As an undergraduate, I took a two semester course at a liberal
university on The Old and New Testaments. While I’ll be the first to admit I
possess a mediocre memory, I do recall its central tenets were teaching of the
text as a historical work; there were no moral or spiritual lessons to be
learned. Perhaps some might say I lacked the courage of my convictions, but at
the time I was agnostic.
Later in life, my outlook
changed and I have had the good fortune to discover outside of my alma mater
the writings of believers discussing scripture. I have found that frequently
not only their thoughts resonate with me more strongly than those secular
scholars I’d read before but that they are more insightful in their
understanding of the Bible.
Writing for Lew Rockwell’s
website, I received some thoughtful inquiries—and some with marked hostility—to
my appreciations of Joseph Sobran, Desmond Doss and other works that I hoped
would inspire discussion and perhaps reflection upon their subjects. I suspect
this essay, in which I hope to introduce the work of Ted Grimsrud to those
who’ve not discovered him, will not provoke as much outrage at worst and angst
at best; perhaps those readers with what I would call closed minds and the
conviction of their unwise prejudices can view the Biblical texts discussed as
presenting moral teachings that are beneficial to those who value the
principles of nonaggression and limited government. If the Bible affirms
central Libertarian tenets, I would think that would be a cause for
celebration, not condemnation—even to committed atheists.
Providentially—I
believe—I discovered Ted Grimsrud’s website in responding to a kind
correspondent. And his work brought me to understand what I believe is an
implicit perspective in the writings of the Prophets and Jesus’s relationship
to earthly power in the form of the Roman Empire and the complicit priestly establishment. Writing Peace: Collect...Best
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In
his essay “The Old Testament Peace Vision” Grimsrud makes
the case that governments as constituted on earth are inherently immoral,
especially when power is concentrated in the hands of a few and the state
becomes militarized. He writes:
When Israel’s elders came to
Samuel asking for a king, he responds with strong words, recounted in 1 Samuel
8:11-18: “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will
take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to
run before his chariots.…He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks
and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive
orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain
and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and courtiers. He will
take…the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. You shall
be his slaves. In that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have
chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
Samuel argues that the turn
toward human kingship will likely lead to a transformation in Israel away from
the central tenets of Torah. Kingship will tend toward a redistribution of
power and wealth. Power and wealth will move upward in the social system,
shifting from the broader community toward the elite. This social
transformation will lead to more and more poverty and disenfranchisement among
the people.
Along with the increasing
concentration of power and wealth in fewer hands, and linked with this dynamic,
under a human king Israel will move toward more and more militarization. With
the king will come a standing army, rather than the ad hoc militias that had
gained and defended the promised land. With the standing army will come the
accumulation of horses and chariots, the tools of war. As well, a new class of
person heretofore not known in Israel will gain prominence—career military
officers as a major power bloc in the society.
I cannot but suspect that
most reading these words will not fail to see how all the governments of the
nations of the earth even now follow this paradigm and the consequence is
suffering and injustice to the vast majority of the subject peoples; the career
military officers gaining prominence is an apt description of President Trump’s
administration. Yet while it is necessary to read the entire essay to
appreciate its central tenet, I think the key point made is that God is the god
of love—not war:
The last Old Testament book
is likely the book of Daniel, probably written around 165 [B.C.]. The basic
message of the Daniel is a good one for a last word. Daniel teaches: be
patient, trust in God’s faithfulness even when you suffer and are afraid, do
not be dominated by your anxiety, let God’s will work its way. Trust that God’s
will is salvation and that even in hard times, God’s love perseveres.
The interpretive key for
reading the Christian Bible as supporting pacifism, of course, may be found in
the life and teaching of Jesus. However, Jesus’s message of peaceableness and
restorative justice stemmed directly from his Bible (our Christian “Old
Testament”). Jesus provided a clarity of focus, but he essentially reiterated
what he saw as the central themes of the Bible concerning God’s compassion.
From
the start, the Bible presents God as willing peace for human beings—for all
human beings. God means for this love for “all the families of the earth” to be
channeled through a community formed through God’s election of them as a people
of the promise. The story makes it clear that this election is pure mercy—God’s
persevering love for God’s elect is itself an expression of God’s love for
enemies. Time after time, the story makes clear, the people turn from God. Yet,
as the prophet Hosea reports Embodying Peace: Colle...Check
Amazon for Pricing. (chapter 11), God
ultimately does not respond with violence and wrath, but with healing love.
(chapter 11), God
ultimately does not respond with violence and wrath, but with healing love.
