restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

This Fourth of July, Become an “American without Reserve”!

 David Alan Black

“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”

Thomas Jefferson

Someone once quipped that the worst thing about politics is that it is made up of politicians. Politicians are desperate to get into office, and once they’ve tasted power they’re even more desperate to hang onto it.

And to dispose of the U.S. Constitution. It doesn’t matter in the least to them what the Founders had in mind for our Republic or what they wrote into the Constitution. Yes, politicians claim to be “for” the Constitution, but if they believe they can cater to the demands of a special interest group and it will help them get reelected, the Constitution is trashed.

Friends, the U.S. Constitution isn’t a dead relic to be placed in a museum. For over 200 years it has been a sentinel guarding against government intrusion into our lives, our religious establishments, and our free press. It’s a magnificent document, unrivaled in human history. It protects the individual freedoms we cherish so much and limits the power of government.

Today our local, state, and federal governments are acting in an unconstitutional way. They are intent on taking away all of our important individual rights that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. They forget that the Constitution is a specific grant of authority to the U.S. government from the American people and that the rights of the people cannot lawfully be infringed by government agents who are acting illegally when they enforce unconstitutional laws. True national reform must remind politicians of their responsibility to defend and protect the law of the land, rather than being mere ciphers of their nationally-structured party machines.

As we celebrate the Fourth of July this year, may the words of Daniel Webster encourage each of us to become an “American without Reserve.”

An American without Reserve

I was born an American; I live an American; I shall die an American;
and I intend to perform the duties incumbent upon me in that
character to the end of my career. I mean to do this with absolute
disregard of personal consequences.

What are the personal consequences? What is the individual man, with
all the good or evil that may betide him, in comparison with the good
or evil which may befall a great country, and in the midst of great
transactions which concern that country’s fate?

Let the consequences be what they will, I am careless. No man can
suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer, or if he
fall, in the defense of the liberties and constitution of his
country.

Strong and valuable though our Constitution is, we should not be satisfied with merely defending it against attacks from those who would undermine our liberties. Every right protected by the Constitution is worth standing up and fighting for!

July 2, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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This Flag Day, Remember Your True Country!

 David Alan Black

We read much these days about nationalism, Pax Americana, a New World Order, “my country right or wrong.” This thought would have horrified our nation’s founders. We forget that our citizenship as Christians is not here on this earth but in heaven because we are members of a heavenly commonwealth (Philippians 3:20). We belong to the only Christian nation that ever existed because we are the people of God. Worldly nations contain Christians and may be influenced by Christian principles, but there will never be a Christian nation except the blood-bought children of God.

Jesus offered high praise for those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. This is the same Jesus who said, “No man can serve two masters.” There were times in the early church when there was ample opportunity for suffering. Then and now, many have become martyrs because they refused to bow the knee to the state.

Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was a martyr who died bravely for the cause of Jesus. During his journey to Rome he wrote to his fellow Christians regarding his impending sacrifice. As we read selections from his letter, we may ask ourselves, what would motivate someone to suffer for his faith? What separates courage from foolhardiness?

Another courageous Christian was Polycarp. The report of his martyrdom is well worth contemplating:

And he was met by Herod, the captain of police, and by his father Nicetes, who took him into their carriage, and sitting beside him endeavored to persuade him, saying, “For what harm is there in saying, Lord Caesar, and sacrificing and saving your, life?” He at first did not answer; but when they persisted, he said, “I am not going to do what you advise me.” And when they failed to persuade him, they uttered dreadful words, and thrust him down with violence, so that as he descended from the carriage he lacerated his shin. But without turning round, he went on his way promptly and rapidly, as if nothing had happened to him, and was taken to the stadium.

But there was such a tumult in the stadium that not many heard a voice from heaven, which came to Polycarp as he was entering the place: “Be strong, Polycarp, and play the man.” And no one saw the speaker, but many of our people heard the voice. And when he was led forward, there was a great tumult, as they heard that Polycarp was taken. Finally, when he came up, the proconsul asked if he were Polycarp. And when he confessed that he was, he endeavored to persuade him to deny, saying, “Have regard for thine age,” and other like things, which it is their custom to say: “Swear by the genius of Caesar; repent and say, Away with the Atheists.”

But Polycarp, looking with dignified countenance upon the whole crowd that was gathered in the stadium, waved his hand to them, and groaned, and raising his eyes toward heaven, said, “Away with the Atheists.” But when the magistrate pressed him, and said, “Swear, and I will release thee; revile Christ,” Polycarp said, “Fourscore and six years have I been serving him, and he hath done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my king who saved me?”

