I
recently preached on the separation of church and state---- the original
Biblical separation of church and state.
It happened in 1 Samuel chapter 8.
Up
until that point in Israel’s national history their government was a
theocracy. God Himself was their king,
and so the priesthood (aka the church) was the central social, moral,
spiritual, administrative, and political authority.
In
1 Samuel 8, the elders (think “delegates”) of the 12 tribes of Israel came to
Samuel---the high priest, prophet, Judge, earthly head of the theocracy, and by
all accounts an all-around great guy----
and said , “make us a king to judge us like all the [other] nations.” (1
Samuel 8: 5)
Somewhere
around 1100-1010 B.C. the ancient Israelites divided authority between the
church and the state.
Now,
it’s tempting to say “and it was all downhill from there.” It would be easy to blame the idolatry and
cycles of exile that followed on this political decision. But to be honest, the Israelites hadn’t done
that well as a theocracy.
The
books of Judges and Ruth testify that even before the erected a wall of
separation between their church and their state, the people of Israel had been
a pretty inconsistent, ungrateful, idolatrous, and morally slack bunch.
The
official designation of “Theocracy” or “Christian Nation” had not made them righteous
people.
One
problem was that the church of Israel (the priesthood) had not set a consistently
righteous example. By 1 Samuel 8, two of
the previous four generations of Judge-priests had been corrupt.
I
mean really, really corrupt.
The
sons of Eli extorted gifts from people who came to offer sacrifices, AND they slept
with the women who came to worship (1 Samuel 2: 12-22). Samuel’s
sons, whom he’d named as his successors, turned
aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice (1 Samuel 8: 1-4).
Most
of the Judges, priests, and prophets had been righteous men and women of the
highest integrity. But a few--- a
notable, not-made-to-be-accountable few--- were enough to give the society
reason enough to sideline the church and make the prevailing culture (like all the other nations) the new standard
for right and wrong in their country.
For
all of our rituals, traditions, history, sacraments, and scripture, the church’s
external influence depends primarily on the church’s internal integrity.
In Israel,
around 1100 B.C., the priesthood lost its street-cred, and so they lost the
nation.
Is
any of this sounding familiar?
By
the way, after reaching the “enlightened” and “reasoned” decision to separate
church and state, Jewish society still didn’t ascend into secular nirvana.
Their
first king, Saul, went from being a decisive hero to being an image-obsessed
idiot whose unjustifiable personal crusades led the nation into military
disaster. The next king, David, had a heart
after God, but the rest of his body was after every woman in the kingdom.
So
what does the original separation of church and state 3,000 years ago teach us
now?
- If the church wants to be taken seriously
by society then we have to do more than argue our historic or scriptural
entitlement to authority. We have
to actually live with more integrity and internal accountability than skeptics,
atheists, homosexuals, pagans, liberals, conservatives, and whichever of
the other nations we blame for
America’s decline.
- You can’t legislate righteousness, nor
can you de-regulate it. No matter
what the state outlaws or legalizes, the choice to obey or disobey God is
in the heart of each individual.
- (And this is going to upset some of you,
but oh well.) The state does not decide what is morally
right. And---- the church doesn’t
either.
GOD decides what is morally right.
Just cause Rev. So-and-so skims off the offering and
talks about his new cars all the time doesn’t mean that’s how God wants people to
behave.
Just cause Mr./Mrs./Governor/ Senator/ President Whomever agrees with it doesn’t
mean that it’s what God wants people to do.
- The Word of God is a greater authority
than the state or the church.
It’s
time for all of us to move beyond the pointless argument over church or state. It’s
been three doggone thousand years now.
This has gotten old.
It’s
time for Christians to stop hitting each other over the head with words like conservative, liberal, progressive, traditional, and contemporary. NONE of those
sociopolitical designations define right and wrong.
It’s
time to turn off Fox and MSNBC for a few hours, sit down with a Bible between
us, accept that these ancient texts are still the inspired Word of God, and let
the Bible show us how to live and move and have our being.
Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold,
the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with
the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—
not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of
Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them,
says the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind
and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My
people.
None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his
brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of
them. (Hebrews 8: -11)
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education,
ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II
is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural leadership development for the
National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Support by check or money
order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