Thus, I would argue that the
modern nation states as they exist in their conduct, in their very
organization, in their priorities, and in the actions of their leadership are
contrary to what God wills for humanity; that is, they are inherently immoral
at their core. And for those who do not believe in God, I would say that the
will of the nation state is anti-human; that violence, contrary to the
libertarian nonaggression principal, is at its heart. Therefore, Grimsrud’s
reading of the Bible is not, in the words of Edith Hamilton, as “a manual of
devotion” but as a text to be studied for a way to live and a source of wisdom,
especially for those who are potential victims and will find inspiration of
those who resisted and succeeded in the past.
In
his essay “Jesus’s Confrontation with Empire”
Grimsrud writes:
When
Jesus rejected authoritarian types of leadership, he rejected Rome’s power
politics: “You know that among the Gentiles (that is, the Romans) those whom
they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are
tyrants over them. It must not be so among you” (Mark 10:42). With this
statement, “Jesus clearly stated that the existing ‘order of peace’ is based on
the oppressive rule of force. That is the way in which Jesus and…his
disciples experience the reality of the Pax
Romana…The alternative which Jesus puts forward shows that he is
not resigned…Peace based on oppressive force is not what Jesus wants.”[11]
Jesus’s
words concerning the payment of taxes present his listeners with a choice
between two competing claimants for their loyalties: God or Caesar; it has to
be one or the other. Those who trust in the true God will deny Caesar’s claims
for their loyalty. “If God is the exclusive lord and Master, if the people
of Israel live under the exclusive kingship of God, then all things belong to
God, the implications for Caesar being fairly obvious. Jesus is clearly and
simply reasserting the Israelite principle that Caesar, or any other imperial
ruler, has no claim on the Israelite people, since God is their actual king and
master.”[12]
When
given the opportunity in the wilderness prior to the beginning of his public
ministry to overthrow the Romans with force, Jesus turned Satan down. And,
at the end, when face to face with Pilate, Jesus asserted that “my kingdom is
not of this world.” However, neither of these points should be understood
as portraying Jesus as apolitical or indifferent to the Roman Empire. Rather,
when seen in conjunction with his ministry as a whole, Jesus in both cases
presents his politics as an alternative to
Roman political authoritarianism.[13] Jesus spearheaded a revolutionary
movement—revolutionary not only in its rejection of the present political
status quo but in presenting an alternative vision for social order. The
language of “kingdom” indicates that Jesus understood himself to be posing a
contrast between his community and Rome.[14]
Jesus’s vision was in full
continuity with the heart of Torah. That such a Torah-oriented vision was
revolutionary in first-century Jewish Palestine only underscores that the
spirit of empire embodied in ancient Egypt remained alive and well in the time
of the Romans. Just as Torah originally countered the empire-consciousness of
Egypt, so its renewal in Jesus’s ministry countered the empire-consciousness of
Rome.
I
think in this time of omnipresent war, when we live in an intrusive state whose
power over every individual continues to increase, when
more and mightier weapons of mass destruction are
being conceived, each and every one of us has to decide whether to worship
Caesar—in his numerous forms and incarnations (for the American citizen the
“Washington” empire) or whether to choose to become closer to God.
I believe the “Kingdom of
Heaven” is indeed possible for a minority, for those individuals who choose to
be faithful to God by rejecting Caesar: not fighting in his unjust wars of
conquest and showing compassion to those in need, by speaking Truth to power,
by remembering what the great teachers of Judaism and Jesus himself knew: we
must change how we act towards one another, we must seek to become like God not
through the lie of the wielder of spears and thunderbolts but to become like
the God whose greatest power is the power of love. For Grimsrud writes:
David
Rensberger makes this same point. “Jesus’s words about his kingship do not deny
that it is a kingship, with definite social characteristics. Instead they
specify what those characteristics are. It is not a question of whether
Jesus’s kingship exists in this world but of how it exists; not a certification
that the characteristics of Jesus’s kingdom are ‘otherworldly’ and so do not
impinge on this world’s affairs but a declaration that his kingship has its
source outside this world and so is established by methods other than those of
this world.”[19] Jesus is a different kind of king,
rejecting the brute force and hoarding of wealth that characterized emperors.