But when he again persisted, and said, “Swear by the genius of Caesar,” Polycarp replied, “If thou vainly supposest that I will swear by the genius of Caesar, as thou sayest, feigning to be ignorant who I am, hear plainly: I am a Christian.”

As in olden times, so today: God’s people need to be what they are—heavenly colonials and holy nationals, a Master’s Minority in a pagan land. I am grateful to be an American, but America is not a Christian nation. America is a mission field. It’s high time for Americans to repent of their idolatrous cry, “Caesar is Lord”!

This Flag Day, let us remember that a holy nation lives to show forth the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

June 12, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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Thinking of Christmas?

 Becky Lynn Black  

Thinking of Christmas?

Just moments ago we got a call from someone who is planning ahead. This year she’s decided to give gifts to needy people in third world countries, giving these gifts in honor of specific relatives here at home. In this way, those who really need gifts will get gifts, and they will be gifts that keep on giving, even into eternity.

What a GREAT IDEA! So she called us to ask if we could help her implement her idea. Absolutely! We are taking a team to Ethiopia in November, and there are many gifts we plan to take with us. Would you like to help us?

For starters, how about money for seeds?  The Burji people are suffering severe drought; all their crops this year have failed. Not only is their crop gone for this year, but also they have no seed for next year. We will be doing a farming workshop in the villages, teaching them about how to improve theirfarms, and distributing seeds to those who attend. They must pass a “quiz” on the information we taught before receiving the seed, and of course, we will tell them about the Bread of Life when we teach them about their farms. We want to give seeds for Kale, Turnips and Field Peas.

Or how about food for war widows?  The Guji tribe has made war against the Burji tribe repeatedly in the past couple years. Each war leaves new widows and orphans in its wake. To lose the head of the household is almost a death sentence for these peasant families. Add to that high inflation, with food prices tripling in just 18 months! The Guji churches are collecting an offering for the war widows, and we want to supplement that offering and give a substantial amount of food to each of the widows. The Guji church leaders will present this food publicly, as a demonstration of the way of Jesus, who taught us to love our “enemies” and to make restitution to those we have harmed.

Or how about food for rural church leaders and evangelists?These men walk long distances into town for a 4-day Bible Conference. Last year they brought their own food and slept on the floor of the church. But the conference ended early because they ran out of food, and they walked home on empty stomachs. This year, in a year of famine, we want to provide the food they need, so they will not be weak during the conference and they can focus on the spiritual benefit gained at the conference.

Or how about wash basins and soap for peasant families? In the villages, we will teach the women, children, and men about hand washing. Poor hygiene is probably the #1 contributor to illness in Africa. And simply washing hands goes a long way in preventing sickness.  We can teach until we are blue in the face, but if they cannot afford a wash basin and soap the teaching accomplishes nothing. So we want to buy simple plastic wash basins and soap, distributing one per household. They must attend our teaching session and pass a “quiz” on hand washing before we give them a basin. And after we leave the village, the church leaders will visit the homes to check that the basins are being used correctly. We want to buy these basins in the Mercado (big market) in Addis, but we need to collect funds for them now.

So what is the cost for all these things? Based upon past experience, here’s what we estimate:

Seeds:  $700

Food for Widows and Orphans: $1500

Food for Bible Conference: $1000

Wash Basins and Soap: $1500

Are you tired of giving Christmas gifts that are quickly abandoned? Would you like to give a gift that lasts, a gift that really helps, a gift that may make the difference between life and death for some poor peasant?  If so, we welcome your partnership with the Burji people, for the Gospel’s sake. Make checks payable to BeckyLynn Black & send to 2691 White House Rd., Nelson, VA 24580. As always, 100 percent of your gift will go to the Burji people. In the Name of Jesus, we thank you!

July 22, 2008

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There Was No Surrender At Appomattox

 David Alan Black

Several years ago, when we were living in the erstwhile Golden State, my wife and I celebrated our anniversary by flying to Dulles and visiting sites associated with the War for Southern Independence. I will never forget our visit to Appomattox, as it just “happened” to fall on Palm Sunday and we just “happened” to attend a Baptist church whose pastor was named Robert E. Lee! Subsequent to our visit I penned these words:

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to forget that the freedoms our colonial and Confederate forefathers fought to preserve merit our support today.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to memorialize the past while tolerating the desecration of our flags, our monuments, and our symbols.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to deny that the cause of the South – limited constitutional government – is still the cause of all loyal Americans.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to forget that the major impetus for America’s slide into a despotic, centralized Empire was Lincoln’s illegal invasion a peace-loving, sovereign nation.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to give up fighting to eliminate every unconstitutional and unnecessary federal law, tax, and program.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to stop fighting to reduce the size of government, to decentralize power, and to abolish the immoral welfare state.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to tolerate politicians who deliberately lie about their loyalty to the Constitution and who willfully ignore the dream of our Founding Fathers.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to ignore the growing federal intrusions into each and every aspect of our lives.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to tolerate a foreign policy that places our troops in 140 countries around the globe and that delights in meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to roll over and play dead while the Bush administration shows contempt for the Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments in the name of the USA Patriot Act.

