DPF-20
Q&A: SHOULD CHRISTIANS GATHER AT CHURCH WHEN GOVERNMENTS SAY NO? Jesus advocated a very meek and submissive lifestyle “meek and lowly in heart; turn the other cheek; go the second mile”” to the Jews living in a harshly unjust, occupied land. Mt. 11:28-30
Paul advocated a subjection to “every ordinance” of the Roman Rule. Rom 13:1 is an imperative, hupotasso “line up behind”
Peter advocated quiet and peaceable living “submit to every ordinance” (1 P2:13), in v. 17 going so far as to say “HONORING” NERO as the Emperor.
Whew, those three are strikingly different from what has come to be AMERICAN Evangelicalism.
We are often seen as militant, belligerent, and fighting for our rights.
It seems we have confused the American way & democracy for Christianity.
They are not the same. One is political, economic, and temporal; the other is Biblical, spiritual, and eternal.
So we believe that civil disobedience is justified only when the government compels us to sin, or when there is no legal recourse for fighting injustice. The reason we draw the line there is simply because all the scriptural examples of civil disobedience fall squarely into those two situations. Any other kind of activism has no precedent in the Word of God and violates the spirit of Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2.