This is a response to a couple of good questions posed to me on the "Death at New Life" thread. Damien asked:

Are all governments inherently evil and acting on behalf of the "dragon"? Is it possible for a kingdom to act in accordance with The Kingdom (whether it realizes or acknowledges it is doing so or not)? Are the two in perpetual dichotomy with one another? I know that the state can certainly act outside of Kingdom boundaries (so to speak), but does it always?

I thought these questions warranted their own thread, as the "Death at New Life" thread has been progressively getting off topic for a while now. Here is my attempt at a tentative response to Damien's good questions:


Hey, Spike. I don't think I could be anything other than kind to you. I promise not to cuss at you.

The question you've asked is a very complicated one. I've tried to spell out my view, in dialogue with others, in two posts already, here ("The State: An 'Order' or Just Ordered?"), and here ("God, Israel, and 'The State'"). In the first post, a lot of my position is teased out in the comments, and the latter is an answer to a question buried in the comments of the former. You may find it a bit tedious to plow through, and I wouldn't expect you to, but they're there if you're interested. I also briefly spelled out my view of Romans 13 in the second comment of my most recent post, here ("Who Said ... ?").

That said, here is an attempt at a short answer.

"Are all governments inherently evil and acting on behalf of the 'dragon'?" No. Not all of them, and of course there are all sorts of different kinds of "government." There is the government of local bodies, such as city councils, church boards, etc. In the U.S. there are of course 50 different governments, and that was more true earlier in U.S. history than it is now, post-civil war and post-WWII. I wouldn't say that all church boards are acting on behalf of "the dragon," but I'm sure there are a few. :-) "Government" is really kind of an arbitrary designation. The "nation-state" is itself really only a fairly recent development on the world scene, and there are differences from one "nation-state" to another. (I can see my attempt at a short answer has already been foiled. Curses.) Costa Rica, Iceland, etc.: these are "nation-states" without standing armies. There's a big difference between nations like these and the U.S., China, etc. Notice that in the Bible the archetypical government that corresponds to "the dragon" is always an empire. Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome. The great evils and injustices are usually perpetrated by empires with the complicity of smaller, dependent states. Such dependent states are certainly responsible for their complicity, but I don't think it would be appropriate to apply dragon terminology to them, unless it is a small state that oppresses and carries itself like an imperial power within its own borders. An example of the big dragon today would be the U.S., the small, complicit state, Israel, or Australia, and the mini-dragon, Hussein's Iraq, or Amin's Uganda, or Pinochet's Chile, etc. And there you have it: in two out of the three examples of mini-dragons I've just mentioned, the big dragon (U.S.) was responsible. (The U.S. sponsored both Hussein and Pinochet, and those are just two examples of gazillions, such as the repressive Saudi Arabian government the U.S. fought to defend in the Persian Gulf War.) In many ways, Gorbachev's Russia had in it the makings of an anti-dragon, until Yeltsin calculatedly stole it out from under him and turned it into a complicit state. (This was over the issue of Chicago school economics, a.k.a. the Milton Friedman "free-market" model. Gorbachev knew that system would destroy his country, and found himself fighting against the dragon U.S. and its complicit states, who in turn sponsored Yeltsin's hostile takover.) There's also the case of Vaclav Havel in Checkoslovakia. Havel led a nonviolent, democratic resistance movement that eventually became powerful enough to undermine the communist regime and establish a republican government. Of course, after he was voted the first president of the Czech Republic, Havel relatively quickly became complicit with the U.S. What started out as a definitely anti-dragon government quickly descended into complicity with the dragon. It is almost completely impossible for a consolidated seat of power to sustain itself without either overthrowing, being destroyed by, or being subsumed into the reigning dragon, and I think this can be established as a general historical fact with perhaps a few exceptions (but I couldn't name any).

In short, no. While I think that all nation-states have elements of evil basic in their structure, not all of them deserve the biblical appellation "dragon," though one is hard pressed to find one that is not in some way complicit with an imperial system.

