“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer grew up in an era of world war, the collapse of Empires and social order, economic collapse, revolutions and the rise of the greatest evils that the world has ever seen. Bonhoeffer recognized evil in the world and the dangers of radicalism. He was a child when the First World War ended and the Kaiser abdicated and Germany went through a violent civil war, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles, economic calamity, Communist and Fascist coup attempts which finally led to the Nazi takeover by legal means. When the Nazis came to power Bonhoeffer was a young pastor. He was one of the first to recognize the evil of the Nazi state and Nazism as well as its hold over Christians from all denominations.
We live in somewhat similar times. These are unsettled and great evil exists, evil which seeks to destroy the world in order to make it in its own image. Some of these are godless, materialist and secular while others are rooted in the Great Religions as well as others in mysticism and individualistic spirituality all of which see the world and for that matter humanity, especially those that are not like them as the enemy. We are well acquainted with the extremism associated with Islamic terrorism as well as that of others with more politically based ideologies which have committed murder on a massive scale and wherever they rule oppress their own people, however Christians are not immune to radicalism usually radicalism in what they see as a godly response to the evils of their time. Bonhoeffer saw the danger of Christians who become radicalized in relationship to how such radicalization stands in antithesis to the Gospel which in restoring fallen humanity to relationship with Christ commands that those that have been reconciled to him has now “given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2nd Corinthians 5:18b-21
Bonhoeffer penned this from inside a Nazi prison awaiting his execution.
“Radicalism always springs from a conscious or unconscious hatred of what is established. Christian radicalism, no matter whether it consists in withdrawing from the world or in improving the world, arises from the hatred of creation. The radical cannot forgive God his creation. He has fallen out with the created world, the Ivan Karamazov, who at the same time makes the figure of the radical Jesus in the image of the Grand Inquisitor. When evil becomes powerful in the world, it infects the Christian, too, with the poison of radicalism. It is Christ’s gift to the Christian that he should be reconciled with the world as it is, but now this reconciliation is accounted to be a betrayal and denial of Christ. It is replaced by bitterness, suspicion and contempt for men and the world. In place of the love that believes all and hopes all, in the place of the love which loves the world in its very wickedness with the love of God (John 3:16), there is now the pharisaical denial of love to evil, and the restriction of love to the closed circle of the devout. Instead of the open Church of Jesus Christ which serves the world till the end, there is now some allegedly primitive Christian ideal of a Church, which in its turn confuses the ideal of the living Jesus Christ with the realization of a Christian ideal. Thus a world which is evil succeeds in making the Christians become evil too. It is the same germ that disintegrates the world and that makes the Christians become radical. In both cases it is hatred towards the world, no matter whether the haters are the ungodly or the godly. On both sides it is a refusal of faith in the creation. But devils are not cast out through Beelzebub.” (Letters and Papers from Prison p.386)
This Christian radicalism has become a very real part of the American religious-political landscape and it has managed to poison a generation through the Dominionism. The man who can be called the founder of this movement which has become one of the loudest voices in American Evangelicalism, the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement and other Christian groups spanning the denominational spectrum is R.J. Rushdoonny. Rushdoony’s version of the Christian faith is an Old Testament militancy based upon Israel’s conquest of the Land of Promise. Some examples of Rushdoony’s theological argument which is echoed by many American Christian conservatives are found here:
“Israel was attacked by Amalek. According to Deuteronomy 25:17, Amalek “feared not God.” Amalek’s attack on Israel, according to the “Midrashic lore,” was an obscene defiance of God and a contempt for God. Where men attack God’s people, there we often have a covert or overt attack on God. Unable to strike directly at God, they strike at God’s people. There is thus continual warfare between Amalek and Israel, between God’s people and God’s enemies. The outcome must be the blotting out of God’s enemies…. the covenant people must wage war against the enemies of God, because this war is unto death. The deliberate, refined, and obscene violence of the anti-God forces permits no quarter… this warfare must continue until the Amalekites of the world are blotted out, until God’s law-order prevails and His justice reigns.” R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1973), p. 318.
Rushdoony’s son in law Gary North is now the primary ideological and theological spokesman for the Dominionist movement. He is very popular and influential in many conservative and political circles and with the Tea Party movement. North makes the following comment in relation to the Christian’s relationship and attitude when dealing with the world.
“It occurs to me: Was Moses arrogant and unbiblical when he instructed the Israelites to kill every Canaanite in the land (Deut. 7:2; 20:16-17)? Was he an “elitist” or (horror of horrors) a racist? No; he was a God-fearing man who sought to obey God, who commanded them to kill them all. It sounds like a “superior attitude” to me. Of course, Christians have been given no comparable military command in New Testament times, but I am trying to deal with the attitude of superiority–a superiority based on our possession of the law of God. That attitude is something Christians must have when dealing with all pagans. God has given us the tools of dominion.” Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), p. 214n
This militancy has gained popular support since the 2008 elections and is reflective of the bitter and angry undercurrent which pervades many Christian political activists many of whom are very comfortable with using violence against those that they believe are their enemies. A similar tenor is found in some of their opponents on the Left who speak of bloodshed.