There was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to support political parties that are determined to create bigger and bigger government, more bureaucracy, more dependence, and less freedom.

And there was no surrender at Appomattox that would allow us to love our government more than we love the Constitution or to give our loyalty to politicians rather than to Almighty God.

August 26, 2004

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com. His latest book is Why I Stopped Listening to Rush: Confessions of a Recovering Neocon.

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There’s Only One “Senior Pastor” and It’s Not Us!

 David Alan Black 

If anyone could have assumed the title “Senior Pastor,” it was the apostle Peter. From the Gospels we learn that he occupied a privileged position among Jesus’ disciples. Along with the sons of Zebedee and his brother Andrew he belonged to the intimate circle of those who gathered about our Lord. According to Mark 1:16, he was one of the very first disciples Jesus called. Mark 5:37 explicitly notes that Jesus permitted no one else to enter the house of the ruler of the synagogue except Peter and the sons of Zebedee.

Even within the innermost circle of disciples, it is Peter who always stands in the foreground. He alone attempts to imitate his Master in walking on the water. He alone is the spokesman for the Twelve. When Jesus directs a question to all the disciples, it is Peter who answers (Mark 8:29ff.). At the transfiguration it was Peter who proposed that they erect tents (Mark 9:5). It is he who asks the questions all the disciples want answered (Matt 18:21). In Luke 22:8 Peter and John are directed to prepare the Passover. The lists of the disciples all give Peter the first place. The list in Matthew 10:2 actually calls him the “first” (Greek protos). After the resurrection the angel says, “Go and tell [Jesus’] disciples and Peter that He goes before you into Galilee” (Mark 16:7). It is Peter who defends the cause of the gospel when the Jerusalem authorities take action against the apostles (Acts 4:8; 5:29). Especially in Mark’s Gospel is the preeminent position of Peter emphasized, in keeping with the solid tradition that Mark is a viva voce transcription of Peter’s teaching in Rome (see my book, Why Four Gospels?).

No one can deny the special role Peter played among Jesus’ apostles. Isn’t it striking, then, that Peter refers to himself in 1 Peter 5:1, not as a “senior” or “superior” elder, but simply as a “fellow elder” (Greek sumpresbuteros)? Or that he tells his fellow elders not to lord it over those entrusted to them (5:3)? Or that he calls Jesus the “Chief Shepherd” (lit., Senior Pastor!) of the sheep (5:4)? This should not surprise us at all. There is an utter and complete absence of any notion of a priestly caste in the New Testament. The early Christian assemblies had no holy man, no head honcho, no top gun, no “clergy” to lead the pack. Clergy dominance came much later and postdates the New Testament by at least a generation. James Dunn, one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, has noted, “Increasing institutionalism is the clearest mark of early Catholicism—when church becomes increasingly identified with institution, when authority becomes increasingly coterminous with office, when a basic distinction between clergy and laity becomes increasingly self-evident, when grace becomes increasingly narrowed to well-defined ritual acts. We saw above that such features were absent from first generation Christianity, though in the second the picture was beginning to change” (Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, p. 351).

How far have we departed from the simplicity that is in Christ! The apostles were very specific in conveying the precise meaning of leadership. It was not, in Peter’s words, to involve “lording it over” the flock, as if we were superior to others. It was to be a leadership of lowly service (1 Pet 5:3). Someday, I hope, the plain truth of the matter will no longer be a subject of debate and confusion among God’s people. The whole traditional concept of one “pastor” of a local congregation is a practice that is absolutely foreign to Scripture. Overseeing elders are appointed by the Owner of the Sheep to exercise humble, non-authoritarian leadership among—not over—them. Thus no church ministered to by a “top gun” can be said to be a truly New Testament church. The only “top gun” in the New Testament was Diotrephes, who “loved to be first” and wanted to be boss. Such a leader was condemned by the apostle John (see 3 John 9-10)!

