Government was God’s idea. It has a divine purpose: justice. As such, good government requires the participation of the just. We should care about that which God cares about. That’s why Christians should be informed about and involved with politics. To that end, I have started a new podcast series on political theology. I will address the Biblical teaching concerning government, the relationship of Christians to politics, principles for voting, the separation of church and state, the Christian foundation of the United States, etc.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts, or at https://thinkingtobelieve.buzzsprout.com/
Thinking to Believe 
August 24, 2024 at 3:43 am
Governments existed long before biblical laws. The Code of Hammurabi, for one, was written a couple hundred years before Moses and the 10 Commandments. So justice isn’t a Christian God thing.
Also, I wouldn’t call a system whereby an all-powerful God decrees that rape victims are forced to marry their rapists justice. Same for requiring the slaughtering of babies of enemy tribes, allowing slave owners to beat a slave so badly that she can’t even stand for a couple of days, infinite torture in hell for simply believing in other or no gods, and so on. If that’s justice, I don’t think justice has any meaning.
I do very much agree that everyone should vote, regardless of religious belief or position. However, it is important that the religious should not attempt to impose laws based upon religious belief on those of other or no religions. After all, I’m sure you wouldn’t want conservative Jews, Muslims or Hindus in government to impose their religious edicts on Christians (something to think about as those populations continue to grow and Christianity shrinks). The separation of church and state protects EVERYONE from each other. To quote some of our Founding Fathers:
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August 24, 2024 at 10:54 am
Also, I wouldn’t call a system whereby an all-powerful God decrees that rape victims are forced to marry their rapists justice.
It’s much more accurate to say that rapists were forced to marry their victims without any possibility of divorce. You’ve got to view this issue within its proper historical and cultural context and not through a modern Western lens to understand that it’s not the tragic miscarriage of justice you believe it to be.
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August 24, 2024 at 12:37 pm
Ah, but I did take into account the most important historical and cultural context—I even included it in that same sentence, which I’ll highlight here:
Also, I wouldn’t call a system whereby an all-powerful God decrees that rape victims are forced to marry their rapists justice.
“All powerful” means that God COULD have easily ordered something that would punish the criminal and help the victim recover from that nightmare she experienced. He could have required his people send the rapist to prison and financially compensate his victim. He could have required his people to show compassion for the victim and care for her.
But instead he decreed that the rape victim would have to LIVE with her tormentor for the rest of her life…without the possibility of divorce, as you noted. Thus, someone who desired a woman who rejected him just had to rape her to ensure she was his forever.
Does that sound like any rational form of justice to you?
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August 25, 2024 at 9:11 am
I agree with what he said…
Taking America Back for God? – YouTube
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August 26, 2024 at 7:02 am
You’re being disingenuous as your point is theologically speculative and decidedly ignores history and culture. The historical and cultural context refers to the cultural norms and practices that characterized that particular era of history. 2 Samuel 13:1-21 is instructive in this regard, particularly verses 16 and 20.
It should also be noted that rape may not be in view in the passage you reference (Deut. 22:28-29); the Hebrew verbs that are used to indicate the sexual action don’t have the same force as those in the verses that immediately precede it where it is much clearer that rape is in view. This is even more plausible if Deut. 22:28-29 constitutes a restatement of Exodus 22:16-17 which it appears as though it might. Also the Exodus passage makes marriage optional and both passages mention a form of financial restitution.
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August 27, 2024 at 3:00 am
“You’re being disingenuous as your point is theologically speculative and decidedly ignores history and culture.”
Cultural norms included killing people, kids disrespecting their parents, lying, creating representative art, and so on, yet according to the Bible God saw fit to include them in his 10 Commandments. Yet it would have been a bridge too far to not include prohibitions against rape or slavery? Or to require his people to care for rape victims? We’re talking about an ALL-POWERFUL God here, right? That means that BY DEFINITION he could have enforced those rules, or at least provide the resources to make them easy to follow. He could have even arranged prior historical events to result in the kinds of cultural norms that matter to him. This implies that better cultural norms didn’t matter to him, or that he couldn’t actually change them.
