I know we’re impressed with Empire, but I don’t think God is.
In fact, while we see it as the pinnacle of human achievement, I think He views it as a backwards step.
(I’m indebted to Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” book this week, as he is the one who has gotten me thinking about some the stuff I’m about to go into.)
Early on in the book he begins by suggesting that we read the Bible all wrong: something I went into a few weeks ago. Literal applications of individual verses was never an intended use of scripture in my view. McLaren suggests God’s story has to be read as a whole. Before we start talking about ‘the individual bits’, we have to understand the ‘Meta-Narrative’, or ‘overarching story’ which runs through everything.
Simply put; we will always get the details wrong if we don’t understand the ‘Big Thing’ God is trying to do.
Now there are many layers to this story, but I think one of the things God is always trying to accomplish is to make us more holistic human beings, and His interaction with us is often pointing out, and breaking down, ways in which we are forming societies which ‘dehumanize’.
Watch the progression:
Adam and Eve (whilst I don’t believe they were necessarily literal characters) were Hunter Gatherers in a place called the Garden of Eden, which had more than enough to eat. But their disobedience sees them cast out into a situation where man is forced to work the soil for his sustenance.
Man moves from Hunter Gatherer to Agriculturalist.
Cain and Abel then represent the battle between Herders and Farmers: Cain (the farmer) killing his brother Abel (the herder, who God favoured) signaling the move to more aggressive forms of human habitation.
Man moves from Herder to Farmer.
Farming fields leads to the need for centers where collectives can support each other, and markets serve to sell produce and make profit, rather than just feed your family. The rat race begins. By the time of Noah these have become ‘Cities’ where all manner of evil exists and thrives… and God doesn’t like what He sees. So He wipes the lot out.
Not long after the Ark touches dry land though, cities thrive again, to the point where an Empire is beginning around the Tower of Babel. Men are building to prove the might that comes from their collective work; we never hear that the tower is actually there to serve any functional purpose.
So God comes in, and splits them up by giving them different languages.
The tellers of these early stories are clearly letting us know that God’s view of ‘progress’ and ours are definitely not the same, and God is constantly trying to save us from ourselves, because we get caught up in greed and pride, and don’t see what we’re really doing.
The story continues and the Hebrews are under the yoke of Empire in it’s ultimate form. The nation of Egypt has this people working as slaves to build monuments to their kings and gods; monuments so great that many still stand strong today. But now God’s people are feeling the flip side of Empire. They are dehumanized in the worst ways, and so they cry out for help, and God rescues them from Egypt.
He takes them into the desert to teach them how to be more humane. He shows them how to worship Him, and how to administer a kingdom with good health care and welfare. He gives them a special focus on the care of the poor, the widow and the foreigner in their midst. He warns them never to use slaves in the way they used in Egypt, and He sets Judges to rule over the people.
But it seems greed is siren song humans can’t ignore. In no time the Israelites are demanding a king, so they can be taken serious on the world’s political stage. They get their way and things slowly build to Empire in the Promised Land. By the time Solomon is king he is conscripting slaves to build lavish works in the manner of the Egyptians. There is this great reference in 1 Kings 10:14 which says, “The weight of the gold that Solomon received yearly was 666 talents…” Do you really think that was the amount, or is the writer trying to tell us something?
God is not happy. This is not what He wants.
The kingdom splits.
In time other Empires conquer and cart them off as slaves.
Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and eventually Rome.
This whole time the prophets keep speaking about a better Kingdom where human beings are valued and peace reigns, but it seems human beings are more keen to get ahead while stepping on others.
By the time Jesus arrives Israel is under the boot of the Roman Empire, and the talk seems to be about trying to work out how to throw them off… probably so they can get back to being their own oppressive Empire again. You don’t get the feeling that anything has been learnt.
Jesus is cornered in the Temple one day and asked whether He thinks the people should pay taxes to Rome. He tells the guys to pull out a coin and asks whose picture is on the front. They reply that Caesar’s image appears there, and He responds, “Well give it back to him then.” On another occasion the crowd is so impressed with His bread and fish trick that they want to ‘make Him king by force’, so He runs, because again their answer to everything seems to be ‘Empire’. He consistently refuses to be drawn into the debate about money and power, instead He teaches about a kingdom where there is justice, love and mercy between human beings; a place where all people are valued and cared for.