"Is it possible for a kingdom to act in accordance with The Kingdom (whether it realizes or acknowledges it is doing so or not)?" Yes. Absolutely. But this is not necessarily a good thing for that kingdom. If you read the notes I pulled from Kittel in my "Who Said ... ?" comment on Romans 13, you'll see that, biblically, the fact that governments are sometimes servants of YHWH is not usually a good thing for that government. For Cyrus it wasn't, for instance. Neither for Babylon. To be YHWH's instrument of wrath is also simultaneously, in the Bible, to be the object of YHWH's wrath. As it is with Satan, so with Babylon, Rome, etc. So while "THE KINGDOM" can put "the kingdoms" to work for its own purposes, that does not necessarily say anything good about "the kingdoms." There is that side of the coin.

The other side is that, clearly, the nations are called to create justice. Normally, in the Bible, particularly in the prophets, the nations are called to justice by way of repentance. The nations are usually either the perpetrators of or are complicit with gross systematic injustice (and this critique was often laid down heavily against the Hebrew kings as well, including David), and the call to justice is the call to abandon the unjust practices inherent in their system of rulership. That means the institutions of slavery, taxation and warfare come under prophetic censure. Most of the time, this is what the Bible has to say about the nations and justice. Of course, there are instances in the Bible, and there are certainly instances in broader world and contemporary political history, where governments have acted justly, or have established relatively just systems. Usually those systems pertain to one or two aspects of a politic, and not an entire incarnation of government. In the case of dragons, such as the U.S., the "just" acts are usually fronts to disguise or to distract from its real practices, which are systematically unjust and apocalyptically destructive. So, for instance, the U.S. gives big handouts to poorer countries, but most of those handouts are to be paid directly back to the U.S. on interest for loans. Our handouts also come with serious strings attached, such as free-trade agreements that serve the interests of a rich minority to the detriment of the poorer majority. Our handouts are often given irresponsibly (thought tactically) to corrupt oppressive regimes that squandor the money on their own limited interests. Another patent example is a war the U.S. claims is for the liberation of a people from an oppressive regime (one we installed) which in reality serves a range of interests that have nothing to do with the people the U.S. claimed to be liberating. Similarly, before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, it dropped food parcels over key locations with a message on the side of the parcels saying, "America is your friend." In reality, this was to secure safe zones for an invading army that devastated the land and destroyed thousands upon thousands of innocent civilian lives. "America is your friend."

All this is to say that Christians ought to exercise serious caution before it pronounces a government just, simply because on the surface it looks like that government is compassionate. However, although there are not as many, there are still examples of governments doing justice for justice's sake, and this is always "KINGDOM" work whether it is acknowledged or not. But insomuch as this kind of justice building involves force, the Christian (I would argue, and I think the distinction is implicit in Romans 12-13) is excluded from such work. The church (and by extension all Christians) has a different, more serious, and truer task. That is to witness to God's reign through the powerlessness of the Crucified One. Even Augustine said that the work of the church is true politics, over against the work of governments. (He wasn't wrong about everything!)

"Are the two in perpetual dichotomy with one another?" Yes and no. I argue that the first instance of consolidated human government is at Babel, and was an act of rebellion against God. Thus from its inception human government has been a move away from God's lordship. Even though God has, in his sovereignty, channeled that rebellion for his purposes, it doesn't erase the fact that at base it is rebellion. The fact that the U.S. constitution claims to be acting in accordance with divine principles means nothing. The apartheid regime in South Africa claimed the very same thing for itself. The model of government in the U.S. is not the most anti-christian form of government out there, but it's up there.

"I know that the state can certainly act outside of Kingdom boundaries (so to speak), but does it always?" No. Not always. But usually. Our post-constantinian reading of certain texts such as Romans 13 has done us irreparable harm. For instance, we just assume that God has "established" all authorities. But the Greek really says that God "orders" all authority, which means that God puts the principalities and powers back in their place. We must always keep in view that the principalities and powers that are always behind governments are always an enemy of God. God is always at work among them, making good out of evil, but it is the authorities that are the "darkness" from which, Paul says in Romans 13:11-12, God will deliver the faithful.

Governments can do good, and Christians should call governments to do good. But we should also expect governments to do evil, lest we wrap up our messianic hopes in a certain "evangelical" president (ha-hem) as some Christians in recent years have been proned to do. When governments are doing good, Christians should be the watch-dogs, calling the government on the carpet for ulterior motives, and holding in check that government's messianic pretentions.

I hope I've begun to answer your questions. This is a taste of my perspective, and I would very much welcome any further discussion with you on this, and any correctives you might have to offer.