that guy, right?

Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’(Matthew 22:13 ESV)

Evangelicals and the GOP; The Gospel-Centered movement and the Tea Party

Read on...it's not what you think.

This is not a post that talks about how Christians should or should not vote Republican.  That might be an interesting and helpful topic, but, though it's been done poorly far more than it's been done well, that's not what we're doing in this post.

What I'd like to explore a bit here are some of the parallels that I see in trends that are occurring in both the world of Evangelicalism and the Republican party.  Let me explain how my brain got to this funky place.

There are many areas of interest that I have followed for a long time: technology, sports, literature, movies, music, culture trends, etc..  Two arenas of activity that that I have tracked for quite some time, both in terms of contemporary development as well as historical trends, are the areas of Christianity and of Politics.

One of the most significant developments in recent years within America's political life has been the emergence of the Tea Party movement.  Whether you love, hate or are indifferent towards the Tea Party there is no denying that its advent has really shaken up the US political scene.  The rapid rise of the Tea Party has been a major disruptive force rocking the status quo in this country's politics, causing the establishment leaders on both sides to be somewhat flummoxed.  Similar to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in the 1970s and the Rush Limbaugh show in the 1980s, The Tea Party is giving  a voice and influence to conservative Republicans, who had, for some time, been feeling taken for granted by the party leaders.

I was just talking with a friend about this the other day and it dawned on me how many similarities there are between the Tea Party in the political realm and the Gospel-centered movement in Christianity.  I won't go into great detail here to describe the Gospel-centered movement; suffice it to say that it is a sub-group within Evangelicalism that believes that many leaders, churches, denominations and other organizations that function under the rubric of Evangelicalism have let go of their commitment to the preaching, teaching and living of the Gospel and are instead embracing and advancing a worldly, person-centered philosophy and world-view.

So, on to the point of this post.

As I was talking to my friend about the Tea Party it occurred to me that a lot of the ways I was describing it could just have easily been used to talk about the Gospel-centered movement.  Don't get me wrong: while I do consider myself to be both a Gospel-centered Christian as well as a Tea Party Republican, I am not inferring some fundamental connection between the two ("If you're a real Christian, you're also a Republican", or "If you're a Tea Partier, you must also be a Gospel-centered Christian").

For the sake of length I will attempt to be brief (too late), but here are some of the similarities that I perceive:

• Grass-roots origins

Neither of these movements came about as a result of high-level strategy meetings by key leaders in the parent group.  Rather, they both sprang up organically of their own accord.  It seems that the impetus (frustration, concern, discontent) behind these movements quietly built up over time as their members (I say 'members' even though there is usually no formal membership as there is no formal organization to belong to) became increasingly dissatisfied with the direction the parent organization was going but didn't know what to do about it.

There was/is no one leader or group that can be said to be spearheading these movements, no address or phone number to call to contact them and no formal structure or organization.  Rather, there are many like-minded people and groups that are finding common cause through a set of shared core values.  There are presumed leaders/spokesmen in both groups, but they speak representatively and not authoritatively.

• Raison d'être (Reasons for Existing)

As I alluded to above, the reason the Tea Party ad the Gospel-centered movement came about is because the conservative base in both organizations (Republican party and the Evangelical church) began increasingly to feel as though these groups were, for various reasons, filling up with people who really didn't share the values that the groups had originally formed around.  As this happened and critical mass began to shift away from these values toward something more "moderate", understandably, the same kind of shift began to be seen in the leadership of these groups (one could easily make a chicken and egg type of argument and say that the shift in leadership happened first and the shift in membership followed, and vice versa, but that is not the focus of this post).  Why exactly this happened is open for debate (I will postulate a theory later), but the fact that it happened is indisputable.

As more and more moderates joined these groups and took up leadership in them, increasingly they began to push and pull them away from the founding principles towards a more centrist set of actions and policies.  Little by little the conservative members of these groups began wondering what was becoming of them?  As Ronald Reagan famously said of his exodus from the Democratic party in 1962, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me."

As this realization began to dawn on the conservative members of these groups they were left with the question: "O.k., What do I do about this?"  As is often the case in these situations, the initial response of most of these people was not to abandon ship.  Many of these folks began to seek ways to voice their concerns, restate their values, rally their supporters and take back the ground that had been surrendered in an attempt to pull their organizations back in the right direction.  That is the role that the Tea Party is playing right now for the Republican Party and the Gospel-centered movement is playing in Evangelicalism.

