Preferring one fox over another

Jesus said to them, “Go and tell that fox Herod, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.’”

—Luke 13:32 (paraphrase)

During this national, presidential election year, the United States is more-and-more spoken of as “empire” despite its having only 5 percent of the world’s population. And that is where I now live amidst all of the politicking hubbub.

This brings to mind a member of our congregation in Belgium who, on a similar occasion back in the 1960s, complained that nothing would influence his life more than the results of an upcoming U.S. election—yet he had absolutely no voice in it whatsoever. He was a buying agent for a copper mining company in the Congo’s Katanga, and he was not mistaken. His job did later disappear under U.S. Cold War policies.

In the late 1970s, a friend in Scotland voiced a similar complaint, reflecting on the then-dominant U.S. power in NATO.

A West African Harrist friend spoke in similar terms in the 1980s; he was Côte d’Ivoire’s minister of petroleum.

The ends-of-the-earth impact of U.S. presidential elections in the third millennium after Jesus the Messiah is both startling and sobering, somewhat like the tail wagging the dog.

In the face of U.S. world power today, there is a real sense in which my overseas Christian friends find themselves along with many multitudes of others in a political situation not unlike Jewish and Christian believers during the times of the Old and New Testaments—or of 16th-century Europe when Anabaptists and Mennonites emerged. Politically speaking, all of these were “subjects.” Such believers were “subject to” the pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of Israel and Babylon, and the emperors of Greece, Rome or the so-called Holy Roman Empire.

Whatever legal rights that were exercised by such “subjects” were defined by the dominant royal or imperial authority and its powers—on which they had no legal grasp or influence whatsoever. The rights granted them were seen to be benevolences accorded by a higher human authority with its power. Under such conditions, when the church taught civics as in the Bible, it taught largely: “Be subject to the authorities, except for requirements which counter your obedience to Christ.”

Today, by contrast, for U.S. “citizens,” the civic situation of the disciple of Jesus with a voice for the Kingdom of God is extremely different. Indeed, in the United States it might seem that our church has not always caught up with this profound distinction between “subject” and “citizen,” and it has often left the teaching of citizenship up to the public schools.

I had to think that through all over again in the early 1960s when fellow disciples in the former colony of the Belgian Congo suddenly found themselves to be not just subjects, but more radically, citizens in an independent Democratic Republic of the Congo. For the first time, they exercised their civic opportunities with a new awareness and began addressing one another as “Citoyen or Citoyenne So-and-So.” They were no longer “subjects” of Belgian colonial authority but “citizens” of a republic with all of their rights and privileges. I had grown up in the United States with the latter accepted as a normal reality but had largely ignored how exceptional and revolutionary such citizenship is.

When, for example, one is born in the United States, one is recognized by the national law to possess freedom and rights that are said to originate from a universal Creator/creature relationship—and not at all from the benevolence of some human authority and power. Such universal freedom and rights from the Creator elicit, authorize and commend personal responsibility for the general well-being of the earth and the whole world. But, secondarily, they do not in any way eliminate one’s being “subject to” authorities and laws. One still remains a “subject” in a nation of rules and the powers that be.

In contradiction to those historical times of Scripture and the early Mennonites, I am not just a “subject.” I am also a “citizen” by the grace of God. As a descendant of nonresistant, Swiss, Anabaptist immigrants of 1717, my current freedom and rights as a “citizen” authorize me to participate in the choice of those fallible people to whom I will be subject—whether they be mayor, governor or president. Just as revolutionary, my God-given freedom and rights also authorize me to participate in the choice of whatever fallible people will represent me in making the very laws to which I will be subject. Further, as a disciple of Jesus and a voice for the Kingdom of God, I am free to have conversation with such representatives and give them my personal counsel whenever I so wish.

I do have personal, Spirit-informed preferences among the various choices that are offered, whether of those to whom I am called to be subject or of those who will help make the laws to which I will be subject. With Jesus, I recognize that any of them—like Herod—may well be a “fox.” I honestly recognize that I cannot fully affirm any fallible candidate nor predict the ultimate consequences of any one’s leadership. Yet I tend to prefer one “fox” over another.
And I can state that preference by freely giving my voice, even anonymously, if I so wish.

