Empire Building and the Christian

Nero and Trump

I pledged to ignore the news and work on a blog I have title “Practicing Death and Learning to Live.” Alas the news cycle took over and I have set aside what was intended to be a hopeful blog on living in the moment. Rather I am dealing with what writer Parker Palmer describes as the Tragic Gap - the tension between living with the realities of the day and with a Christian hope in the future.

In my previous blog Trump and antichrists some critics chastised me for picking on Trump and not looking closer to my Canadian home. Again, my concern was not comparing the fitness of Trump with any other leader. I, like others have my opinion on that. Rather my ire is raised when Trump is exalted in Christ-like terms. He is anti-gospel or anti-christ if you prefer. By contrast I have not read anyone who would compare Trudeau to Christ. This is not to denigrate Trudeau, it is simply to state the obvious difference. And further I have not read any person or group who has used Romans 13 to suggest we must subject ourselves to Trudeau because his authority comes from God. In fact, for better or worse Trudeau in recent times has been consistently maligned by both those inside and outside the church. Trump on the other hand has been granted remarkable latitude for his bullish narcissistic ways based on Romans 13:1-7.

Being Subject to Authorities

13 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority[a] does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.

Consider during Trumps first presidency the then attorney general Jeff Sessions declared “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.” (June 14, 12018)

Oh, the power of proof texting. The only way you can read Romana 13 as a proof text for granting unequivocal powers to the state as ordained by God is to ignore the rest of Romans, in particular Romans 12 and 14 which frame this chapter. Paul is writing in the time of the tyrannical reign of emperor Nero and Pax Romana, a peace that was maintained through fear, violence and oppression. In its place today we have MAGA’s Pax Americana which is establishing its authority through racism, force, nationalism and misogyny.

Clearly Romans 13 is a cautionary tale bracketed by Romans 12 and 14.

12:2 Be not conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of the mind

12:9 Let love be genuine, hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good: love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor…contribute to the needs of the saints; pursue hospitality to strangers…live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly…leave room for the wrath of God…do not overcome evil by evil, but overcome evil with good.

13:13 let us walk decently as in the day…put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is little room here for blind subservience before bombastic secular leadership.

In the Jewish tradition, it was a common practice to rewrite significant portions of the Hebrew Bible with interpretive glosses that reflected the times in which they lived. These glosses are called Targums. In their commentary on Romans Scholars Sylvia Keesmatt and Brain Walsh engaged in their own imaginative Targum between ancient text and contemporary realities in their recent volume Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/ Demanding Justice.[1]

Here is an abridged reading of their Targum that in our current times is timelier than ever. 

Romans 12-14.

Don’t be conformed to the empire, my friends,

but be transformed by the kingdom.

Do not have minds conformed to the reigning ideologies,

but experience, in the praxis of living sacrifice

nothing less than the renewing of your minds…

Renewed minds,

liberated imaginations

for a restored creation,

for a discerning resistance,

for lives of justice,

for subversive hospitality,

for radical peacemaking…

Renewed minds,

rooted in the story of Jesus, not the president,

the story of creation, not our nation

                  the story of love, not self-interest

With embodied lives of sacrificial love,

A gospel spirituality permeating all of life

And liberated imaginations,

We will be a people of discernment,               

seeing just beyond the range of normal sight,

                  understanding the path ahead in these dark times,

                  discerning God’s will in the midst of the crisis,

knowing what side we are on and who our allies are…

Like the Pax Romans before it, the Pax Americana

was always a fraud. And as its façade falls off

as the ugly face of empire is revealed.

The violence will escalate

In the face of such violence

We embrace the gospel of peace,

The reconciliation of enemies,

the disarming of the empire

As it collapses all around us…

Now I know what you are thinking

What about the state?…

Aren’t we called to be a law-abiding people?

How could I call for total obedience to Lord Jesus

and also require such obedience to the war machine of the state in the next?…

How could you have even read what I said in Romans 13

apart from what I had just written in Romans 12

and indeed in the whole letter?

How could you ever interpret my words as legitimating the rule of the empire when it was the empire that persecuted our people and put our Lord on a cross?

So listen up.

The state has no self-appointed divine authority.

Saying “God bless America” is presumptuous

and “America First” is blasphemy.

All authority is rooted in the God or Messiah Jesus

the very God that the empire rejects in it embrace of idolatry.

While the state might appear to be in control,

All the power that it seems to have is only temporary…

Submitting all government rule to the sovereignty of God

We demote arrogant and totalitarian rulers.

But knowing that these are violent regimes,

we urge caution:

watch your back around the state…

The state does, after all, bear the sword…

So, if you get on the wrong side of the regime,

fear is a healthy response…

I’m suggesting choose your battles…

Be careful with authorities.

Don’t cheaply bring the attention of the RCMP, the FBI or ICE to your community.

This is no game.

Don’t expose your vulnerable neighbors unnecessarily.

Some folks really should be feared.

But don’t allow such fear to the last word

on the way you comport yourself in this world

You need to notice the quotation marks…

Notice the irony.

Notice the nudge, nudge, wink wink,

Those at the top might in face be undeserving

Yet we honor them anyway

Outdoing one another in showing honor

Means honoring the underserving

Both in society’s eyes and in your own…

While I may have had in mind the imperial regime of Nero

When I first wrote those words –

                  Nero’s insatiable sexual appetite,

His household of blood and murder

His economy of theft and pillage

His empire of insatiable greed and expansion

Things haven’t really changed that much have they

But what else would you expect…

But if you can see just beyond the range of normal sight

If you can see with the eyes of faith

If your imagination has been set free

If your minds have been renewed

If you can discern the times…

You will see that the night is indeed far gone

And the day is near

So, living in faith

And embracing the politics of love, let us say to the darkness, “we beg to differ,”

And live as in the day.

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[1] Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Brian J. Walsh, Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice, (Brazos Press: 2019):297-311. An important read that addresses the powers of our time in light of Paul’s writings. Ironically when I was asked a couple of years ago to teach an adjunct class on the book of Romans and included this text as a secondary read my contract was rescinded. I will leave it to others to interpret the cause. But I do endorse this book as a timely read in our current times and worth the purchase just for the authors Targums.