My Views On Romans 13.

It has not been a good time for me healthwise, and the weeks are long and very quiet. There are no serious health problems beyond what I have already, but there is depression and some physical discomfort. As I wrote during my stays in hospital (the letters are included in some of my earlier blog entries), I constantly pray to God for His guidance and ask Him what I can do for Him beyond my extremely limited abilities to help others. It is often suggested that I could offer free of charge some tuition to local children with their mathematics. They would visit me here at home with my wife supervising, but this would entail a commitment which I may not be able to fulfil with my variable health conditions. It has been suggested that I could spread the Word (note the upper case "W") to people over the Internet, and I guess that is what I am doing here, but I have to pass a comment about my experience when others try to do the same for us, my wife and myself. We receive, most mornings, religious posters and devotions from friends and family, and even some Christian websites, but they all appear to be assuming that we are already well and happy, and are asking us to thank God for His blessings and another wonderful day. Their intentions are admirable, and we occasionally thank them for their messages and posters, but they are doing little to help. At the present time we are not making the effort to read them on a regular basis. Perhaps we should. Of course we are constantly thanking God for His blessings, of which we have many (one of which is my ability to type!), and we pray to God for Him to help and comfort the millions who are far worse off than us.
So here I am again at my laptop ranting away with my nonsense! I will not give up my interest in Christian Anarchism but I have had no further opportunity to engage in conversation with other Christians, although my wife says she likes my last two blog entries. Understandably she is not comfortable with my use of the word anarchy, but is always willing to read what I am writing. On the few occasions when I felt well enough to explore the Internet I spent some time trying to read about how Christian Anarchists address their apparent problem with Romans 13, particularly verses 1 to 7. There is, of course, an enormous amount of material on the Internet on this topic, written by Christian Anarchists, far too much for me now to study, so I will therefore continue my entry by writing my own views, which I have held for many years.
The written words in the Bible are presumed to be inspired by God, even though they were written by man, therefore susceptible to the wiles of the devil. This belief in God's inspiration comes, I understand, from the fantastic intricacies of the Scriptures, particularly the prophecies. I say fantastic, but I think we must accept that under the influence of the devil these words may well contain untruths, and only by prayerful reading of the words, combined with what we can learn form other other human enterprises such as archeology etc., and not ignoring the writings of other Christian apologists right up to the present time, will we get closer to the Word of God, who is Jesus. Notice again my use of the upper case "W", a crude device - there are no upper case characters in the original languages - but it works for me indicating my spiritual attempt to communicate with God. (This paragraph has upset my wife, but I love her no less - even more - for disagreeing with me, and pray to God for guidance).
When Paul wrote those words for the Christians in Rome to read, he was a man of his time and I cannot believe that he thought his writings would continue to be read for the next 2000 years. He wrote for that time, and his readers would fully understand the nature of civil and religious human authority, and the consequences of disobeying them. But many did, and became martyrs, dying when they saw that the authorities which they were being asked by Paul to obey were not behaving according to God's law. We certainly know nowadays how human authorities behave in this evil way, and it is up to each of us to decide how we should react. The arguments for a so-called just war become paramount, but my belief is that it is better to die for God than to die for a nation state. In WW2 consciencious objection was no longer punishable by execution, and a Christian Anarchist will take that opportunity to avoid front-line military service. It might be argued that by accepting a non-combatant role in the army is compromising the Christian Anarchists' beliefs, but that is what we all do even in peace-time, and my anarchism does not support violent revolution. As a young man and becoming a committed Christian Anarchist I would have applied to join an intentional community (see Wiki) where I could mix with like-minded people, give up my dependence on materialism, live frugally, but still pay taxes and do whatever was required to remain within the civil law. Our circumstances in such a community would only become threatened if such communities became the norm, but if as a community we remained stable we would survive as a community until the Second Coming of Christ. I believe we are in the end-times now, and in spite of the fantastic progress we are making materially, the divide between the rich and the poor gets ever greater, and climate change, depletion of natural resources and pollution will bring our progress to an end. God bless.

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