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Can a Christian be an Anarchist?
I am working on a series called “Defense of a Christian Anarchist”. Here is my first article http://thelibertasproject.liberty.me/2014/09/15/a-defense-of-the-christian-anarchist-romans-13/ . What other sections in scripture do you think I should address? Do you see flaws in my argument?
I read the article and think your interpretation of the following is,well, a bit of a reach: “Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good…”
Tough not to take a statist message from that.
If you get the chance, the “render onto Caesar” of Mathew 22:21 would be interesting to see analyzed.
We have to think about in what context Paul wrote this in. The “authority” was killing the ones doing good. They were feeding them to animals. Crucifying them. And beheading them. Clearly, this is not an authority that God set up. Which then begs the question what would an authority that is set up by God look like?
As for Mathew 22:21 check back to my page on Monday 22 September. The stuff I found in researching this one was fascinating.
I’m an atheist, but grew in a Christian home and attended church until I moved away from home. I know you defined what Christianity is to you, but I’m still not clear because there are a lot of other big concepts that weren’t mentioned.
The reason I find Christianity and Anarchy incompatible is because Anarchy respects the non-aggression and I don’t believe Christianity does. What I mean is that the concept of hell as punishment for those who do not follow Jesus is no different than threatening jail to somebody who doesn’t agree with you. How can a person truly choose to love Jesus, when the alternative to rejecting him is eternal punishment?
Now this may not be your definition of Christianity, but there are many who follow the religion who teach exactly what I’m speaking of. That would highlight another problem I have which is lack of consistency. Anarchism has some problems with it’s mainstream definition, but I find it very logically consistent, whereas Christianity is very contradictory imo.
Let me pose a scenario:
I own a property and it is really large. I have maintained it and protect it on all fronts. On my property I allow people to build, sell, live free, and do whatever they wish. There is only one requirement that they love me. If they dont love me than I reserve the right to not allow them on my property. Personally, I just dont like to have people on my property that hate me.
Here is the catch, all the property surrounding my area are a waste land. They suck and it is miserable to live there, because no one has ever maintained it. I freely allow anyone to come to my land as long as they fulfill that one requirement. Am I in the wrong? Am I morally responsible for the people not on my property? I believe an anarchist would say that I am not responsible for them…but what do you think?
That is an interesting scenario. Here are my thoughts:
I am going to use a definition of love that I got from Stefan Molyneux. I actually didn’t quite understand his definition until your example made me think of it. This might be paraphrasing as I can’t remember his exact words.
Love: is an involuntary response to virtue
I am sure that more could be added to that definition, but let’s focus on the idea of “involuntary response”. In other words, one cannot “require” love as you say because it’s an emotional reaction to goodness.
I cannot require that my wife love me in exchange for a house, car, etc. She could agree to that deal, but it would almost certainly become a charade eventually. Even if she wanted to truly love me, it’s up to me to be worthy of that love. I must provoke an emotion in her through my goodness. She might love money and jewellery, but that is much different than loving me.
That seems to raise a few good questions and they’re probably impossible to answer, but what do Christians love about God? Do they love God or do they love what he provides? What is there to love about a being that doesn’t exist in any sense of the word? Is it really love if the alternative is eternal suffering?
It is not just a simple case of some guy who has a nice property and wants to share it in exchange for some appreciation. I would say that yes, God is morally responsible for the people not on his property because he created all of it. God created heaven and he created hell and he also created people with the FULL KNOWLEDGE that some of them were going to sin against him. He could have just as easily made all people incapable of evil, but he didn’t.
It is logically impossible for God to be all knowing and all powerful. If he’s all knowing than he knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, but if he’s all powerful than he has the power to change it, which invalidates his knowledge.
See I dont think that love is involuntary on the contrary I think it is the most voluntary action that we can make. I am married and every day I make a choice to love my wife. Many people will say that they “fell out of love”, but I dont think they fell out of love they fell out of forgiveness and mercy. They choose to stop acting out of unconditional love. This is when relationships fall apart. When spouses/partners start recording wrongs, dont forgive, have no mercy, have no patients, and stop being kind. These are all choices we make.
I read a book before I was got married called “I take thee Rebekah” and it is about a man and woman in India that had an arranged marriage. He talks about learning to love this stranger in his life. He made a choice and so did she to be in mutual relationship. They both invested into that voluntary relationship (they both agreed to the arranged marriage).
Now what if I said that we have an arranged marriage with God (the bible constantly refers to our relationship like this). I understand that you do not believe, but use your imagination. Now we have a choice to unite in that marriage or we can choose not to be part of that marriage. If we are not apart of the marriage than it is described as hell. Hell is not a place where God sadistically tortures people. It is being apart from the Creator of life, thus it is full of death and decay, and is described as hell. What do you think?
Sidebar – I really do like Stefan Molyneux. He is by far my favorite atheist.
I was addressing Love more in terms of the emotion or feeling, whereas in your reply I think your focusing more on it as an action or verb. Of course we choose how to react to our emotions, but I’d disagree that I can change my gut feeling towards something.
