Stand Up To Tyranny: How To Respond To The Evils Of Our Age | Scoop News – Scoop.co.nz

Tuesday, 30 March 2021, 5:05 pmOpinion: John W Whitehead

By John W Whitehead & NishaWhitehead

The church mustbe reminded that it is not the master or the servant of thestate, but rather the conscience of the state. It must bethe guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it willbecome an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritualauthority.Martin Luther King Jr. (AKnock at Midnight, June 11, 1967)

Inevery age, we find ourselves wrestling with the question ofhow Jesus Christthe itinerant preacher and revolutionaryactivist who died challenging the police state of his time,namely, the Roman Empirewould respond to the moralquestions of our day.

For instance, would Jesusadvocate, as so many evangelical Christian leaders have donein recent years, for congregants to submit to yourleaders and those in authority, which in the Americanpolice state translates to complying, conforming,submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority andgenerally doing whatever a government official tells you todo?

What would Jesus do?

Study the life andteachings of Jesus, and you may be surprised at how relevanthe is to our modern age.

A radical nonconformist whochallenged authority at every turn, Jesus spent his adultlife speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo ofhis day, pushing back against the abuses of the RomanEmpire, and providinga blueprint for standing up to tyranny that would befollowed by those, religious and otherwise, who came afterhim.

Those living through this present age ofgovernment lockdowns, immunity passports, militarizedpolice, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmedcitizens, roadside strip searches, invasive surveillance andthe like might feel as if these events are unprecedented.However, the characteristics of a police state and itsreasons for being are no different today than they were inJesus lifetime: control, power and money.

Much likethe American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus daywas characterized by secrecy, surveillance, a widespreadpolice presence, a citizenry treated like suspects withlittle recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, amilitary empire, martial law, and political retributionagainst those who dared to challenge the power of thestate.

A police state extends far beyond the actionsof law enforcement. In fact, a police state is characterizedby bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation ofsuspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread policepresence, and a citizenry with little recourse againstpolice actions.

Indeed, the police state inwhich Jesus lived (and died) and its striking similaritiesto modern-day America are beyondtroubling.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule bythe elite. As the chasm between the wealthy andpoor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class andthe wealthy class became synonymous, while the lowerclasses, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms,grew disinterested in the government and easily distractedby bread and circuses. Much like America today, withits lack of government transparency, overt domesticsurveillance, and ruleby the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire wereshrouded insecrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watchfor any potential threats to its power. The resultingstate-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by themilitary, which acted as investigators, enforcers,torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today thatrole is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department ofHomeland Security and the increasingly militarized policeforces across the country.

Widespread policepresence. The Roman Empire used its military forcesto maintain the peace, thereby establishing a policestate that reached into all aspects of a citizens life.In this way, these military officers, used to address abroad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced thewill of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of localpolice and federal agents, are employed to carryout routine search warrants for minor crimes such asmarijuana possession and credit cardfraud.

Citizenry with little recourse againstthe police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedomand independence nearly vanished, as did any real senseof local governance and national consciousness. Similarly,in America today, citizenslargely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented inthe face of a power-hungry federal government. As states andlocalities are brought under direct control by federalagencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessnessgrips the nation.

Perpetual wars and amilitary empire. Much like America today with itspractice of policing the world, war and anover-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for theRoman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsulato all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extendinginto North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition tosignificant foreign threats, wars were wagedagainst inchoate, unstructured and socially inferiorfoes.

Martial law. Eventually,Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that leftthe citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressivetotalitarian regime. In the absence of resources toestablish civic police forces, the Romans reliedincreasingly on the military to intervene in all matters ofconflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scufflesto large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, withtheir martiallaw training drills on American soil, militarizedweapons and shoot first, ask questions later mindset,the Roman soldier had theexercise of lethal force at his fingertips with thepotential of wreaking havoc on normal citizenslives.

A nation of suspects. Just asthe American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects tobe tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empirelooked upon all potential insubordinates, from the commonthief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to itspower. The insurrectionist was seen as directlychallenging the Emperor. A bandit, or revolutionist,was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was alwaysconsidered guilty and deserving of the most savagepenalties, including capital punishment. Bandits wereusually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring othersfrom challenging the power of the state. Jesusexecution was one such public punishment.

Actsof civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Startingwith his act of civil disobedience at the Jewish temple, thesite of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin,the supreme Jewish council, Jesus branded himself apolitical revolutionary. When Jesus with the help of hisdisciples, blocks the entrance to the courtyard andforbids anyone carrying goods for sale or trade fromentering the Temple, he committed a blatantly criminaland seditious act, an act that undoubtedly precipitatedhis arrest and execution. Because the commercial eventswere sponsored by the religious hierarchy, which in turn wasoperated by consent of the Roman government, Jesus attackon the money chargers and traders can be seen as an attack on Romeitself, an unmistakable declaration of political andsocial independence from the Romanoppression.