The time has come to bring our local church practices under the scrutiny of God’s Word. If there are practices in our tradition that are in conflict with the New Testament revelation, then we have only one option, and that is to correct our practices. The Bible clearly rejects our clergy-laity divide. All members of the local church are to function in the body according to the grace given unto them (Rom 12:1-8). The church is a temple in which every Christian is a “priest” who offers spiritual “sacrifices” to God (1 Pet 2:5, 9). According to the New Testament, all Christians do the work of ministry through the exercise of spiritual gifts. Whatever legitimate distinction can be made between leaders and led (e.g., 1 Thess 5:12-13) does not negate the fundamental truth of the priesthood of all believers.

Phil Lancaster is right: It is an affront to Jesus Christ and an insult to every other man in the church for a pastor to assume a place of prominence and uniqueness when Jesus Himself condemned any attempt at superiority of position (Matt 23:8). Jesus is the only Senior Pastor of the church. The rest of us are brothers. R. T. France, in his Tyndale Commentary on Matthew, reminds us that “[Jesus] has the only true claim to ‘Moses’ seat.’ Over against that unique authority His disciples must avoid the use of honorific titles for one another, an exhortation which today’s church could profitably take more seriously, not only in relation to formal ecclesiastical titles (‘Most Rev.’, ‘my Lord Bishop,’ etc.) but more significantly in its excessive deference to academic qualifications or to authoritative status in the churches.”

Do you comprehend this? If you do, you are now seeing into the very heart of the Christian gospel. No version of that message goes deeper than that which declares man’s root problem before God to be his pride. Many of our man-made approaches to doing church, indeed, are open to blame precisely because they never get down to this level. True Christian discipleship is always countercultural. One of the clearest indications of this is Jesus’ insistence that the one who wants to be first must be the slave of all (Mark 10:44), that greatness comes in service, that giving your life away is the only way to find it.

Let me flesh this out, in closing, in four ways. If you are a church leader, might I suggest in the first place that you take down those silly diplomas hanging on your office wall? No one in your congregation is even faintly impressed by them (I dare say, not even you should be!). Second, recognize that biblical eldership has no room for religious titles or exalted positions like “Senior Pastor,” “Associate Pastor,” “Reverend,” and the like. If you need a title, “Elder” or “Brother” will do just fine. Third, if you do hold to the “one man pastor” concept, get rid of it. Only the shared leadership model is taught in the New Testament, for only shared leadership promotes the New Covenant priesthood through manifesting Christ as the only true Head of the church (Col 1:18). Finally, commit yourself to going back to the Bible in all that you do. Everything in the Christian life needs to be built upon the Word of God.

Do you see the exalted supremacy of the Chief Shepherd, incomparably disclosed at the Ascension and Exaltation, as the basis for all service to Him? The Bible does; and I venture to add, if you felt the burden of your own weakness and sin, so would you. In heaven, where these things are better understood, angels and men unite to praise the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 19:16). Here on earth those who by grace have accepted the role of unworthy undershepherd do the same.

December 16, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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The Theory That Backfired

 David Alan Black 

The Just War Theory (JWT) continues to be used by a good number of Americans to justify the president’s war on and occupation of Iraq. The JWT does have some moral value, in my opinion. It was developed to help Christians judge war and to steer the church and society toward peace. But it is also clear to me that in the history of the church the JWT has usually functioned to justify war rather than to judge it. The theory was originally developed to show that some wars might be an exception to the Gospel of peace, but in reality it has become a tool to defend every war that comes along.

As I see it, the problem with the JWT is that it lacks a sufficiently thorough-going Christian ethic. Perhaps that’s why it has never been a formal doctrine of the church—although many use it as though it were. Both the classical JWT as articulated by Augustine and the contemporary “liberation theology” of some Latin American theologians exemplify the Constantinian orientation that fuses church and politics in a questionable if not unbiblical way. Both assume that one side will be just and the other unjust, whereas there is usually (if not always) much that is unjust on both sides during war.

To take an example from World War II, sources have put the number of dead during the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden at 135,000. The town was completely destroyed. This strategy certainly made the allied air war against Germany understandable. In essence, it opened up a second front since it tied up over a million Germans in air defenses. It also tied up tens of thousands of 88 millimeter guns that had to be used for anti-aircraft purposes even though they were the best anti-tank guns the Germans had. One could even argue that the Germans might have been successful in their attack on the Soviet Union had the air war not raged over the skies of Germany.

