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than - a rarity among kings and emperors, a wondrous happening. But do our leaders today have that same kind of openness to their prophetic critics?
There can be great missionary thrust out of a sense of chosenness. But it must keep its humility and be leery of imperial culturalism and arrogance. Blending faith and nationalism has a great appeal and is alive and well to this day. It's reassuring to think of ourselves as a good, righteous and favored people. It exalts our own culture and tends not to judge or condemn our own government for any of its actions.
For the Hebrews and their tribal religion all went well until one day a man by the name of Amos stirred up and full of fire walked onto the scene. He proclaimed that God's judgment is impartial, that God measures all peoples and nations with a plumb line. The judgments of Amos are dramatized as he condemns other nations first: Condemned is Damascus for its three transgressions (hear the people shout "Amen"!) Gaza is condemned for its three transgressions (again "Amen"). Next Tyre for its transgressions and then Edom and the Ammonites. The people were undoubtedly thinking, "Preach it Amos!" But then Amos crosses the line and condemns Judah (2:4). They have rejected the Law of the Lord; they "sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals - they trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth." (2:7). He goes on, "Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt. There is much more here than the tribal god who led Moses and conquered other nations on behalf of the Hebrews. This is clearly a new and disturbing kind of religion. The Hebrew people are still a special people of God but they are special in responsibility. "Alas for those who are at ease in Zion…" (6:1) …"who lie on beds of ivory..." (6:4) the rich are condemned because they have "turned justice into poison" (6:12). All is not well within. This is a transcendent religion, true monotheism with a universal just God. No nation is beyond God's judgments. We must remember that the prophets spoke their words of judgment out of love. Because they loved God and because they loved their country they spoke judgment and suffered rejection for doing so. People called them traitors and condemned them but they were the ones who really cared. We shouldn't expect it to be any different today.
Prophetic religion understands God not as tribal and cultural but as universal. Prophetic religion knows that nothing in this world is ultimate; nothing is beyond question, above judgment. The ultimate is in God alone and God judges all. None is good but God alone. We as well as our enemies are judged by the same measures. And the flip side is that other nations as well as ours can be instruments of God's will and working in the world. If we bomb civilians it is just as much terrorism as if our enemy does it. When we intervene in the affairs of another nation it is just as wrong as when another nation does it. This overcomes one of the most dangerous tendencies of non-prophetic religion; when we connect human zeal or anger with that nationalistic god it absolutizes the zeal and anger and makes all kinds of cruelties and violence permissible and even honorable. In essence it baptizes them.
A large block of Christianity has made the religion of Jesus into a nationalistic, tribal religion which leads us safely through the Red Sea and gives us the land of the Canaanites where we are the "good people" and our enemies are the" evil doers" and sinners. Our church related hospitals and colleges have become private rather than church owned. They can and do receive federal dollars. Now we have the faith based social programs financed by federal dollars so the church is taking even more state money. Can we take government money and remain prophetic?
Jesus in his day was a part of that prophetic tradition with Amos. But his followers got off track some three hundred years later as Christianity became the favored religion of the Roman Empire. For religion to serve nation can be most rewarding and tempting but to do so is to lose its prophetic soul. If you see this nationalistic god as a handmaid of the empire you are quite right. This religion uses the name and language of the universal God of justice and prophetic faith, causing some people to confuse it with such. But our nationalistic god is nothing of the kind. The nationalistic god is a reflection of the nation, of the empire, of power, and often greed.
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