The Myth of a Christian Nation

by Gregory A. Boyd

  BECOME AS CHILDREN

  Several episodes in Jesus’ ministry illustrate this unique nature of the kingdom of God in particularly poignant ways. At one point people brought their children to be blessed by Jesus, but his disciples put a quick stop to it. In typical kingdom-of-the-world fashion, the disciples assumed Jesus was too important to concern himself with children. Jesus showed how wrong-headed they were—and by allowing the children to come to him, he demonstrated the kind of kingdom he came to bring. (I imagine Jesus roaring with laughter as the kids climbed all over him!) To Jesus’ way of thinking, there is no place in the kingdom for evaluating how important someone is on the basis of their power, possessions, money, or social respect. Children have none of these, but for that reason, they have open access to the Creator of the universe in his incarnate form.

  Elsewhere Jesus announced that the kingdom of God belonged to “such as these” (Matt. 19:14). Unless adults become “like children,” Jesus taught, they cannot enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 18:3–4). On one occasion he gave a version of this teaching in response to a dispute some disciples were having over who was the “greatest”—typical kingdom-of-the-world antics (Luke 9:46). In the kingdom of God, the least are the greatest and the greatest are the least. Children illustrate this perfectly. Because they are regarded as the least important (especially in first-century Jewish culture), they are, in fact, the greatest—precisely because they are least by kingdom-of-the-world standards. (Jesus’ preference for those who were poor, outsiders, downtrodden, and despised teaches the same truth.)

  More specifically, children illustrate the nature of the kingdom of God because they have not yet been conditioned to believe they need power, money, and social respect to be great. Nor have they yet learned the worldly principle that one has to trust in and employ “power over” others to acquire and secure these things. In short, they have not yet been socialized into the kingdom-of-the-world mindset. Their minds haven’t yet been conformed to “the pattern of this world” (Rom. 12:2 NIV); they are yet humble and innocent. For adults to participate in the kingdom of God, Jesus is saying, we must become deconditioned from kingdom-of-the-world thinking and acting, and return to the humility and innocence of little children.

  GOD WASHES FEET

  The kingdom-of-God lifestyle was also beautifully illustrated just before the Last Supper. John tells us that Jesus knew that “the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God” (John 13:3). So what did Jesus do with all this divine authority? He “got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him” (John 13:4–5).

  Here is Jesus, possessing all power in heaven and earth and knowing he is about to be betrayed and die a horrible death—and what does he do? He assumes the position of a common household servant and washes his disciples’ dirty, smelly feet—the very people he knows will betray and forsake him before morning!

  This is how power is wielded in the kingdom of God. If you have all power in heaven and earth, use it to wash the feet of someone you know will betray you! In serving like this, Jesus declares to all who are willing to hear that he “would not rule by a sword, but by a towel.”9

  HEALING THE EAR OF AN ENEMY

  As I’ve mentioned, the same power of Calvary was manifested several hours later in the Garden of Gethsemane. As temple guards were about to arrest Jesus, Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of Malchus, the slave of the high priest (John 18:10). This is predictable tit-for-tat behavior in the kingdom of the world: when you’re threatened, defend yourself with force. It’s significant to note that Peter was always the one who most resisted Jesus’ servanthood model of the Messiah. Like many others, Peter held the notion that the Messiah would be a political and military leader who would exercise “power over” the Romans and free Israel. At one point Jesus even has to rebuke Peter, actually calling him “Satan” because of his obstinate resistance to Jesus’ call to suffer (Matt. 16:21–23).

  Apparently Peter hadn’t yet learned his lesson, for he was still trying to protect Jesus (and his own ideal of a militant Messiah). This time, though, Jesus told him to put his sword away, reminding him that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matt. 26:52). In the tit-for-tat kingdom of Babylon, violence begets more violence, and Jesus hadn’t come to propagate more of that. Rather, he came to plant the seed of a kingdom that alone holds the hope of ending all violence.

  So, far from using his divine authority to fight back, calling legions of angels and forcefully controlling his enemy’s behavior, Jesus used his divine authority to heal the ear of a man who came to arrest him. Though he could have exercised “power over” the servant, he displayed outrageous, unconditional love instead by coming under him, by serving him. Jesus was saying, in effect, “Though you seek to do me harm, I care about you and will not use my authority to defeat you. Rather I will serve you and heal you.”

  This kind of power transforms people. We can’t be sure, of course, but it’s hard to imagine the healed servant not being profoundly affected by this unexpected act of love. Do you think the servant, with whatever ill will he may have harbored toward Jesus on the way to arresting him, continued to harbor it after his encounter with kingdom love? Can you imagine him being among those who spit on Jesus and mocked him? Is it not more likely that he became at least a little more open to God’s love and perhaps a little more loving toward others as a result of Jesus’ gift? The point is that love, through service, has a power to affect people in ways that “power over” tactics do not, and it is this unique power of self-sacrificial love that most centrally defines the kingdom of God.

