Group Think | Do not conform to the pattern of this world. (God and guns part 1)

In the past year or two, I've found myself completely change positions on what became a hot-button issue after the Sandy Hook shootings in December.

I never have really enjoyed shooting guns--I do have a BB gun for trying to kill the gophers in my backyard, but I don't have that "Wow, this is so cool!!" feeling that a lot of other men (and women) get when shooting something more powerful.

However, I used to be really supportive of people who owned guns, and wanted to defend their viewpoint.  Here's why:

I used to be a pretty conservative Republican (today I'm a moderate independent).  Why? Because I'm an evangelical Christian raised in the 1980s and 90s, and that meant you were a Republican.  I used to be in favor of people owning guns because I was a Republican.

Even after I became a political independent, I was still in favor of people owning guns because most vocal American Christians are Republicans, and thus support gun rights.  I know that's a little over-simplified, but hang on with me, and I'll try to demonstrate causation.

My default way of thinking was "guns are fine. Self-defense is fine. Pre-emptive use of drones or snipers is fine if the person is really a threat to society."

I thought so because the people around me thought so.

On the internet, sometimes people talk about "group-think."  Group-think is when everyone on a message board has the same opinion regarding an issue because everyone on that message board has the same opinion (kind of circular logic).  In the outside world, there could be a much better opinion being discussed, but because of the bubble of that message board, the whole group has the same opinion.

My old views on guns, weapons, and such was group-think--group-think of my friends, the religious right, whatever.

What the internet refers to as "group-think" the apostle Paul refers to as "conforming to the pattern of this world" (Romans 12:2).

In The Message, Eugene Peterson paraphrased Romans 12:2 "Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking."

When I first heard that sentence, it blew me away.  I think it's my favorite verse in The Message.  I had always assumed that I could stop conforming to the pattern of "this world" by avoiding things like sexual sin, anger, lying, bribery--you know, those clear-cut sins we love to talk about in America.

When I heard The Message, and thought about the word "culture," I realized how much of what I believe is based on how I fit into the group-think of those around me without even thinking.

What shapes your culture?  Your parents, family, childhood friends and experiences, religious background, ethnicity, social status, schooling, finances, TV, movies, songs, current friends and experiences, work environment...

The most overlooked way Christians fit into culture without thinking is by fitting into the group-think of the church.  Look, the church is made up of flawed people who are often deceived or distracted simply because they are people.  

I know (now) that not every evangelical Christian had the same view on guns that I did, but the majority of the people I knew in the church at that time had pretty similar opinions on this issue.

Just because everyone else thinks it doesn't mean it's right--even if they're Christians.

There are so many things that each of us believe because of group-think.  I'm going to dedicate a couple of blog posts to unpacking how to get out of group-think and stop fitting into culture as we are commanded to do in light of Romans 12:1-2.  Then, I'm going to spend some time looking at the issue of guns/weapons as an example of how I have applied Romans 12 to my own life and seen myself faced with the reality that my old way of thinking was rooted in group-think and often countered the very teachings of Scripture.  

Does God Judge Nations? My Response to Christians claiming the recent shooting was God's judgment on America

God does not judge nations collectively, with one exception: when they attack other nations, especially His covenant people.  Things were different in the Old Testament, but we can learn a lot from that time, if we study how He dealt with His covenant people, and how He dealt with the other nations.  But, we need to keep in mind who God's covenant people are today, and what constitutes a nation.

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I don't blog too much these days, so I'd better give some context for whoever reads this in the coming years.  Last week there was a shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, which lead to the deaths of 27 people, including 20 first grade children.

Like most disasters (natural or man-made), some Christian leaders responded by saying this was a form of God's judgment on America.  James Dobson, for instance, said that the shootings were God's judgment for America accepting abortion and gay marriage.  

Well, I happen to be working through studying the minor prophets of the Old Testament, and recently studied Jeremiah in-depth.  When reading the Prophets, it's clear that neither of those issues is the sort of thing for which God judges nations.  Maybe individuals, but not nations.  

Right now I'm studying the book of Amos, which provides a concise, clear description of what God judges nations for.  

In Amos 1-2, God delivers judgments on several of the nations surrounding Israel and Judah, then hones in on those two nations, with whom God had a special covenant.  