My personal participation in the election process—by which I make known my preference even among limited, “fox”-like options—is my act of “citizenship” recognized as given to me here by my Creator by virtue of my birth. Whatever other meaning it might have, it is a “political” act. My participation as a Christian disciple with a voice for the Kingdom of God is an influence upon the polis.

The polis is the ordering of the inhabitants of region, city, state or nation—and today—the world. Obviously, such influence may be oh-so slight. Yet it helps to determine to whom and to what all of us here—citizens and foreigners—are bound to be “subject to” with its unbelievable worldwide impact.

So, when I vote, I remember my Belgian, Scottish and Ivorian Christian friends. Too many times was I asked whether there wasn’t something I could do “back there.” Such friends have no voice whatsoever in the face of the current, unique and far-reaching “imperial” dominance in power and wealth of the United States, to which they are nevertheless subject.

Without any voice whatsoever, they too will be significantly influenced and pressured by the U.S. political, economic and cultural weight to which they are subject in the world today.

If I were to decide to not exercise my freedom to give my voice, that would nevertheless still be a political act. In fact, it could be seen to reflect an unconcern about the value for others—at home and abroad—of my preferences as a member of the church and a committed disciple of Christ with a voice for the Kingdom of God.

But how, amidst all of the conflicting interests within the current hubbub, does one determine such preferences?

I know from the Gospel of Messiah that God’s ultimate purpose worldwide is “the reconciliation of all things.” As a disciple already reconciled, I am oriented to God’s will for peace. Here, in the richest and most powerful United States of America, I do express my electoral preferences. But I do not decide my preference on the basis of my personal interests by asking what will be best for me, or for my condition, or for my state and my country.

Rather, with reference to my recognized, God-given rights and freedom in view of the general well-being of all the earth, I seriously consider the different possibilities. Then, with my overseas friends, and for their sake, I ask rather: Which “fox” will best provide the leadership that will best contribute to the general welfare of the whole world? Whose leadership do I think will most reduce worldwide the destructiveness of injustice? Who will move the nations of the world generally toward peace? Who will support the freedoms that allow the reconciling Word of Jesus Christ to flourish through communities of his disciples planted among all the nations?

Of course, I know that my interpretation of my vote will not be given it by others, but I am still free to give it my own interpretation. Yet, is not that elected, fallible magistrate committed beforehand to exercise the use of violence through armed police and military power? Further, if he is a professing Christian, is that not already a highly-significant “foxy” compromise—much like that of Roman emperors who professed the faith? Is it not a serious contradiction for me to vote for one whom I know to be so committed ahead of time?

In this country it is the national Constitution— made by another generation, prior to and quite independently of me and my birth and my voice—that so commits the magistrate. My voice for the Kingdom of God—as a U.S. citizen—does not determine that function nor explicitly approve how it will be exercised. It only participates in the determination of a fallible person who will hold that office. As a Spirit-led disciple of Christ, I voice my preference.

But, what about co-disciples who differ with my preference and cancel it out?

With them I may well share both my basic perspective and my insights and continue to assume full responsibility for my own voice. Yet, I must add that I have no illusions about the immediate, direct effectiveness of this exercise of citizenship, done in hope. Still, I rejoice in my civic situation and its freedom and take very seriously its invitation to state my preferences. The polis wants to know them. (In Belgium, one is even fined if one does not vote!)

In the end, my vote is one among hundreds of other problematical situations in the world where I trust that my decisions and actions, oriented and interpreted through hope in the coming Kingdom of God, will help nudge things forward in the fulfillment of God’s purposes, until they are fully fulfilled in Christ. I pray, “Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.”

David A. Shank, of Goshen, Ind., answers difficult questions for Third Way Café. He and his wife Wilma are retired from overseas ministries in Belgium and West Africa under the former Mennonite Board of Missions, that sent them to live and study in Scotland for more than two years. During the 1970s, between overseas ministries, David was associate professor of religion and campus minister at Goshen (Ind.) College and was speaker for “The Mennonite Hour.”