Collin Willis

Weaponizing the Good Book

We’re in the middle of a political election cycle, one of the most bizarre and unpredictable ones that I can recall. As election rhetoric heats up, you are bound to hear one candidate after another use the Bible as a shield and a foundation for whatever beliefs they hold. I write this because I am frustrated by the wide acceptance of political positioning as Biblical positioning. This isn’t to say that the Bible can’t inform politics, but that more often in this country it is the political slants informing Biblical interpretation. To illustrate my frustrations and the danger of politicians weaponizing the Bible, I’d like to make the following point; democracy is unbiblical.

Biblical Governments

The Bible recants the dawn of creation until well into what we would consider the Classical Era. Many of its stories take place before the dawn of government and many more exist outside the hierarchies that were being established in concurrent civilizations at the time. In this pre-government period the Israelites are governed by God directly in many cases; Adam and Eve or Abraham and his first children for instance. The first time that a main character exists within the context of what we would consider a government is when Joseph rises above the ranks to rule as 2nd in the land. In this instance, Joseph governs within a theocratic monarchy. However, since this is an Egyptian creation and not a mechanism of God’s chosen people, I won’t take it as evidence.

The God Given Method

The system of God relaying instructions to his followers becomes wide in scale during the Israelites’ time in Egypt. Here God gives instruction to Moses, who then shares them with Aaron and the two of them lead their people. This serves as the template for what would become Israel’s system of Judges. Later, post-Exodus, Moses appoints intermediary judges to solve disputes at the behest of his father-in-law. Jethro’s status as a follower of God is questioned by many historians and there is widespread debate over whether he was a priest to other gods or a reformed priest who discovered and followed the same God as Moses. Either way, the Bible seems to endorse his political advice to Moses. This system established by Jethro is a primitive judicial system aimed more at dealing with compromise between individuals rather than in creating a legislative or executive modus operandi.

At the same time as these minor judges are in operation, God delivers the framework of what would become Israel’s law to Moses. This first codified law includes the Ten Commandments and the later specifics listed primarily in the book of Leviticus. This also establishes the Priesthood, intercessors chosen from Aaron’s line to govern sacrifices and atonement between the Israelites and God. I would argue that the priesthood falls under more of what we would consider religion today than it does what we would consider government. However, the Ten Commandments and the Levitical laws do comprise the bulwark of Israel and then Judah’s legislative system, with God acting through the Judges (and later prophets and Kings) to form what we would consider an executive branch.

While it might seem stark in contrast to other civilizations of the time, this system of government isn’t too far off from other ways of thought. Monarchies and theocracies existed in various forms at the time. What I believe makes the Judges system unique isn’t that the leader claims to be operating on instruction from God, but that this claim isn’t used also as a basis for a familial line of succession. Unlike in places such as Egypt, the next representative of God isn’t a relative in most instances.

A Compromise

The Judges system guided the Israelites for many generations. Judges, Prophets, and military leaders from all sorts of backgrounds rose to guide Israel and commune with the Lord on how to do so. However, the Israelites found themselves isolated in a world where the next leader and the system of governance was becoming more autocratic and more clearly defined. Kings were the norm and the Israelites, who lived at the nexus of several major empires, began to wonder why they didn’t have one. Fearing the power of their enemy, the Philistines, and against the behest of the Judge and Prophet Samuel, the Israelites clamored for a King. Samuel admonishes them to consider the importance and significance of Prophet and Judge leadership, but the will of the people wins out and eventually Saul is chosen as Israel’s first King.

Though Saul is a monarch, the Israelite monarchy isn’t established by dominion or crafty political maneuvering like the later dictators of Rome. Israel is made a kingdom by a tide of populism rooted in fear. Though this is a far stretch from what we would consider a democratic election, it is one of the closest examples the Bible lends to us. It is also one that ended in disaster not just for Saul but for David’s line of succession as well. Rampant instances of the people leading the ruler turn Israel away from the God who gave them their desire for a King, eventually bringing both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah under the violent thumb of hostile nations from Babylon all the way to the Roman empire.

So far the Old Testament doesn’t seem that fond of democracy.

Republican Values

Eventually the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Egyptians were all replaced as the dominant political powers of the land. The Roman Empire, first a Republic, was the government in between the Old and New Testament. During the life of Jesus and extending through the rest of the New Testament, Rome has been converted into a hybrid between Republican governance and Authoritarian Imperial power with the latter increasingly outweighing the former.