Sounds like the prophets.
Sounds like God at Sinai.
After Jesus death and resurrection, Paul and the Apostles are always contrasting the Empire of Rome with the Kingdom of God. Again and again in their writings they talk of the power and oppression of Rome in opposition to the love and community of God.
Through all this it seems God is warning us that Empire is not the way forward: ‘progress’ seems to be ‘regress’ in God’s opinion, but we stubbornly push on because Empire feels good if it’s working for you.
As a solution God keeps trying to establish communities to show a way of living which adds value to humanity.
He tries to form Israel along these lines.
He tries to get the church to live from this space.
And it seems it generally did for the first 300 years of Church history: it lived underground; in the catacombs under the cities of the Roman Empire, and in the provincial backwaters where the long arm of Rome was weaker.
In those kind of circumstances it was easy to keep Jesus’ concern for the disenfranchised alive because, well, they were the disenfranchised.
But then something very significant happened.
In 312AD a Roman General named Constantine was in a power struggle with a contemporary named Maxentius to wear the purple robes of the Emperor of the Rome. Things came to a head on the 28th of October when the two meet to do battle at Milvian Bridge in Northern Italy.
Being alive then you would be forgiven for thinking there was nothing too significant about this battle as this is how power rose and fell in the Roman Empire, and these sort of conflicts were regular as clockwork.
But this battle would change everything for the church. Historians at the time, like Lactantius, tell us how Constantine had a dream the night before the battle in which Jesus visits him and simply says, “By this sign, conquer”. Some suggest the sign in question was the Chi-Rho symbol, which looked like a tall ‘P’ with an overlaid ‘X’, and this symbol had become one of the accepted symbols used by early Christians to identify each other and places of worship.
Constantine got up and immediately ordered that all his soldiers should paint this symbol of the Christian God on their shields. The next day they went into battle and smashed the forces of Maxentius in a decisive victory, and Christianity finally got a break from the disenfranchisement.
A big one.
In gratitude to God, and due to his new religious convictions, Constantine not only chose to follow God himself, but, as new Emperor of Rome, he made Christianity the official religion of the whole Empire.
In a very short space of time Christianity moved from being centered around the oppressed, to being the official religion of the Roman nobility; and they were now the decision makers of it’s future.
Council after council was held over the years that followed were the elite began to choose which books to be included in the canon of Scripture, what the structure of the church would be, what the buildings would look like, and what the important elements of the services would be.
More than that, the church got into bed with politics. The two mingled to the point where Popes began appointing kings, approving treaties and blessing royal marriages. The Holy Roman Empire gradually became an all-powerful force in Europe, and if you know anything of the history of the Dark Ages it was anything but the ‘Kingdom of God’ Jesus had been speaking about. It seemed many of Jesus’ good teachings about this Kingdom being an upside down one, which moves from the underside of power, were left in the dark recesses of now-abandoned catacombs.
Church had become Empire!
And in the last 1700 years not much has changed in our thinking. God is having a really hard time driving this habit out of us.
I mean we don’t really need lessons in the evils of Empire in our day and age, it’s effects are obvious:
The degradation of our environment for industry.
The hugely unequal distribution of wealth.
The pillaging of natural resources by the wealthiest countries, leaving a wake of poverty.
The recent global financial crisis perpetrated by a handful of supremely greedy fat cats, plunging millions into unemployment and poverty.
But in church we often seem so blind to this stuff, as if it’s none of our business.
Human beings may think Empire is the answer, but He can see what it’s doing to the world, even if we can’t, and He’s trying to rescue us from ourselves.
Can you see the story He is trying to write?
Too often the church today has forgotten this mission and replaced it with a quest to form mini-empires of their own making. We function with the same power structures in place. Our fancy buildings sit in the midst of abject poverty. We have copied-and-pasted the Empire’s mode when we should be a force moving in the opposite direction; offering an alternative.
Our job as Church, is to imagine a new way to be; a better way to be that doesn’t rely on Empire thinking. Church, if anything, should be a model of fully-human community that extends beyond it’s own walls. We have to, in every way, be ‘humanizers’ in a ‘dehumanizing’ society.
