Jesus and Conservatism
Theology - N.T. Wrights and Wrongs
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 12 July 2012
Everyone must stand somewhere in order to say anything. And even if
what he wants to say is that the previous sentence is not true, he still
has to stand somewhere to say it. We can run, but we can't hide.
If one of the things I want to say (or confess) is that Jesus is
Lord, I have to stand somewhere to say that, and that somewhere is
determined by my testimony. Where was I on the road when the Lord called
me? And where does He want me to be on the road right now?
When I describe some of where I am, there is no intimation that
anybody else has any obligation to be at that same place -- a Wilson, an
American, a male, a blues aficionado and so forth. To accept
differences of this sort is to rejoice in a triune God who did not make
us all the same. Trying to "fix" the differences of others like this is
to fight for a boring world. Celebrate diversity, man.
But there is a difference between honoring the differences that God
placed in His world and trying to honor the differences that sin brought
in. The former is Trinitarian, and the latter is rebellion.
Now to say that Jesus wants me to be a male is not to say that He
wants that for everybody else. He doesn't want that for approximately
half of us. But to say that Jesus led me into conservatism (for example)
is to say that it would be better if others did that too. This is not ideological imperialism; rather, it is what it means to think something, at least something of this nature.
"I think I'll have another helping of potatoes" says absolutely
nothing about what other people ought to be thinking. But "I think that
two oranges and two more of them make four" is a claim that I believe to
be binding on others.
So when I claim, as I recently have, that belief in the lordship of
Jesus Christ obligates us to a position that honors the concept of
limited government, I really am saying that everybody needs to get good
with this. The Bible teaches it. So then, someone will say, "you are
claiming that Jesus is a conservative"? Not really -- given where He is,
at the right hand of the Father, I really don't know how the label
would attach. But I am willing to say that He wants you to be one.
Akkk! Pandemonium!
Am I saying that Jesus wants us to be heartless money-grubbing,
indiscrimnate carpet-bombing, nationalistic, crony-capitalists? Um, no.
Not that. Jesus doesn't want anybody to be anything evil, and He doesn't
want anybody to be somebody's evil caricature of anything either.
Nobody has to do those.
But He does want us to take personal responsibility, honor the
property of others, respect and follow the sexual ethic of Scripture,
refrain from taking the blood of innocents, remember the poor with our
own funds (as distinct from funds we stole from others), and respect the
need for the civil magistrate to stay within his appointed bounds. Now,
take those positions and bundle them all together. What do you call
that? I call it a recognizable form of conservatism.
That is not secular conservatism, to be sure, but that's okay. Jesus doesn't want you to be a secular conservative! That would be bad, and Jesus only wants you to do good things.
N.T. Wright and I agree that "Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar." But he
wants Third Word debts cancelled on that basis, and he once called
Margaret Thatcher's salutary economic reforms "wicked." I, on the other
hand, recently preached that Obamacare was unbiblical, immoral and
unconstitutional, and I believe that every form of socialism is
institutionalized envy, and needs to be marinated in lighter fluid
overnight before we go find our biblical worldview matches.
Now the dictum that "Jesus is Lord, and not Caesar" requires that we
go one way or the other, down into the details, and that we do so in His
name. The only way to avoid that is to reject the claim that Jesus has
something to say about how we govern ourselves. For as soon as you say
that He does have opinions on it, then some bright fellow will ask, "Oh?
What are they?" And I will say that Jesus wants us to stop spending
money we don't have, and a Christian Keynesian will say the opposite.
And somebody is wrong, not only about the economics, but also about what
Jesus wants.
The only alternative to this is to say that Jesus doesn't care what
the magistrate does. But if He cares, then His people will be asked how
He cares, and how His care cashes out. As a minister of Christ, I don't
have the option of saying nothing.
When differing with Wright on his economics, I do not fault him for
speaking to the situation, and I do not fault him for doing so in the
name of Christ. I would only fault him for the bad economic reasoning,
and we could then engage in profitable debate -- and the debate should
occur on that level. If I faulted him for even broaching the subject in
the name of Jesus, then I would be revealing that my true authority was a
species of secular conservatism, considered apart from Christ.
What we may not do -- and this is my reason for bringing all this up
-- is employ unequal weights and measures. We cannot apply different
standards to different preachers. If I say that Jesus is Lord, and not
Caesar, and everybody applauds, yay, and I continue on and say
that this is why we must vigorously defend our Second Amendment rights,
and the audience goes cold, and then grows surly, and then somebody says
that he doesn't think it is really appropriate for ministers to "get
into politics," the game is obvious, is it not?
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