The nations of Syria, Tyre, Philistia, Edom, Moab, and Ammon were judged by God.  Each of them were judged for things like attacking other nations or helping exile people (which may or may not refer to an attack on Israel--God's chosen people in the Old Testament).  

Judah and Israel were judged for specifically turning away from the LORD (YHWH), their God.  They were held to a higher standard because they were God's covenant people.  

Amos 3:2 makes it clear that the Hebrew people were the only family God would punish this way.  Throughout the Prophets, Israel and Judah were judged guilty of breaking God's covenant by doing two things: mistreating the poor (particularly through ignoring them) and worshiping false gods.  

So, what does this show us about how God deals with nations?

1. The only nation God judges for issues of righteous living is his holy nation.  In the Old Testament, that was Israel (Exodus 19:6).  We as Christians believe we are the holy nation today (1 Peter 2:9).  So, the only nation that God collectively judges for sin issues today is the Church (some people may include modern Israel, but that's the only other possibility).  When it comes to righteous living, God deals with the others as individuals.

2. God deals with other nations based on how they treat other nations, especially his chosen people.  The judgments in Amos deal with how the nations were treating other nations.  In Jeremiah 50-51, God judges Babylon for its degree of violence, even though He chose them as an instrument of justice!  In the Prophetic books, God especially cared how nations treated Israel, His Old Covenant chosen people.  If we believe that the Church is God's chosen people today, then all that matters for national judgment is whether a nation persecutes Christians or not.  God still will judge individuals within each nation and leaders of each nation based on their actions (righteous living included). 

3. America (and most modern countries) aren't "nations" in the biblical sense at all.  In both Hebrew and Greek, the principal word used for "nation" also means "family."  In Amos 1, Edom is specifically judged for sinning against its "brother" (Amos 1:11).  Edom, Moab, and Ammon all descended from relatives of the line of Israel (Edom from Esau; Moab and Ammon from Lot).  God says that Israel is the only "family" he has known in chapter 3.  

The nations God was judging in Old Testament times were ethnic groups.   The Bible presents a clear picture of federal sin and federal guilt--if someone in your extended family (your ethnic/linguistic nation) sins, then you are guilty.  Romans 5 goes so far as to say that we are all guilty because of the sin of humanity, not just our family-nation.  We can't just say "my ethnicity is good/bad," we must say "all people are sinners, therefore we experience judgment."  

However, under the New Covenant, we can be acquitted of the sins of our ethnicity and all humanity--we can be set free by becoming federated to Jesus himself.  This idea is hard for us Americans to understand, since we don't think this way culturally.  However, this is exactly the point of Romans 5:12-19.  

4. God always warns before He judges.  The whole reason we have the prophetic books in the Old Testament is because God spoke through the prophets regarding what He was about to do.  God has always clearly warned a society that He was about to judge, and how He was about to judge.  Unless someone can produce a record of a prophecy foretelling the specific tragedy in question, they can't retrospectively declare it was God's judgment.  

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So, anyone who says that the Newtown massacre was God's judgment on America is wrong on many accounts.  First off, since most or all of the people who died were of varying European descent, we would have to say that God was judging those various nations.  It's either that, or you can say that God was judging all of humanity.  You can't say "God was judging America," because it just doesn't make sense in light of the theology of federal sin (Romans 5).  

If we do look at the USA as a nation, then the only thing it is accountable for (as a corporate entity) is how well it treats God's chosen people--the Church (not the nation of Israel, which most Christian Zionists claim without thinking about verses like 1 Peter 2:9 and Hebrews 8:13).  Every person starts off equally guilty because of the sin of the human race.  Leaders within our government and each individual in our society are then individually accountable to God for their actions.

Finally, whoever claims that something was a judgment of God, when it wasn't is taking God's name in vain, and attributing the work of Satan to God.  That seems like something pretty serious--like something that might be worth God's judgment.

*A friend pointed out something, which I want to clarify: I can't be 100%  sure that no one prophesied the events of last week, so I can't be 100% sure that my fourth rule applies to the current situation (you'll notice I didn't apply it in the 2nd and 3rd-to-last paragraphs).  It's also the most generally discerned biblical principle, so I hold it the most loosely of the four (which is why it's number 4).  The first three points clearly do apply to the recent events.