He denies the validity of militarism. “The empire (‘kingdom’) that his
words and actions have attested differs significantly from Rome’s.” Jesus
advocates inclusiveness, humility, and mercy—all in contrast to how the
Gentiles’ leaders lord it over them.[20]
Sadly,
too many people who consider themselves religious Christians and Jews have lost
their way. I believe that the warmongering, Machiavellian Neoconservatives, be they Jewish or Christian,
and all their minions and hangers-on are victims of their own hubris and
ignorance; by their deeds they are distancing themselves from God, the God who
values all human life. Sadly, there is a rise in antisemitism (or Judeophobia) and I have been attacked on the
social media site Gab for pointing out the truth that many Jews are advocates
for peace. Phillip Giraldi has written subsequently
to his essay America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars: Proclaiming Peace: Col...Best
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Would I do something
different if I were to write my article again today? Yes. I would have made
clearer that I was not writing about all or most American Jews, many of whom
are active in the peace movement and, like my good friend Jeff Blankfort and
Glenn Greenwald, even figure among the leading critics of Israel. My target was
the individuals and Jewish “establishment” groups I specifically named, that I
consider to be the activists for war.
I
would add of course Professor Stephen Cohen to Giraldi’s
list. I do not know if Christian and Jewish warmongers and lovers of our modern
day Romes—whether London, Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Brussels
or Tel Aviv—will ever change their minds, will ever learn what the Bible taught
about righteous conduct and what ultimately are actions that will be in their
own—and their nations’—interest. The Roman Empire is long dead; these modern
empires will also die in time, perhaps not without
claiming the lives of millions of more victims, including their own populations
and perhaps many of their ruling “elites” despite their arrogance and
delusional conviction of invulnerability.
As to atheists who read my
words and perhaps are put off by the Bible, I would encourage them to find the
work of atheist Murray Rothbard; ironically, he was speaking in his best
writing in the tradition of Prophetic Judaism as Amos did. In his essay “The
Anatomy of the State”, he writes:
We are now in a position to
answer more fully the question: what is the State? The State, in the words of
Oppenheimer, is the “organization of the political means”; it is the
systematization of the predatory process over a given territory. For crime, at
best, is sporadic and uncertain; the parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive,
parasitic lifeline may be cut off at any time by the resistance of the victims.
The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of
private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively “peaceful” the
lifeline of the parasitic caste in society. Since production must always
precede predation, the free market is anterior to the State. The State has
never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest
and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its
time-honored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that
the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation
more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with
the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.
(Rothbard,
Murray N. Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature (pp.
59-60). Ludwig von Mises Institute. Kindle Edition.)
I find a resonance in
Rothbard’s writing and the prophets, and Grimsrud’s discussion in his essay
above about the drawbacks of kingship, in other words the state:
As Samuel warned, these kings
do figuratively, at least, return the people to Egypt. By the time of
Israel’s third king, David’s son Solomon, the die is cast. When Solomon
gained power, he reorganized social structures toward much greater centralized
control. He instituted rigorous taxation to expand his treasury. He
began to draft soldiers, to expand the collection of horses and chariots into a
large, permanent army with career military leaders. And he also decreed a
policy of forced labor for his twenty-year building project of constructing
first his palace and then the temple. Samuel had warned that the kings
would build standing armies, take the best of the produce of the people, and
make them slaves. This is precisely what Solomon did. With him,
Israel took a large step toward political authoritarianism, moving back in the
direction of Egypt…
Poignantly,
the prophet Jeremiah, when Babylon conquered the Hebrew nation-state, writes of
accompanying Jewish exiles into Egypt. It is as if the entire history
following the exodus has been for naught, as people of the covenant return to
trusting in power politics and turning from Torah and toward empire faith. Egalitarianism as a Re...Check
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Of
course, it’s not the ancient Hebrew peoples that concern me now; it’s the
worship of the state and the god Ares that has replaced God in the hearts of
too many professed Christians in America. As William J. Astore writes
powerfully about so many American apostates in his The American Religion of War:
We have a cult-like affection
for war and the military. It drives what we see—what we perceive. Believing is
seeing. The military confesses to believe in “progress” in Iraq and
Afghanistan, for example, so we invent metrics that show how we’re winning
(which is exactly what we did fifty years ago in Vietnam).
We
are not a rational society. We are a faith-based society. And our temples and
crosses are military bases and weaponry, which we export globally. The U.S. has
800 overseas bases, and America dominates the international trade in
arms. Meanwhile, our missionaries are our Special Ops
troops, which we send to 130 countries, spreading the American gospel. The
gospel of war and the gun.
The icons of American
militarism are our weapons. Our warplanes, our drones, big bombs (the MOAB),
the list goes on. They have become the iconic symbols of an idolatry of
destruction.