Even a person who claims to like the police and believes that they’re there for our protection probably has an initial gut response of nervousness when they see them approaching in the rear-view. People lie to themselves in this way all the time. It’s that first reaction to somebody or something that needs to be analyzed. In the case of authority I believe deep down we react with nervousness because there is a very real threat that we subconsciously recognize.
Arranged marriages are about as anti-choice as it gets. In fact, the term is basically an oxymoron. Why does the concept of an arranged marriage even exist? Isn’t the idea of marriage, a voluntary contract between two mutually consenting adults, good enough? You either get married (to whom YOU choose) or you don’t.
An arranged marriage dictates who you will marry, and then through societal pressure and guilt, the two people are emotionally railroaded. Of course people who have been subjected to this will twist it into sounding like THEY made a true choice, but they’re confused. The poor guy in that book you read has been duped. He seems to think that being pressured into a situation and “choosing to make the best of it” , is the same as choosing to be put into that situation in the first place. An initial choice was made under a form of duress and that’s my main point.
The hell topic could be debated forever and what you are doing is defining in a more easily digestible way. That’s fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that Hell has always been conveniently used to manipulate people, especially children.If loving God was just a friendly suggestion and Hell was really no big deal then I would have no problem with religion.
I can freely choose with whom I associate and if I associate with virtuous people my life will ultimately be better. All that those virtuous people can do is persuade me by being virtuous and beyond that they cannot worry. Virtuous people know the onus is on them to be sufficiently attractive to attract the love of others. I can’t be upset at somebody else for not liking me and choosing to ignore me. I could be disappointed and question my own shortcomings and work to improve myself, but other things are out of my control. Surely God would understand all of this.
I question God’s effort in attempting to persuade us. There is far, far, too much that he has left open to interpretation. Even if he wasn’t all-knowing and initially screwed up, he could still use his omnipotence at any time to interject and make corrections. IMO, God cannot experience disappointment if people reject him because he knew before he created them what the outcome would be. Why doesn’t he choose to persuade them actively demonstrating his goodness, rather than allowing them to misinterpret a very poorly written book for thousands of years? The fact that you and I can sit here and discuss our interpretations of religion just proves my point. The way I see it, most death and decay is a result of believing in God(s) and not the opposite.
We can take any piece of literature and break it down to be more complex. If you sat down and read the book of John or Luke you would see that it is quite simply. People make it more complex, because we like our pride. The idea of winning an argument is too much for some of us. 🙂
Can’t we both agree that people in power (i.e. government) have manipulated, twisted, and mutated different religions. I dont agree with all other religions of course, but most promote peace, kindness, forgiveness, mercy and love. The government or ruling class have always taken religion to be used for hate, anger, murder, and theft. Most religions do not support these acts.
I think that you were spot on when we were talking about love. I view love as an action not an emotion, thus I brought up an arranged marriage my example. I was not supporting arranged marriages, I was simply using it as an example, to support my point that love is an action that can be expressed on a stranger. If love was simply an emotion (how dreadfully shallow) than Jesus would have no grounds to say, “love your enemy” or “love your neighbor” or “love yourself”.
As for God persuading us, I think that the beauty of the universe and creation call out a sense of worship in us. When we look at the magnificent constellations. Or when we are standing on the top of a mountain side. Or when you look into your lovers eye. There is something more than just cells and molecules and I think that is what persuades me the most.
Yes all religions have been corrupted, but as I said God not only foresaw, but could have easily corrected the problem of conflicting interpretations. I cannot excuse an omnipotent being for such obvious oversights in his grand scheme. If he doesn’t truly possess those powers, than he isn’t a God by the traditional definition. Perhaps we have conflicting definitions, I’m not sure.
If we divorce the philosophy of Jesus with the rest of the Christian religion and the existence of God, then I’d agree there is value in some of teachings. I don’t want to hijack the thread, by carrying on so I’ll just restate my original thought, but I’ll clarify it a bit.
I don’t think that Anarchy and the existence of an omniscient / omnipotent god, heaven/hell, and creationist ideas are compatible. Anarchy and the philosophical teachings of Jesus on the other hand, seem to be fairly in line. 🙂
Well, political philosophy (of which anarchism is one flavor) explicitly deals with the relationship between humans and other humans. One could believe literally anything about the relationship between man and a non-human entity and be an anarchist (regardless of whether that entity is omniscient, whether heaven and hell exist, etc.) and not fun into problems with a political philosophy.
“Can an Anarchist be a Christian?”
Many people claim that a just and virtuous god would not allow some of the evils which have occurred in human history. That would certainly be true if that god were a statist.
One of the core tenets of anarchy is that all people have free will to live as they please. This is no different than a god who allows people the free will to do all the good or evil they wish. To me, the fact that God has allowed us to keep this free will in the light of all the evil which occurs is evidence that God believes in our right to anarchy, if that is what we choose, otherwise such a powerful being would have taken away this free will and forced us not to harm each other.
God is not evil, God is an anarchist who allows us to choose to follow his rules or go our own way, according to our own desires.