However such words and actions often mirror those of their proclaimed enemies the radicals of which use similar words of violence and justification of brute force to achieve their goals. Those who do not agree with such theology or ideology be that from those in the Dominionist movement or the more radical leftists are as much of an enemy as anyone else. Neither side will stop until they conquer and destroy every bastion of the other. The war between the “godless and the godly” to quote Bonhoeffer is actual a war against the creation and humanity that God through Christ seeks to redeem.
Bonhoeffer made a very poignant observation:
“There is a truth which is of Satan. Its essence is that under the semblance of truth it denies everything that is real. It lives upon the hatred of the real and the world which is created and loved by God. It pretends to be executing the judgment of God upon the fall of the real. God’s truth judges created things out of love. And Satan’s truth judges them out of envy and hatred. God’s truth has become flesh in the world and is alive in the real, but Satan’s truth is the death of all reality.” Bonhoeffer Ethics p. 366
As I look around and see the great conflict in our country with two sides determined to win at any cost and demonize any contrary opinion and fear for what will overtake us as the Satanic truth proclaimed from all sides of the political and religious spectrum consumes the land. In the midst of such discourse which is trending toward physical violence as the extremes battle for power the Church and Christians are commanded to demonstrate the love of God to all people no matter how vile their outbursts or prejudice. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians “God has entrusted the ministry of reconciliation to us.” It is this reconciliation of the real Incarnate Jesus Christ that must be made present in the midst of the current darkness. Christian radicalism is as poisonous as godless radicalism and it has no answers. It is time to cast it aside.
Peace
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 
When England broke into war/anti-war factions at the beginning of WWII, C.S Lewis, writing in his book “The Screwtape Letters” highlighted a set of instructions to his nephew, Wormwood on how to use Christianity as a means to a end to bring down mankind. Screwtape writes:
“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours—and the more “religious” (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.”
And you are right, Padre. We are in just as bad a shape today. The problem is we have our Bonhoffers and Lewis’s today but nobody wants to listen to the quiet words of wisdom, and tend only to heed the thunder of the extremist’s version of “God’s Wrath.” If you are not shaking “the right fist of Rightousness and the left fist of Holiness in somebody’s face, you are neither a Christian nor a patriot.
Shortly before he died, J. Vernon McGee was quoted as having said: “The demise of the church will come from within … from the clergy.”
The religious right today is more interested in getting someone elected than bringing a soul to Christ. And they are a lot more concerned with theocracy than theology.
Sorry, Padre. You touched a nerve! -Bill
Bill
Nice comment and quote from Lewis. Screwtape is an interesting book and the passage you quote is a superb example of what is happening in our country today. I am using it in an article that I will post later today.
Blessings
Steve+
Padre, I noticed you used the phrase “Land Of Promise”, rather than “The Promised Land”. I don’t recall how the phrase is used in the Bible (I am not as devout as you, or even as much as I should be), but the contrast is both interesting and topical. “The Promised Land” is something given to you, a fait accompli if you will – you need do nothing but reach your destination along a laid-out path. “The Land Of Promise” is a blank slate – there is the promise of whatever YOU put there, whatever effort YOU put forth.
This seems topical to me “from the sidelines”, as a lay person more than a person of faith. It seems that a large number of people have over-committed to “following”, to seeking that laid-out-in-advance path to somewhere. I see less and less seeking, fewer people wanting to do the work in “A Land Of Promise” to reap the benefits of their efforts. Even among the small group of Methodists we rub shoulders with (we do maintenance work on their church), the vast majority seem to have taken the concept of “lamb of God” a little too literally – they show up on Sunday, listen to an hour’s worth of preaching, and leave, having “served their time”. There is a small Bible study group, fewer than 8 people from a group of 60-80 regular attendees, and even their number often shrinks.
My point is, I was raised with the idea that seeking to follow God is something each person does, actively, with the help of Church leadership. Today, be it Christian or Muslim, people want to be led, they want to be directed to “The Promised Land” where they will receive their reward, without effort on their behalf. And when leading a group, as the military members among us know well, you have to give EVERYONE the same “marching orders” – attempting to lead each individual separately leads to chaos. If the religious orders of the world would seek to guide each individual while the INDIVIDUAL seeks the path, there would be less opportunity for evil, or just misguided, religious leaders to drift toward extremism.
And I seriously hope that ANY of the above made sense. If not, I sincerely apologise – it’s been a physically painful day, and I may be a little more looped than normal. 🙂
John
Thanks for your e-mail you no longer are in the Spam folder. I think that too many people want a magic key or formula given by someone with the “direct line” to God, thus the popularity of the heavy hitters with big churches and television shows. Likewise people love those that have seemed to unlocked some “secret” to success or spiritual power. It is a somewhat Gnostic way of doing faith going to those that have some sort of special knowledge that is limited to just a few of the enlightened. It is dangerous because it stops critical thinking or personal responsibility for what one believes. I know too many people that have been burned by such “teachers”.
Catch you later,
Steve+