It’s how the story ends.
It’s the end goal.
And we can’t hide behind the walls of our own success for much longer, because if history is anything to go by, God tends to smash those before long, kicking us out the door to actually ‘be’ Church again.
So what would it look like to be constructively anti-Empire?
and how to be anti~empire and still live a fulfilling life, in a world that is fully geared toward empire~building?
me and my wife have just recently made a decision to get out.
i’ve been trying to live an authentic life within the system. hoping to speak some kind of truth that will cause leaders to check their thinking and see how destructive their ways are. believing that a great change will take place.
i have officially given up.
i no longer believe it can be changed, and i no longer believe it is possible to live out our full potential in such a system. capitalism must die for humanity to progress. i fully believe it.
Dear God, please smash the capitalist system, bring it to its knees, and right the injustice it has caused against your people.
here’s a great article to end with
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/201142612714539672.html
good job buddy
really good read
keep on!
Great article. I really enjoyed the way you dealt with the broader narrative of the bible. My sense though, is that the church (as a social/cultural entity) has become so enmeshed in empire and money, that disentanglement is very difficult – if not impossible. The cost of letting go is too great. On the one hand, leaders get money and control; on the other, people get a convenient substitute for really following Jesus – a placebo faith that is so comprehensively aligned with their quest for wealth, convenience and happiness that it makes no real demands other than for them to give the leaders the money and power they seem to desire so much (as a means to an end of course….)
Excellent post Sean! The system is destined to reach its empirical climax; our calling is to be kingdom agents; our job is to set individuals free spiritually so that they trust God implicitly as the world begins to change. I honestly believe we are now on the brink of cataclysmic change, which will be driven by the powers that be. Interestingly enough I believe Satan will destroy the global capitalist system in due course from within replacing it with the ‘new world’ of ‘evolved’ human consciousness… where light and darkness will be virtually indistinguishable… I believe to achieve this, the present destabilization of the world must run its course – increase in political and ‘natural’ disasters; increased interpersonal hostility at every level of society; the collapse of the global (pseudo-capitalist) economy; the disintegration of the fiat money system; the merge of global spiritual ideologies (Including institutional Christianity) and the gradual centralization of global security and resources.
In short… the solidification of ‘the tribulation’.
We are called to provide a sure, uncompromising, contrast within this evolving world… a contrast we will pay for in blood… maybe no literally, for the time being.
But as Sean so clearly portrays… the kingdom is ultimately “not of this world”, it is real, it is powerful and it will triumph in the end when the Ancient of Days separates, forever, light from darkness.
I honestly believe that we are called to be that contrast wherever we are… I believe some are called out of the thick of the system to prepare ‘cities of refuge’ (themselves only a temporary expression of aspects of the kingdom) and others, the emerging prophets of our time, are called to do strategic battle on the coalface.
I believe we now stand of ‘the eve of battle’ and that God, far from being passive, is preparing and positioning his people to endure the final and greatest assault on His authentic, eternal authority. This must happen so that when eternal justice is served, it will be absolute.
Because our battle is not against “flesh and blood”, we have a divine mandate to sustain the light of divine love and truth in the midst of the darkness until “all these things will be completed” Dan. 12:7
Indeed, but how on earth do you buck a trend that is so entrenched, so pervasive and so all-encompassing? It amazes me how so much of the life and teachings of Jesus’ are in direct opposition to our current culture yet this does not temper our efforts to try and mix the 2, caught with 1 foot in each world whilst not being a citizen of either.
Jesus was a revolutionary.
A question – if Constantine and his “panel” put the scriptures together who is to say they got it right? Is a scary thought that the book we see as God’s word and infallible could in fact not be (infallible)…
I think it is correct to say that the system cannot be changed. And it will not be changed. Look at Christ for example. He did not change the system, nor did He destroy it.
Rather Christ gathered and empowered those who saw it for what it was (and still is) and “worked” with these few. These few in turn got the message across to others who were willing to listen and receive this message of change (Truth) and so on.
Empires rise and fall. This is their cycle and there is something within our nature that draws us to them and most likely always will. Not everyone will listen, not everyone will receive.
Has Christ not maybe charged us to share His message with those who are willing and not to fight Empires?