  Insofar as we trust this kind of power and think and act accordingly, we are bearers of the kingdom of God. Insofar as we do not, we are simply participants in the kingdom of the world.

  JESUS’ TEACHINGS ON KINGDOM LOVE

  Jesus taught what he lived and lived what he taught, so we shouldn’t be surprised to find Calvary-type love pervading his teaching.

  When asked to name the most important commandment, he answered that “all the law and the prophets” hang on loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and on loving our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:36–40). By neighbor Jesus meant anyone we happen to come upon in need of our service (Luke 10:27–37)—and he says that everything hangs on sacrificially loving this person. We can try to obey all the particulars of the law and prophets, such as the Pharisees did, but if love doesn’t motivate this aspiration, we haven’t even begun to obey the law and the prophets, even if we meticulously follow every command. Love, not religiosity, is the defining mark of the kingdom of God.

  This kingdom love that Jesus speaks of always has a Calvary quality to it. While people in the kingdom of the world find it easy to love those who they think deserve it—that’s part of the tit-for-tat nature of the world’s kingdom—kingdom-of-God participants are called to love all people unconditionally, even their enemies, just as Christ did (Luke 6:27, 35). We are even commanded to use our kingdom authority to pray sincerely for those who persecute us—again, just as Christ did (Matt. 5:43–44; Luke 6:28). (Remember, he’s talking to people who before long would be beheaded, burned alive, or fed to lions!) While people in the kingdom of the world usually do good to those who do good to them, followers of Jesus are called to do good even to those who harm them (Luke 6:34–35). When struck on the cheek, we are to offer up the other (Luke 6:29). When asked by an oppressive Roman guard to carry his equipment one mile, we are to offer to carry it two (Matt. 5:41).

  Understood in their original context, these teachings do not tell us to allow people to abuse us, as though we are to love our enemies but not ourselves. To the contrary, Jesus is giving us a way by which we can keep from being defined by those who act unjustly toward us. When we respond to violence with violence, whether it be physical, ver
bal, or attitudinal, we legitimize the violence of our enemy and sink to his level. When we instead respond unexpectedly—offering our other cheek and going a second mile—we reveal, even as we expose the injustice of his actions, that our nemesis doesn’t have the power to define us by those actions. In this sense we serve our enemy, for manifesting God’s love and exposing evil (the two always go hand in hand) open up the possibility that he will repent and be transformed.10

  Peter addressed this point when he spoke to a congregation about to undergo unjust persecution. “When [Jesus] was abused,” Peter said, “he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). So when we are persecuted we are not to resort to violence (as Peter himself had done in the Garden!), but we are to “sanctify Christ as Lord” in our “hearts.” In this way, he continues, we “put those who abuse [us]…to shame” (1 Peter 3:16). Our refusal to sink to the level of our enemy opens up the possibility that the enemy will see the injustice of his treatment and perhaps be freed from his dehumanizing mindset.

  Similarly, Paul says we are never to “repay anyone evil for evil” and “never avenge [ourselves].” All judgment is to be left to God (Rom. 12:17–19) who, among other things, uses governments to repay wrongdoers (Rom. 13:4). Instead, we who follow Jesus are to feed our enemy if they’re hungry and give them water if they’re thirsty. In this way, Paul says, we “will heap burning coals on their heads” (Rom. 12:20)—an idiomatic expression for bringing conviction on someone. Paul is saying that the stark contrast between an enemy’s behavior and our loving response will bring conviction on them and possibly result in their transformation. This is how we keep our own heart from being “overcome by evil” and how we “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).

  Whether we’re talking about our response to a persecuting official, a threatening nation, or a mean-spirited coworker, kingdom people are to follow Jesus’ example. This Calvary-like response to conflict and violence is only possible, however, if we allow the Spirit to purge our heart of “all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” (Eph. 4:31). If we follow the “pattern of this world” (Rom. 12:2 NIV) and allow bitterness and hatred into our heart, and if we consequently demonize our enemy, we cannot possibly obey Jesus’ teaching—or Peter’s and Paul’s. For their teaching is not merely that we are to act lovingly toward our enemy while we clench our teeth. No, we are to genuinely love them, and one’s ability and willingness to do this is the most distinctive manifestation of the reign of God in one’s life.

  Martin Luther King Jr. captured the heart of Jesus’ ethic of loving one’s enemy as he discussed the concept of nonviolent resistance advocated by Mahatma Gandhi (who himself was influenced by Christ’s teachings). King wrote that the concept of Satyagraha (meaning “power of love and truth” ) “avoids not only external physical violence but also violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him.” Later, King commented, “Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.”11

  As Gandhi frequently noted, Satyagraha is more a discipline of will, mind, and emotions than behavior. When put into practice, however, loving one’s enemies and returning evil with good has a power to accomplish something the kingdom of the sword can never dream of: namely, freeing the enemy from his hatred and stopping the ceaseless cycle of violence that hatred fuels.

