Christian Civil Disobedience

The events of the past few days have been heavy on my mind and I find myself going back and forth on the subject of Christian civil disobedience.  First, I want to say that I am a Bible-believing Christian and I love Jesus with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and seek to follow Him in all I do.  This post is not about what we SHOULD do, it is just a discussion starter.  I am not sure how we should respond to all that is going on, but I am doing the only thing I know how to do - look to scripture to see how Jesus and His followers handled situations like this.

My first concern with this is that in fighting for our ‘rights’, that we are focusing on ourselves and our cause rather than the hearts of those we fight against.  The Great Commission didn’t tell us to go into all the world and fight for our right to practice our faith as we please.  It says, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:19-20).  If we are fighting for OUR rights, are we telling people about Jesus in the way we were called to? Romans 13 tells us to be subject to the authorities and governments God has placed over us and not to rebel against these authorities in order to maintain a clear conscience. It also states that to fulfill God’s law, all that is required is to love others.  

My second concern is our perspective on our mission as Christians.  We seem to think that our mission is to condemn sin and that somehow people will desire to come to know Christ as a result of our reminders.  Throughout the New Testament the word truth is used over and over again.  Personally, I have always thought that truth meant the law, but I was reminded today that Truth means Jesus.  He said that He is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’.  John 8:32 states that 'we will know the Truth and the Truth will set us free' meaning only Jesus can set people free.  ‘Speaking the truth in love…’ (Ephesians 4:15) truly becomes telling people about Jesus rather than nicely telling them the sins they are committing.   As I mentioned above, God calls us to communicate His love and let that be the difference in us. It is not our job to change hearts and minds.  We can try all we want, but we can only modify behavior.  Only Jesus can transform hearts and minds.  We are only asked to tell and invite. When faced with Jesus, people become very aware of how they fall short and are then overwhelmed with his offer of grace in spite of it all.  

There are many situations where people disobeyed authorities in order to preach the gospel or to worship God, but not many where the situation called for a Christian to rebel against the government in order to fight for rights.  Yes, I do believe that the punishment for this particular clerk refusing to do a certain part of her job was extreme.  Most people would have been fired or compelled to resign, not jailed.  However, personally, I would have found her more of a ‘hero’ of the faith if she was doing what her job required yet slipping tracts in the papers or saying ‘Jesus loves you and so do I’.  We have a misguided idea that if we don’t point out a person’s sin or we do something that seems to condone their behavior, that we are abandoning our faith.  We need to refer to how Jesus related to those who needed Him most.  Are we really gaining anything if we maintain our rights but neglect to offer spiritual freedom to another person? Obviously there is no ‘one size fits all’ response because, on a physical level, a doctor being forced to perform abortions is VASTLY different than a clerk being forced to sign her name to a marriage license for a same-sex couple. Also, I realize that there are many other dynamics involved in this in regards to our government systems.  This is just something for us to think about because it’s not going to get better and it will most likely affect you personally in some way.  

Do you have thoughts about this? I’m sure you do.  Feel free to discuss, but please be courteous.  As we come closer to ‘the end’, it is imperative that we live in unity as Christians (Ephesians 4).