Dear Reader… "Wrestling" With Nonviolence

May 31, 2010 By Kurt Willems 35 Comments

Dear Reader,

There is an area of theology that I have wrestled with in new ways for the past four years or so: war and peace.  I have a friend who pushed back on areas of nationalism and just-war theory for quite some time, and it seems that we have found consensus in the last year and a half or so.  This friend has contributed to this blog and you can read his first article here.  Through much reading, reflection, and prayer; I now hold to the view of nonviolence.

Nonviolence is a word that has more benefits than using the term pacifism.  Pacifism often communicates inaction or helplessness.  A useful observation that was made by my professor recently was differentiating between the language of – nonresistance, pacifism, and nonviolence.  Pacifism’s weakness is that it seems to relate to withdrawal from conflict.  The other terms (“non_____”) are also a bit frustrating because they define themselves around what they are not, rather than what they are.  The difference here (which is a key difference for me) is that nonresistance is just as much of a “withdrawal” word as pacifism.  Traditionally, the Mennonites (my tradition) have preferred this term, but I am not sure that I am fully against “resisting” someone if justice is threatened; I am however against doing violence to them.  Now this is where the dialogue gets a bit interesting [Read more...]

Filed Under: Dear Reader..., Nonviolence Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 35 Comments

Whose Kingdom, Which Lord? Jesus & Nationalism, part 5 (Concluding Exhortations… Native Americans as Victims of Nationalism)

May 27, 2010 By Kurt Willems 22 Comments

This is part four of a five part series on Jesus and Nationalism.  It reads as one fluid written sermon so you may want to read the rest of the series.  I have never spoken this sermon but figured I would use the blog to get the text out there…

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So, lets return to where we began this morning.  Does the painting that puts Jesus in the center of our national identity help or harm the cause of the Kingdom of God?  In my experience in God and politics conversations that I’ve had, many people truly believe that God has divinely foreordained the form of government in America.  I have heard people appeal to the Constitution and its amendments as though they are a moral supplement to the Bible.  I have friends who have made comments to me on several occasions about how the right to bear arms is an expression of Christian freedom.  Or some will start a conversation on some kind of ethical issue by saying, “but the constitution says…”  In other political circles, the conversations sometimes can become dangerous in that people can put all of their hope in government to solve the world’s problems.  But, as we have seen this morning, the New Testament clearly is careful not to align the Church with any nation or political ideology.  This is not to say that God doesn’t want governments to preserve order and justice in societies, but we must understand that all human governments are his accommodation to our broken world; never a path to his ideal plan for the cosmos.  When we place the cross and the flag too closely together [Read more...]

Filed Under: (Series) Jesus and Nationalism, Greg Boyd, Nationalism, Nonviolence, Politics, Roman Empire, Theology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 22 Comments

Whose Kingdom, Which Lord? Jesus & Nationalism, part 4 (When 2 Empire's Collide)

May 26, 2010 By Kurt Willems 6 Comments

This is part four of a five part series on Jesus and Nationalism.  It reads as one fluid written sermon so you may want to read the rest of the series.  I have never spoken this sermon but figured I would use the blog to get the text out there…

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Now lets turn back to Luke chapter 2 for a moment.  We started with a question about if Caesar Augustus is important to the story that Luke is trying to tell us about Jesus’ birth.  What do we know based on verse 1 of this chapter?  We know that the great Emperor has decreed that the whole world must be counted.  This was an effort to make sure that the taxes could be taken with greater accuracy.  For those in Judea, like the parents of Jesus, this was simply a reminder of the poverty and suffering of their people because of the Roman Empire.

And think about Caesar Augustus again.  Remember the announcement about his birthday that we read earlier that dated to 9 BC?  Lets look at it one last time and see if anything starts to come together for us about the first birthday of Jesus. [Read more...]

Filed Under: (Series) Jesus and Nationalism, Greg Boyd, Kingdom of God, Nationalism, Nonviolence, Politics, Powers, Roman Empire, Theology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Whose Kingdom, Which Lord? Jesus & Nationalism, part 3 (Give to Caesar What is Caesar's?)

May 24, 2010 By Kurt Willems 65 Comments

This is part three of a five part series on Jesus and Nationalism.  It reads as one fluid written sermon so you may want to read the rest of the series.  I have never spoken this sermon but figured I would use the blog to get the text out there…

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And it is to a question regarding some of these particular kinds of coins that I want to shift our attention for a moment.  In Luke chapter 20 we read:

20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.

25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.  Luke 20.20-26

Here Jesus is confronted with one of the most direct political questions that we see addressed in the entire New Testament.  Do the Israelites need to pay taxes to the Roman government that has set itself up as God?  How will Jesus answer this question?

What is important to understand about this situation is that Jesus finds himself in a difficult situation.  First of all, a strict observer of the Torah would not have even had the type of coin required for the tax because it had an image of the Caesar on it.  All such coins would have been considered to be a graven image.  But, they were of the impoverished and dominated peoples of the Roman Empire (all with the exception of the Jewish elite who had compromised their standards by becoming in “cahoots” with Rome so to speak), so what option did they have?  Jesus’ answer to “…give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s…” basically meant, [Read more...]

Filed Under: (Series) Jesus and Nationalism, Greg Boyd, Kingdom of God, Nationalism, Nonviolence, Politics, Powers, Roman Empire, Theology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 65 Comments
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