“It should also be noted that rape may not be in view in the passage you reference (Deut. 22:28-29); the Hebrew verbs that are used to indicate the sexual action don’t have the same force as those in the verses that immediately precede it where it is much clearer that rape is in view. This is even more plausible if Deut. 22:28-29 constitutes a restatement of Exodus 22:16-17 which it appears as though it might. Also the Exodus passage makes marriage optional and both passages mention a form of financial restitution.”
That “definite possibility of a potential maybe” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. We’re talking about the BIBLE here, something that’s supposed to be the word of God, not just musings by some primitive randos, right? It’s God’s salvation manual for humanity, and as such does it make any sense at all that its teachings aren’t crystal clear to anyone and everyone throughout history who reads it? An all-knowing God would know that future generations would be reading these passages and find them seriously problematic, don’t you think? Why wouldn’t he word the Bible in such a way that it could never be misconstrued? That seems inconceivable in the context of a GOOD God.
Can you imagine how horrific it would be if people today followed what the Bible teaches? Ask any woman alive today if she would be thankful for a law requiring her to marry her rapist, and I’ll bet she would find the very idea horrific, arguably the worst nightmare that could be inflicted upon her. And I doubt women in biblical times considered an equitable solution. Trying to hide that behind “cultural norms” is defending the indefensible. Remember, we’re talking about an all-powerful God here, one who does not need to compromise his own values for anyone else’s sake. As the supposed moral authority, he should be held to a HIGHER standard, not a lower one. Does that not make sense?
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August 27, 2024 at 12:45 pm
“He could have even arranged prior historical events to result in the kinds of cultural norms that matter to him.”
The abundant irony of this assertion seems to be utterly lost on you.
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August 27, 2024 at 1:27 pm
The above assertion is even more ironic in light of this one:
“[The Bible is] God’s salvation manual for humanity, and as such does it make any sense at all that its teachings aren’t crystal clear to anyone and everyone throughout history who reads it?”
This would necessitate identical cultural norms that are the same for all peoples in all times that never change over time or place. It is primarily the divergence of *conceptual* understandings of the world between peoples in different places alive at different times that explain why their writings aren’t “crystal clear” to us and not mere semantic nuances found in writings in another language than our own. To argue that God could have arranged history to make cultural change possible decoupled from evolving ways in which humans communicate about concepts and ideas in light of said cultural change renders reality to be one wherein change serves no purpose to begin with.
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September 1, 2024 at 3:21 am
“The abundant irony of this assertion seems to be utterly lost on you.”
I’m sorry, but the irony here is that you are ascribing limitations to a supposedly all-powerful being. So you’re essentially saying that God can make laws against killing or talking back to your parents or making fun of the Holy Spirit, but he is incapable of making laws preventing slavery or rape or tens of thousands of babies dying of disease, starvation or violence each and every day of the year? If that’s not irony, what is?
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September 1, 2024 at 3:22 am
“This would necessitate identical cultural norms that are the same for all peoples in all times that never change over time or place.”
Not for God, it wouldn’t. An all-powerful deity could BY DEFINITION arrange events such that every culture would develop the same cultural norms necessary to understand the Bible without any ambiguity. Or God could just as easily ensure that every translation of the Bible is perfect, without error, and automatically adjust it to take into account cultural norms (even we humans today are capable of writing instructions that can be accurately translated into hundreds of languages, something that would be trivial for an omnipotent beingj. Or he could simply impose perfect understanding of the Bible on our minds.
This is what I means when I say Christians always ignore the most important context of the Bible: God’s supposed omnipotence. It always takes multiple reminders of this biblical claim to get them to acknowledge this fundamental context. And when they finally DO acknowledge it, they resort to saying God works in mysterious ways, we must just have faith that he has some good reason for allowing such things, and who are we to question his actions? None of which should be satisfactory answers to anyone who wants justified true belief. Surely you can see that.
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September 16, 2024 at 7:53 am
This is what I means when I say Christians always ignore the most important context of the Bible: God’s supposed omnipotence.
Don’t forget about Jews and Muslims.
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