Beneath all this lies the evolution of the Jewish faith and its own authoritarian forms of government. While the framework that guides the Pharisees and the Sadducees was rooted in the instruction passed down to Moses, even this was a dividing issue amongst the Hebrews. The Pharisees held firm to Jewish legal tradition while the Sadducees focused more on the temple and their role within it as the path to salvation and guide to social order. Yet both groups existed under the Roman thumb and were forced to adhere to its restrictions amidst great persecution and often great genocide. A Republican form of government created the boogeyman of the New Testament and established the institutions that would later persecute Christians.

Christ ’33

A democratic vote leads Jesus to the cross. Roman Governor Pontius Pilate gives the people the choice between releasing Jesus whom he has personally finished with or releasing Barabbas, a political insurrectionist. The Judean people choose Barabbas and despite what he knew to be unjust, Pilate bows to the whim of the people and respects the results of this “vote”. While we know this to be a part of God’s plan in the great scheme of things, this is a pretty vivid representation of the dangers of populism as a movement and the democratic process as a legal basis.

In these three Biblical examples we’ve seen populism and democracy vote for a monarch in direct disobedience (sin) to the Lord. We’ve seen the greatest representative form of government give in to fascist tendencies as Caesar is supported by populists to become the first dictator and precursor to the Imperial Rome that plagues the New Testament. Lastly we’ve seen populist voices and direct democracy lead to the crucifixion of God’s only son. I’d argue the Bible doesn’t paint inspiring examples of democracy if ever it supports it at all.

What Government Does the Bible Support?

It doesn’t. To argue that the Bible supports any form of worldly government or specific action requires a very elastic reading of the Bible. To fixate on it as a playbook for modern political strategy is to miss the grand point of it; that this world is broken and awaiting redemption by the one being capable of bringing it back to order and restoration. The Bible wasn’t written because God’s real desire was for trickle down economics nor because He thought the Garden of Eden would be a good parallel for communist theory.

I’d like to reposition this article by pointing out its faults. I used Biblical passages and pulled them out of their original time and genre in order to meet the needs of my personal beliefs and political points. I took things out of context and passed them through a lens far different than the times and places in which they originally occurred. I believe in the Bible. I believe that is the divinely inspired word of God as given to its chosen authors and passed down through generations until it was eventually canonized and delivered in the formats we receive it today. Because I believe that I must acknowledge that it is at its core an ancient series of documents delivered to different people at different times. This does not mean that it is irrelevant to today, but it does mean that I cannot simply copy and paste my interpretations of it onto the problems I want it to solve. The more that I try to squeeze it through my own needle points so that it weaves the tapestry I want it to, the more I bastardize it by removing it from its rightful context and intent.

The Bible Doesn’t Tell Me So

The Bible does not address democracy, bicameral systems, or the modern political machine. It was not written to an audience that could have fathomed the level of political, religious, and social freedom we have today. Democracy is Unbiblical because it is simply not present within the chronological context of the Bible’s historical books. That doesn’t give me the right to use the Good Book as a bullet shield to declare my purported belief as divinely inspired or heavenly sanctioned. It gives me the right to look like an ass (in the KJV context, not a swear word) while cherry-picking verses that reap the rewards I want.

The Bible does not tell me that gun control is a right or that the free market economy is how God wishes the world to operate. It doesn’t tell me that socialized medicine is the right way to love my neighbor or that democratic institutions can save the world. This election season there are a lot of people who are going to stand and claim that God told them to vote for this person or the Bible told them to endorse this policy. A lot of people are going to smile at the cameras and put their words into God’s mouth and sadly a lot of people will believe them. Be wary of the people who “speak for God” in ways that only seem to benefit them. Utilize the Bible as the resource that it is and compare and contrast those who it shows us spoke for the Lord and how their words and their lives contradict with politicians both red and blue.

Slavery as a Biblical Institution

The Bible was a good friend of the slaveholder and many did (and still continue) to justify America’s worst sin as something ordained by God. They pull verses like Ephesians 6: 5-9 and claim that slaves should have been respectful to the masters who whipped them, raped them, and profited off of their expenditure. Conveniently they ignore the following verses that dictated the behavior of the masters as well. They also do not look to the book of Exodus where the Bible frequently illustrates the sinfulness of the slave masters and the special attention He has for the cries of the oppressed. They also ignore the fact that many of the Bible’s 66 books were written to enslaved peoples, oppressed peoples, and the displaced. It wasn’t written to justify the systems that oppressed them, but to give hope in a lasting freedom to the downtrodden and oppressed.

