For a long time, I have felt a heavy weight of responsibility to pray for Barack Obama and, to a lesser but still significant extent, Brian Schweitzer. It’s very hard to do, because I oppose almost everything of what both men want to accomplish. But the Lord never lays someone on my heart for no reason. The lord doesn’t do anything for no reason.
I pray that both of them will be strengthened to bear their burdens. I pray that Jesus will be with them and help them. I pray that they’ll be helped to govern according to what God wants to accomplish. I pray that they’ll have a miraculous revelation about life.
There is no authority that doesn’t come from God. God put Moses or David or Solomon in power, and did amazing things for his people through them. God also put Pharoah in power. Just because God puts someone in power doesn’t mean he endorses what they do, but it does mean he intends to accomplish something.
No one can read the bible and take it seriously and want what happened to Pharoah to happen to anyone they know. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a son.
I just pray that whatever God is doing with Barack Obama and Brian Schweitzer, it won’t hurt them any more than the responsibilities they already bear. Winning and losing elections, successes and failures in policy — these are part of the business. And it’s a very rare policy from either one, when I don’t believe it would be best for the country if they failed. But let those be the only harms they suffer. Being used by God for a position of authority is a risky business. I hope he’ll help both men come through it in a way that pleases him.
Since he loves every one of us, I know that the way that pleases him best will also be best for them.
Another very tough subject and you address it well and with humility. The challenge for me is when and how you deal with the abrogation of authority. In other words, those in authority have not been give authority to ignore God’s law. When they do, they abrogate their authority. Francis Schaeffer’s “A Christian Manifesto” takes this head on. We are justified in not submitting to abrogated authority because it would mean violating God’s law. Thankfully in America the government isn’t forcing us to violate God’s law. But imagine living under China’s one-child policy, which I’m sure leads to millions of forced abortions and even infanticides every year. Another area where biblical rules and societal structures collide is the fact that we live in a republic where the people are sovereign. If our natural rights are being systematically violated by despotic government, we have a duty to overthrow that government and restore the protection of those natural rights. Despotic governments use authority to kill and they must be resisted in order to preserve life. Nothing’s ever cut and dry. With all this said, you are absolutely on the mark when you admonish Christians to pray for those in authority.
I appreciate that you brought up the question of being justified in not submitting. It’s something that I have very significant struggles with, in particular as it relates to Obamacare. In 2014, the federal government will give its citizens an order to buy health insurance or be punished. I find the idea horrifying — that we have actually come to the point where we let our government give us orders about what to buy.
I’m very strongly moved toward civil disobedience. I know for a fact that the authority to compel whatever purchase suits its social agenda was never granted to the federal government. What I don’t know is, does that rise to the level where following Jesus no longer has to mean submitting to the civil authority. I shouldn’t say I don’t know. A better phrase would be not 100% confident yet.
The Obamacare mandate is rather anecdotal to what we’re discussing. Like you, I’m not sure if ignoring the mandate is permissible because of an underlying principle, i.e. freedom to make choices about what goods and services we purchase. The outcome of abiding the mandates isn’t on its face. However, one can certainly invoke the slippery-slope argument. If the State has the power to use coercion (the force of law) to literally make us purchase a particular good or service, then what else will it force us to purchase, or not to purchase, or to do, or not to do. Additionally, we can also look at this from the personhood perspective. I’m a person created in God’s image and from that created origin I have free will and action. To violate that foundational truth is to violate the very essence of personhood. Any such violation should be resisted in the name of truth, not just freedom. Just some FFT…
I only bring it up because the main thing that’s holding me back from a commitment to disobey that law is “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
I meant to say that “The outcome of abiding the mandate isn’t evil on its face.”