What comes to mind is the parable of the seeds falling on various soil types and also that of casting pearls before pigs.
Leave the pigs, feed the sheep.
Tim Keller has some good insight into our deep longing for a city (which is a design of God) in which there is safety and justice and a beautifully functioning community. Unfortunately, the concept of a city left in the hands of sinful men inevitably becomes Empire. Perhaps all the church can endeavor to do is practice redeemed community in stark contrast to Empire, and hope that the world will once again note the difference between gospel-centered community and normal humanistic society.
My personal conviction is that Christianity was never designed to be a majority religion, and almost without fail whenever we see a vast majority of a community claiming to be Christian, its not true faith in Christ but a form of religious Empire. That’s why I don’t think a revival will ever take place where the majority of the world gets ‘saved’- the Bible seems to point to the opposite happening- hearts will grow colder. Revival is then when the distinction between those who choose Christ and those who reject Him becomes obvious.
So the true Christ-follower is destined to swim against the tide, as the Bible so often warns us, and as Hebrews 11 brilliantly illustrates. We’re longing for a country of our own, and so we persevere, trusting that Christ is preparing that perfect city for us. Let’s not get caught on the wrong side of Empire.
Great Post Sean,
I remember a few years ago when I was first contemplating the possibility that evolution was true I found the writings of James Arraj from innerexplorations.com to be quite helpful. In the link below he discusses the theological implications of the big bang and evolution and where it leaves Christians who accept these realities:
http://innerexplorations.com/chtheomortext/chmys.htm
I found it interesting that even from a scientific perspective the genetics of the human race point to a single mother and single father from which all modern humans developed.
But of even more interest was his discussion on the “The Great Leap”.
Science predicts that the hominids split off from the line that was to lead to chimpanzees some 5 to 7 million years ago in Africa (which is why it is technically incorrect to say evolution teaches that we evolved from apes – it doesn’t. It teaches that we share a common ancestor).
The various hominids (like Australopithecines, Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus and the Neanderthals) that came from this initial ancestor share many character traits. They developed primitive tools and some mastered the use of fire. However, even though some of these hominids lived on the earth for millions of years their development was quite static. They made tools, but these tool sets remained unchanged for millions of years and showed no signs of development.
But suddenly, about 50 000 year ago, a new line of hominids appear.
Arraj notes that,
“These new hominids have undergone some profound transformation which has been called a great leap forward, or a cognitive revolution. They seem to burst out of Africa and colonize the whole world in a relatively short period of time, and their culture appears qualitatively different from what went before. They make fine tools and complicated weapons. They utilize not only stone, but bone, antlers and ivory. They sew clothes and build dwellings, and therefore can enter environments where no hominids had ever gone before. And they create beautiful art. And unlike the hominids of the past, this cultural revolution does not appear connected with some anatomical change in brain size, and it doesn’t stay stable over long periods of time. These humans are continually innovative, and through what they create, whether it is ostrich shell beads and ornaments found in the caves of Africa, or the great cave art of Europe, we recognize these hominids as ourselves.”
Arraj goes on to suggest that the sudden change came about through the direct intervention of God. This intervention he believes is the infusion of a set of early humans (the genetic “first parents” of science and the biblical Adam and Eve) with a divine spirit.
It was the gift of spirit that enabled the sudden explosion of human consciousness for which science alone has no explanation. Suddenly these hominids became true human beings.
He also suggests that in some way, alluded to in the ‘mythology of Eden’, these first parents broke relationship with God who gave them this gift of spirit and this had real spiritual and psychological (and perhaps even physical) consequences for all of their children.
Have been reading quite widely on evolution recently and, contrary to popular belief (it would seem) there are major inaccuracies regarding scientific theory on the traditionally held links between Homo sapiens and their proposed predecessors. I have discovered how simplistic it is to speak of these things as though they are established facts.
Well, I don’t really disagree Chris, I think scientists of varying stripes would often like us to believe they know more than they do – or rather I think that most people assume that scientists know more than they do, while many scientists themselves are happy to admit where sciences has not yet proven and issue. However, I have found that most of the so called evidence against evolution (from Christian sources) doesn’t generally hold the scientific weight it claims to hold.