  Jesus’ ethic is clearly predicated on people acquiring a love that participates in God’s unconditional love for all, for apart from this love, his teachings are absurd. Just as God “is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35), and just as God allows the blessings of nature to come “on the evil and on the good” (Matt. 5:45), Jesus says we are to love without consideration of others’ moral status. We are to love as the sun shines and as the rain falls—in other words, indiscriminately. We are to “be merciful, just as [our] Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). God’s love is impartial and universal, unrestricted by typical kingdom-of-the-world familial, tribal, ethnic, and nationalistic loyalties, and so must ours be (Deut. 10:17–19; 2 Chron. 19:7; Mark 12:14; Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:10–11; Eph. 6:9; cf. 1 Tim. 2:4; 1 Peter 1:17; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 John 4:8). As we noted above, we are to consider anyone in need a “neighbor” whom we are called to serve (Luke 10:27–37). Consequently, we are to give to beggars and lend to those in need without expecting anything in return (Matt. 5:39–42; Luke 6:31–36). We are, in short, to love and serve without judgment, without condition, and without any consideration of what’s in it for us.

  If this teaching sounds impractical and irrational—to the point where we might want to come up with clever rationalizations to get around it—this is simply evidence of how much we have bought into the thinking of the kingdom of the world. By kingdom-of-the-world standards, this is impractical and irrational, for in kingdom-of-the-world thinking only “power over” is practical and rational. But this radical, non-common-sensical, “power under” love is the kingdom of God, for this loving way of living reflects the nature of God and looks like Jesus.

  LIVING CONSISTENT WITH GOD’S CHARACTER

  As Hauerwas and Willimon note, these radical teachings are not given as a “strategy for achieving a better society”—as though Jesus came to tweak the kingdom of the world. Rather:

  They are an indication, a picture, a vision of the in-breaking of a new society. They are indicatives, promises, instances, imaginative examples of life in the kingdom of God…. [They] help us see something so new, so against what we have heard said, that we cannot rely on our older images of what is and what is not.12

  What is more, while the kingdom of the world is centered on what “works” to achieve one’s self-interests, Jesus’ radical teachings are concerned with something entirely different, based on the character of God. Hauerwas and Willimon write:

  The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is. Cheek-turning is not advocated as what works (it usually does not), but advocated because this is the way God is—God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. This is not a stratagem for getting what we want but the only manner of life available, now that, in Jesus, we have seen what God wants. We seek reconciliation with the neighbor, not because we feel so much better after ward, but because reconciliation is what God is doing in the world through Christ.13

  This is simply who God is and what God is up to in the world, and so living consistent with God’s character, reflected in the teachings of Jesus, is simply what it means to submit to God’s reign. In sharp contrast to kingdom-of-the-world thinking, therefore, disciples of Jesus aren’t to act first and foremost on the basis of what seems practical or effective at securing a good outcome. We are to act on the basis of what is faithful to the character and reign of God, trusting that, however things may appear in the short term, in the long run God will redeem the world with such acts of faithfulness.

  God’s reign is manifested and expanded through the faithfulness of his subjects, and so, where people choose peace over violence and forgiveness over retaliation, acting in the interest of others rather than out of self-interest, the kingdom of God is present. Where people choose violence, retaliation, and self-interest, however, they are merely participants in the kingdom of the world, however understandable or “justified” their behavior is by kingdom-of-the-world standards. The way of living under God’s reign is shocking and impractical within the context of the kingdom of the world, but it is the only way that is in harmony with God, in concert with what he is doing in the world, and, thus, the only way that manifests his reign.14

  THE ALL OR NOTHING OF LOVE

  The rest of the New Testament confirms the centrality of Calvary-quality love for people who want to participate in the kingdom of God. Perhaps nowhere is this more powerfully co
mmunicated than in 1 Corinthians 13. Here Paul says:

  If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1–3)

  Listen carefully to what Paul is saying. A more radical teaching on love couldn’t be imagined! Most of us could not help but be impressed by someone who could speak in a beautiful angelic tongue or who possessed powerful prophetic gifts. But these abilities amount to nothing more than religious noise—a clanging cymbal—unless motivated by love and used for the purpose of love. And who wouldn’t be impressed by someone who understood all mysteries or possessed all knowledge? Yet if they don’t use these marvelous gifts to “come under” others in love, they are altogether worthless. And who could criticize someone who had mountain-moving faith or who gave away all their possessions or even heroically sacrificed their life? Yet Paul says that if these aren’t done for the purpose of loving others, they are devoid of value, at least from a kingdom-of-God perspective. They may be very impressive within the context of a religious version of the kingdom of the world, but they are utterly insignificant in the kingdom of God, except insofar as they manifest Calvary-like love.