COMMENTARY: Competing Loyalties Test Our Moral Judgments

c. 2003 Religion News Service (David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.) (UNDATED) I received a letter recently from someone criticizing my just war reasoning related to a possible Iraq war. The criticism was not that I was employing just war theory wrongly but that I […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) I received a letter recently from someone criticizing my just war reasoning related to a possible Iraq war.


The criticism was not that I was employing just war theory wrongly but that I was employing it at all. An authentic Christian perspective, the letter essentially argued, is not concerned with what nations or governments should do but with what Christians should do. And because Jesus taught that Christians should refrain from violence and make peace, Christians must oppose a war with Iraq or at least refuse to participate in it.

There is a cogency about such a position.

It is also well-represented in historic Christianity. It has the benefit of reducing the obligations of Christians to one sphere of loyalty _ the church. Christians are thus understood as those whose allegiance belongs solely to the church and to Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church. The affairs of nations, including our own, are of no concern to us.

Further, where we happen to be situated geographically is an accident of history; we have no particular allegiance to this or that nation but instead to the global church and its eternal Lord.

One great benefit of this view is that it can keep us free from any form of idolatry. If our sole allegiance goes to the church, then we are unlikely to set up any false idol of nation or president or tribe or class in the place of God. We are also unlikely to confuse or conflate Jesus with other lords, as if love of Christ and love of country (or leader, or tribe, or class) were somehow the same thing.

There are few contexts in Western culture today where this danger is greater than in our own nation; here patriotism and Christianity all too often converge into a confused religious nationalism.

Unfortunately, the perspective articulated in the letter fails to account for some hard facts of human experience. Every human being participates in a large number of forms of community. These begin with the family (nuclear and extended), reach to the neighborhood or local community, and are broadened further as we encounter the state and then the nation in which we live. We also participate in various institutions, such as schools, workplaces, civic clubs, athletic leagues and service associations, not to mention local congregations and perhaps national religious organizations.

The nature of these outposts of human community varies. But in each case they are intended to _ and most often do _ provide benefits to the individuals who are embedded within them and who are served by their mission. They are forms of community organized to accomplish certain social purposes that secure and enhance human life. It is hard to imagine what life would be like if these various forms of community did not exist.


Unless we attempt to withdraw completely from humanity, each of us unavoidably must interact with multiple layers and levels of community life, from which we generally benefit. This, however, raises the question of whether we are in turn obligated to contribute something to them. If we fail to acknowledge any obligations on our part, we become “free riders,” people who enjoy the benefits of the efforts of others without doing our share. If everyone did the same thing, all forms of human community would collapse.

Thus even the most devout Christians must acknowledge we are obligated to contribute constructively to the various forms of community in which we are embedded. I have very particular obligations to my immediate family and the extended family, my friends, the Evergreen neighborhood, Jackson, Tenn., and the United States _ obligations I cannot simply abandon because of my commitment to Jesus. Each reader has his or her own particular obligations that parallel these.

To recognize these obligations does not conflict with loyalty to Jesus. In fact, I would argue it is precisely as we bring the very real obligations that we have in these multiple spheres of life under subjection to Jesus that we come to understand how demanding and complex Christian discipleship really is.

If Jesus is Lord of all, and not just of my individual life or even of the church, then I will bring a commitment to his lordship into every decision in every sphere of human community in which I find myself.

This will sometimes cause me to dissent vigorously from what someone wants to do in this or that community, including my nation. But I will not withdraw from that community or pretend that it has no claim on me because my allegiance belongs solely to Jesus. Instead I will serve it as constructively as I can under the lordship of Jesus.

DEA END GUSHEE

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