Most young earth creationists are not as well schooled in evolutionary theory (or real science) as they would like their readers to believe. And most are using theories and propositions that have been academically refuted by a broad range of scientists. These creationists often hold no academic qualifications or at best an undergraduate science degree.
I used to read the AnswersinGenesis website a few years ago and was convinced that the academic world was conspiring against these “scientists” who were clearly providing evidence for a young earth and a non-evolutionary origin of being. But as I continued to read other websites and scientific articles I realized that their proofs were actually far more unreliable that the general scientific consensus.
By far the “theory” of evolution is the most widely held proposition for our origins, and this even by most Christian and Religious scientists who are quite comfortable with the idea of Theistic Evolution whereby it was God’s design to bring about life through the Big Bang and Evolution.
All I’m saying is consider the fact that many of these creationist books and websites have a fundamental bias towards the clear scientific data – they hold the bible to be a scientific book, which it is not, and thus they begin their reasoning with their conclusions already written. This is not the way evolutionary theory developed, it was rather from the careful observation of what is, in the world, in the rocks, in the fossils, in space etc. that gave rise to the theories which we know know as evolution, the big bang and others.
See this website for some examples of Christian scientists who support evolutionary theory and an old earth:
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/young_earth_creation_science.html
And this article – Is there really scientific evidence for a young earth:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~matthewt/yeclaimsbeta.html#civ
Hey Sean,
I was struggling to keep my next reply from turning into a post of its’ own but lost the battle. I decided to post it on my blog instead
Feel free to leave a reply.
Much Love in the Lord Jesus.
Hey Jacques, I’m with you totally. I’m not by any means advocating ‘young-earth creationism’ over evolution, what I am saying is that the science of human evolution from lesser life forms is not based upon absolute, established fact…which is important because many naively believe it is (I’m also not saying young-earth creationism is either). It is a position marked by speculation and a significant degree of inaccuracy. What interests me is how sold out so many lesser-informed ‘anti-religion’ people are to the ‘religion of science’. To recover this thread, It is clear that both science and religion have played a major role in reinforcing empire. Both disciplines overlap in so many ways, no doubt reinforcing each others good points, and emulating each others bad points. I don’t think it’s accurate at all to say that science is entirely objective and honest… it simply isn’t true.
I found Sean’s blog a couple of days ago. In his welcome he says, “I was meant to be a prophet” and I just had to read all of his blog. I’m now 75 and our journeys have been so very different, but it’s obvious that we have a similar perspective with a few significant differences. But then iron sharpens iron!
Then I read this topic – a perspective that I can relate to! I’m sure that God’s view of ‘progress’ and ours are not the same. I’m a Brit who lived through the second World War. As a teenager I was aware of the changes taking place in the British Empire. I got into serious trouble for daring to suggest that the Empire had been built largely on greed and selfishness. That didn’t go down well, but history has shown that I was more right than I had realised.
I could really relate to some of the comments here – I’ve been outside the walls of ‘traditional’ Christianity for some 40 years. We know of the rise and fall of empires. I would suggest that a similar story is true of denominations and the Christian RELIGION in general. The problems are I believe so entrenched that disentanglement is just not possible – and yes, I believe that we are on the brink of a cataclysmic change.
I’ve recently finished putting together something of the story of my journey and some of the questions that I have considered over the years.
My post entitled “Christendom” seems to be particularly appropriate.
Chris –
I hear you – we see through a glass darkly and so do the scientists
Peter –
I liked your blog and look forward to reading some more
Sean and everybody else –
I found some articles that I think are quite relevant to this discussion.
Larry Hurtado and Ben Witherington are both leading New Testament Scholars. I’ve read a number of their articles and one of Ben Witherington’s books. They happen to disagree with each other on a number of issues, but also respect each other as serious academics and experts in their fields.
Larry Hurtado has a good article on the Chi Rho symbol you mentioned – here.
and also suggests that the secrecy of early Christianity is sometimes over-exaggerated.
Ben Witherington has done a series of posts reviewing a new book called, ‘Defending Constantine’ by Peter Leithart, which does a good job of debunking some of the (evangelical) myths attributed to the man. Ryan over at the ‘A Word about Words’ blog has put together a nice set of links.