WAS JESUS ANTI-NATIONALISTIC?

 

 

Progressive Christians regard Jesus as one of their own, a citizen of a borderless world:

Progressive Christians have long held the conviction that the whole Christian-America-thing is actually anti-Christian. Christianity has an implicit anti-nationalist bent. Jesus actively resisted the nationalist aspirations of his followers, which made him a disappointment to them — and ultimately cost him his life (initially!). https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2014/08/07/4-ways-christian-fundamentalists-get-progressive-christianity-shockingly-wrong/33537 

Was Jesus an anti-nationalist? Admittedly, He was inclusive of all who would come to Him (John 6:37), However, He did not initiate them into a borderless existence but into the Kingdom of God. 

This Kingdom is a Kingdom set apart from the rest of the world. It is exclusive but inclusive of any who will come. It is also a Kingdom with stringent requirements and boundaries: 

 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) 

Nor is this Kingdom universal but particular, for a particular people who would enter it: 

"Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” (Luke 13:24) 

Consistent with the particularism of His Kingdom, Jesus only prayed for a particular group of people:

“I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine:” (John 17:9) 

Jesus consistently affirmed the particularism of the Old Testament against progressive universalism. Likewise, He did not teach that we have equal responsibility for all parents but affirmed our overriding responsibility for our own parents (Matthew 15), children, and family (Matthew 24:43). 

This was a particularism reaffirmed by Jesus' authoritative commentators, the Apostles: 

But if any provided not for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8) 

Even though Jesus had fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant by bringing in the New, He never spoke against the former. Instead, He insisted that we should live according to it: 

But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”(Matthew 4:4; 5:17-19) 

Under Mosaic Law, Israel had been both a civil and religious state. While the Law provided for a separation of powers—prophet, priest, and king—a separation of religion and state had been unthinkable. God and state were to operate together. The state and its laws were partnered with religion, all under God, as a witness to Israel’s God to the surrounding nations. 

Israel did allow non-Jews to settle in Israel. However, they could not worship as they had before, nor could they proselytize. One law- the Mosaic Law - would apply to all: Leviticus 24:16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the LORD shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death. 

There is a Biblical place for patriotism, at least for Christ-honoring expressions of patriotic concern. If we are to have an overriding love and concern for our wives, children, and even our block association or neighborhood, it is certainly not illegitimate to have an overriding and particular concern for our nation. 

The Church has, in so many ways, proved to be a vehicle of mercy to its community. What had been the fruits of America’s Christianity? Alexis de Tocqueville, French statesman, historian, and social philosopher wrote “Democracy in America” (1835). It has been described as "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." According to Tocqueville, freedom and morality both found their American incarnation in Christianity: 

“In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people.... Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate.”

“I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

DISCERNMENT & DECEPTION

 

 

We flourish or flounder relative to the things we believe. Every spiritual blessing is imparted through what we believe and know about our Lord (2 Peter 1:2-3). Consequently, our welfare depends upon discerning fact from fiction, what the Bible teaches from what it doesn’t teach. Here is an example of how one renowned influencer distorted Scripture for his own malign purposes:

 "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited." (Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922)

Actually, he hated Christianity and persecuted Christians. He was even able to deceive many churches to support his national and racial policies and to close their eyes to the worst oppression? He posed as a champion of righteousness, twisting Scripture to bolster his claims. Why did segments of the Church believe him? They either didn’t know Scripture or didn’t care about it. In either case, Christ wasn’t first in their lives. Instead, their tastes and fears held the reigns at a great expense to all.

In Contrast to hatred, the Apostle Paul had written: Romans 9:3–5 “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.”