The command that slaves obey their masters isn’t said to benefit the masters. It is a reminder that Paul gives to the church in Ephesus about their duty to live as Christ lived for the sake of the body as well as the sake of themselves. It is a warning of the severity of what it means to live and behave in a Christlike manner, not a condoning of the system that requires that sacrifice of them.

How can we use the Bible?

Carefully. I do not believe there is anything wrong with using Biblical examples to inform your personal beliefs, but the levity with which we attribute those beliefs to what the Bible tells us and the modern political lenses we distort them through are a great danger not just to the Christian faith and to the nation, but to our ability to follow Christ’s example and live as He lived. What conclusions we believe the Bible leads us to and how we pursue them both with and against our neighbor is where the real issue lies. In order to better understand this, let’s take an example from the first few pages of Genesis.

“In the Beginning…”

Genesis 1 recants God’s ordering of the Heavens, the Earth, the seas, and the living things between them. Genesis 2 goes deeper into the creation of man and the first commands that God gives the creation made in His image. Before sin has even entered the world, Adam is tasked with working in the garden and taking care of it. God created man and entrusted him with caring for his creation, establishing both the idea that God cares not just for mankind but the entirety of what He spent 6 days creating. It also makes it very clear that man’s task even when the world was perfect was to maintain and care for that created order. The creation narrative isn’t really about creation. The world was created as a formless, dark, and water covered void in Genesis 1:1-2. The creation narrative in the rest of Genesis 1 is about God bringing order and growth to what He had made. Adam’s task is the same as the one God took upon himself, just on a much smaller scale. Adam is asked to steward what God has given him and his descendants.

This mandate to Adam is a foundational piece of why I believe we have a responsibility to take care of the Earth, to steward is growth, and care for the other created beings upon it. I then take that belief and I use it as the basis of my support for climate change initiatives, political candidates who support them, and technological advancements like clean energy and electric cars. I do not think this is an inappropriate use of the Bible as a political foundation. The issue becomes when I begin to use that belief as the only way to interpret those passages and those policies and political actions as the only means to “living biblically”.

On the flip side of that stance, I think a compelling case could also be made that because Adam’s stewardship was for the Garden and given before the fall, that sin has changed the call. Working the ground is later given to Adam and his descendants as a curse, the Garden locked up, and the world doomed beyond man’s ability to restore it. That interpretation can then be used to dismiss the stances that I personally believe in and the political actions I would take. Yet they both stem from the same source material. The issue isn’t that either stance is rooted in the Bible, but that modern political machinations have sutured those texts to their pre-existing beliefs.

Biblical Mandates

The Bible doesn’t address climate change because fossil fuels, climatology, and even the most basic tenants of science were ridiculously beyond the comprehension and life of those Genesis was originally passed down to. To say that the Bible endorses or disavows political action is a dangerous thing, yet it is an action we see constantly from both sides of the political spectrum. When I believe that the Bible endorses my bill or my law, I then create conditionals to the Christian faith which are more often than not used to alienate and attack my neighbor.

To disagree with a political opponent or a neighbor is okay. What is not okay is pimping out the Bible to back your political stance and to claim its endorsement of your party and its actions. When we take the time to acknowledge the role that our experiences and interpretations play in our understanding of the Bible, we not only gain greater understanding of how our opponents think differently but we unshackle the Good Book from the hands of those who use it maliciously and in blasphemy.

To truly live the way the Bible calls us to, we cannot choose to live only by our favorite verses and most convenient interpretations. We cannot cherry pick verses and isolate them from the greater context. We have to admit our own biases and prejudices and guard ourselves against them and those who encourage them. The Bible is not a political tool and candidates and parties who use it as such should be approached with great caution. This country is sick with cancerous interpretations of the Bible that mislead generations into believing that Christians can only be in one party or that to put your faith in one candidate is to put your faith in God. The Bible has little to say on political policy, but it has much to say on how we are called to live our lives and the signs that both spiritual fruit and a lack of it serve to identify who follows Christ and who uses Him to get what they want.