Military-style arrests in the deadof night. Jesus arrest account testifies to thefact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary.Eerily similar to todays SWAT team raids, Jesus wasarrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavilyarmed fleet of soldiers. Rather than merely asking forJesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuerscollaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a governmentinformant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identificationmarker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery mustbe used to obtain this seemingly dangerousrevolutionists cooperation.

Torture andcapital punishment. In Jesus day, religiouspreachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolentprotesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed,the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed aprotest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course.However, government authorities were quick to dispose ofleaders and movements that appeared to threaten the RomanEmpire. The charges leveled against Jesusthat he was athreat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Romantaxes and claimed to be the rightful Kingwere purelypolitical, not religious. To the Romans, any one of thesecharges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which wasusually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals,revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

Jesus waspresented to Pontius Pilate as a disturber ofthe political peace, a leader of a rebellion, apolitical threat, and most gravelya claimant to kingship,a king of the revolutionary type. After Jesus isformally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death bycrucifixion, the Roman means of executing criminalsconvicted of high treason. The purpose of crucifixion wasnot so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immenselypublic statement intended to visually warn all those whowould challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it wasreserved solely for the most extreme political crimes:treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After beingruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to across.

As Professor Mark Lewis Taylorobserved:

The cross within Roman politicsand culture was a marker of shame, of being a criminal. Ifyou were put to the cross, you were marked as shameful, ascriminal, but especially as subversive. And there werethousands of people put to the cross. The cross was actuallypositioned at many crossroads, and, as New Testament scholarPaula Fredricksen has reminded us, it served as kind of apublic service announcement that said, Act like thisperson did, and this is how you will endup.

Jesusthe revolutionary,the political dissident, and the nonviolent activistlivedand died in a police state. Any reflection onJesus life and death within a police state must take intoaccount several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly againstsuch things as empires, controlling people, state violenceand power politics. Jesus challenged the political andreligious belief systems of his day. And worldly powersfeared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control ofthrones or government but because he undercut their claimsof supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a timewhen doing so couldand often didcost a person hislife.

Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the politicaldissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has beenlargely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smilingJesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwiserendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power andpolitics.

Yet for those who truly study the life andteachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outrightresistance to war, materialism and empire.

Ultimately,as I point out in my book BattlefieldAmerica: The War on the American People, this is thecontradiction that must be resolved if the radicalJesusthe one who stood up to the Roman Empire and wascrucified as a warning to others not to challenge thepowers-that-beis to be an example for our modernage.

After all, there is so much suffering andinjustice in the world, and so much good that can be done bythose who truly aspire to follow Jesus Christsexample.

We must decide whether we will follow thepath of least resistancewilling to turn a blind eye towhat Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the evils ofsegregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, tothe moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corrodingeffects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions thatdeprive men of work and food, and to the insanities ofmilitarism and the self-defeating effects of physicalviolenceor whether we will be transformednonconformists dedicated to justice, peace, andbrotherhood.

As King explained in a powerful sermondelivered in 1954, This command not to conform comes [from] Jesus Christ, the worlds most dedicatednonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challengesthe conscience ofmankind.

Furthermore:

We need torecapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who werenonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refusedto shape their witness according to the mundane patterns ofthe world. Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune, and lifeitself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right.Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants. Theirpowerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils asinfanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, theycaptured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ The hope of asecure and livable world lies with disciplinednonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, andbrotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic,scientific, and religious freedom have always beennonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress ofmankind, put your faith in thenonconformist!

Honesty impels me to admit thattransformed nonconformity, which is always costly and neveraltogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valleyof the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having asix-year-old daughter ask, Daddy, why do you have to goto jail so much? But we are gravely mistaken to thinkthat Christianity protects us from the pain and agony ofmortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that thecross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian,one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties andagonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it untilthat very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us tothat more excellent way that comes only throughsuffering.

In these days of worldwide confusion, thereis a dire need for men and women who will courageously dobattle for truth. We must make a choice. Will we continue tomarch to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, orwill we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, moveto its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music oftime, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to thesoul saving music of eternity?

ABOUT JOHNW. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and authorJohn W. Whitehead is founder and president The RutherfordInstitute. His books BattlefieldAmerica: The War on the American People andAGovernment of Wolves: The Emerging American PoliceState are available at http://www.amazon.com.He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The RutherfordInstitute. Information about The Rutherford Institute isavailable at http://www.rutherford.org.

Scoop Media

Become a member Find out more

Follow this link:

Stand Up To Tyranny: How To Respond To The Evils Of Our Age | Scoop News - Scoop.co.nz