• Other Similarities

There are many other similarities between the two groups:   

- Both are attracting the best and brightest conservative leaders.

- Both groups are exerting a surprisingly strong influence on their respective cultures and arenas of activity.   

- They are both holding large, well-attended rallies and conferences to which like-minded folks flock in great numbers to identify with the movements, hear from their leaders, be inspired by one another's passion and voice their solidarity.   

- Both are making the moderate, in-name-only types very uncomfortable as the conservatives show by their passion and commitment how genuine and heartfelt their beliefs are, compared to those who are there by default or for convenience sake.  Many of the moderates seem uncomfortable with the way these movements are revealing them to be moderate because part of the nature of these movements is to clearly define themselves by what they DO and DO NOT believe.  The moderates have long enjoyed the luxury of hiding under the generic banner of their respective organizations, to be a member of which one need only subscribe (and often not even formally) to a very basic set of values.  Many of these folks only held to some of the stated values of the group.  The existence and work of these conservative movements has served to shine a light on those furtive members who heretofore had been able to slink around unnoticed, and that makes them very uncomfortable. 

- As a result, there are already a good number of 'posers', 'hangers on', and 'ooh, ooh, me too'ers joining the ranks of these movements.  There are a number of people who do not truly identify with the values of these groups, but are shrewd enough to sense the momentum shift that is happening and so have made the calculated decision to hook their wagons up to this horse. 

-Those outside these groups publicly (have been forced to) acknowledge the significance and influence they possess.  But privately they often scorn the members of these movements as simpletons, unrealistic, rigid, uncompromising stick-in-the-muds.  They not only believe that these movements are wrong in what they assert, but they resent their ability to organize into a force that they must reckon with. 

-Those who find themselves outside these movements, but inside their parent organizations, are maddened by the way the advent of these movements has weakened their brand (GOP, Evangelical) and their control over the power, resources and influence that those brands once possessed.  More and more, people are coming to the conclusion that the label Republican or Evangelical hardly means anything.  This is forcing members to further define themselves - something that those who are not in the conservative movement find undesirable as well as difficult.  They use words mushy words like moderate, independent, progressive, and centrist.  But when asked to define what they mean by those terms, they either are unable or unwilling to do so.  They are frustrated that not only can they no longer take for granted those 'right-wingers' in their organization and expect them to follow their orders and do their bidding, but they are increasingly finding that they no longer have the ability to steer the ship and are finding themselves more frequently in the back seat, along for the ride.

"O.k." you're saying, "So What?  What does this all mean?"  Well, that is a HUGE subject that has largely yet to be decided.  But I do think we can make a few observations.  

1. First, if you find yourself in one of these movements, this should be a very encouraging time, because the momentum is yours.  The wind is in your sails right now.  You are no longer only a fringe malcontent whose voice is not being valued or heard.  What will become of your movement is yet to be seen, but you are no longer being taken for granted by the organization that you used to feel at home in but where, in recent years, you have felt ever more a stranger in your own home.
2. Part of the point of this post is to note how similar the development of these two movements - from two very different arenas - is.  What I think we can learn from this is that history has some cyclical tendencies to it.  If you care to look, you will notice over and over in history, in almost every sphere there is a cyclical pattern that looks something like this: A) People are discontent with the way their group has strayed from its traditional roots and values; B) People get frustrated enough to start talking and debating and working against this shift; C) Those who find themselves in solidarity in their resistance to this drifting start to band together informally and then formally; D) Eventually there is either a cataclysmic break up over irreconcilable differences between the conservative resistance and the parent group, or the power and influence of the conservative group simply becomes so strong that it either retakes control of the parent organization (rare!) or peacefully steps away from it leaving it to die a slow death.  This cycle of drift and recovery can be observed in nearly every sector of life from politics to business, religion to academia, and more.
3. You may have already identified what phase each of the two groups we have been talking about are in this cycle: we are in phase C.  The question before us is, what will phase D look like for these movements?  Cataclysmic breakup (3rd political party / new conservative Gospel Coalition) or peaceful reclamation?  Time will tell.