A xenophobic form of
patriotism exacerbates a religion of violence. Exclusive rather than inclusive,
it sets the boundaries of “us” versus “them.” Critics and dissenters are cast
out and exiled.
Meanwhile, in far-off foreign
lands, we reject the reality of ruins and rubble. We couch it instead in terms
of salvation: “we had to destroy the village to save it.” It’s another aspect
of our evangelical approach to war. It’s like being born again. You must tear
yourself down before you’re born again in the spirit of Christ. We seem to
believe cities must be ruined before we can declare victory over the enemy.
Of
course, the “theology” Astore describes is the worst kind of blasphemy; as
Grimsrud explains, such beliefs are the very antithesis of the core principals
of prophetic Judaism and are inherently anti-Christian. I truly do not know how
people can who hold such beliefs can be swayed from their “faith” for surely
there was more outrage against the NFL players “take a knee” protest than against the wars
that caused millions to suffer, millions to die and claimed not only foreign
but American lives.
To
some extent, I am heartened by what Stephen M. Walt wrote in “That Israel Lobby? History Has Proved Us Right”:
There is also a growing
divide within the American Jewish community over what is best for Israel
itself. Scholars like Dov Waxman, Steven Simon and Dana Allin have documented that
American Jews today are less reluctant to criticize Israel’s policies or the
actions of the Israeli government. The creation of the pro-peace lobby J
Street, the rapid growth of progressive groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, and
the success of controversial online journals critical of Zionism, such as
Mondoweiss, show that attitudes about Israel are more complicated than in the
past. Reflexive support for whatever Israel does is no longer the default
condition for many American Jews.
I
believe Grimsrud has pointed out the policies of Israel’s government today
contravene its Biblical teaching and heritage; they are and will continue to be
a source of woe. And for Christians in America the warning is the same, for
Washington is the Rome of the twenty-first Son of Thunder: The Sp...Best
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immoral and destructive as Rome’s empire at its height of conquest and
oppression.
century and just as
immoral and destructive as Rome’s empire at its height of conquest and
oppression.
Yet we do not have to worship
empires or remain their slaves. Ordinary people of good conscience do not have
the corrupt power of the state: its armies, its media, its lies, its central
banks, and its martial fanaticism. What we should and do have is a commitment
to peace, a commitment to helping those in need, a commitment to reject
prejudice and a commitment to tell the truth. Christians especially should
understand their obligation to bring God’s Kingdom of Heaven to fruition, by
practicing justice, through love, by rejecting the central tenets and slavery
of empire. We need to support one another in these difficult times, now more
than ever.
Certainly
reading the Bible and using resources that include Peace Theology to
aid in our understanding can set us free. Yet I am afraid that there will be
even more violence—not only wars—in our future. Yet sometimes the best in
people is revealed in such moments of crisis; when they remember without
realizing how to become close to God.
We must understand, contrary
to my liberal professor’s teaching, that Jesus’s Kingdom of Heaven has its
origin in God but is necessary on earth; that we must learn what constitutes
right and proper relationships between human beings. Jesus’ kingdom is for the
living.
Christians have to learn
again what Grimsrud reiterates:
In
the end, Jesus’s death offers a profound alternative to imperial power politics.
Jesus exposes Rome’s style of politics as actually a kind of anti-politics, a
dis-order that gains people’s trust as an idol that actually separates them
from God. “The scene exposes Roman justice to be administered by the elite
for the elite’s benefit. There is no doubt that by Rome’s rules Jesus
deserves to die. But this scene, in the context of the Gospel story, raises
profound questions about the nature of those rules.”[24]
At the heart of Jesus’s
teaching in the final months of his life was his instruction to his followers,
“take up your cross and follow me.” This is a call to live free from
political authoritarianism, to recognize that following Jesus puts them
directly in opposition to the powers of empire. That the authorities (human and
spiritual) would put Jesus to death is absolute proof of their idolatrous
nature—and of the need for people of faith to distrust them.
And for people of faith, no
matter the persecution, no matter the scorn and disdain, we know the
peacemakers have God on their side. In eternity, that’s all that matters after
all.
Yvonne Lorenzo [send her mail]
makes her home in New England in a house full to bursting with books, including
works on classical Greece and by Mises, Tom Woods, Joseph Sobran, and Lew
Rockwell. Her interests include mythology, ancient history, plasma cosmology
and classical music, especially the compositions of Handel, Mozart, Bach, and
the Bel Canto repertoire. She is the author Son of Thunder and The Cloak of Freya.
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