Yet it is precisely here that the JWT breaks down. The horrors of modern warfare always make the JWT ineffective, for although it condemns weapons of mass destruction it breaks down completely when weapons are specifically designed to destroy nameless civilians indiscriminately. Referring to the air campaigns of World War II, Ralph Raico has noted:

But the great war crime which will be forever linked to Churchill’s name is the terror-bombing of the cities of Germany that in the end cost the lives of around 600,000 civilians and left some 800,000 seriously injured. (Compare this to the roughly 70,000 British lives lost to German air attacks. In fact, there were nearly as many Frenchmen killed by Allied air attacks as there were Englishmen killed by Germans.) The plan was conceived mainly by Churchill’s friend and scientific advisor, Professor Lindemann, and carried out by the head of Bomber Command, Arthur Harris (“Bomber Harris”). Harris stated: “In Bomber Command we have always worked on the assumption that bombing anything in Germany is better than bombing nothing.” Harris and other British airforce leaders boasted that Britain had been the pioneer in the massive use of strategic bombing. J.M. Spaight, former Principal Assistant Secretary of the Air Ministry, noted that while the Germans (and the French) looked on air power as largely an extension of artillery, a support to the armies in the field, the British understood its capacity to destroy the enemy’s home-base. They built their bombers and established Bomber Command accordingly.

Please note that such widespread and massive destruction obviously violates every rule of the JWT. In Iraq, a similar thing can be said. Civilians are being killed there on almost a daily basis and yet there is no hue and cry from evangelicals over this failure of the JWT. According to an iraqbodycount.org report, there have been over 1,500 civilian deaths in Baghdad since the American occupation, while 20,000 civilians were injured during the war. UNICEF recently reported that more than 1,000 children have been injured by unexploded ordnance since the end of the war. This includes now unguarded Iraqi munitions. The report emphasized that “the coalition forces have a clear obligation under humanitarian law to remove these dangers from communities.” Cluster bombs are an especially notorious culprit. Many of the victims are children—from babies to young teenagers—who were killed after the cessation of direct bombing raids often because they attempted to pick up a brightly-colored or otherwise enticing bomblet.

These illustrations could be multiplied tenfold but they suffice to suggest that Christians have historically had a problem in consistently applying the JWT to any specific conflict in which they have been involved. As Christian pacifists have contended for centuries, self-interest prevents most people from being able to determine when a war is just. Even in Iraq, there are enormous problems with concluding that this conflict is just. Among the conditions to be fulfilled before war is justified are several that only questionably apply to the situation in the Iraqi War: (1) the war must be defensive—it must be a response to unjust aggression; (2) success must justify all wartime sacrifices; (3) there must be some proportion between the moral and physical costs of the hostilities and the peace and better social order sought after; and (4) only military targets, not unnamed civilians, can be targets of military strikes.

Most disturbing of all is the fact that the kind of military action the U.S. is using in Iraq is not really stopping terrorism. In fact, it has actually prepared the soil to generate more terrorists. As Pat Buchanan said during the last presidential campaign,

How can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution …. Have we not suffered enough – from PanAm 103, to the World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam – not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism? Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire? America today faces a choice of destinies. We can choose to be a peacemaker of the world, or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle.

In his classic essay on just war, Murray Rothbard wrote: “My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.” Murray concluded that there have been only two wars in American history that were unquestionably just (and where the opposing side waged a war that was clearly unjust)—the American Revolution, and the War for Southern Independence. Rothbard’s position leaves little room for justifying wars. He argues that war is too destructive, and the state too eager for war, to sacrifice a principled opposition to unjust wars and foreign interventions.

Those who truly love freedom love peace. In the end, the JWT does not advance the cause of peace because it does not sufficiently recognize the idolatry of nationalism. The nation-state has become a god in our civilization, and there is a deep-seated propensity to preserve and defend that god at any cost. Paradoxically, one of the things that has contributed most to this idolatry has been the JWT itself.

November 24, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com. He is currently finishing his latest book, Why I Stopped Listening to Rush: Confessions of a Recovering Neocon.

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The Power of Personal Observation

 David Alan Black  

I have just finished reading the Greek text of the book of 1 Thessalonians. Even though I have read this epistle many times and have done a complete discourse analysis of the original text, I realize that I have barely scratched the book’s surface and have barely begun to mine its depths. I feel somewhat like Sherlock Holmes, only that his life was an astonishing example of observation while mine, it seems, is an example of an astonishing lack of observation.

I often wonder what my growing up years in Hawaii might have been like had I been more diligent about studying God’s Word on my own, including the book of 1 Thessalonians. My abysmal work ethic – 1 Thess. 4:9-12! My lack of spiritual power – 1 Thess. 5:19! My apathy toward missions – 1 Thess. 1:8! My nonexistent prayer life – 1 Thess. 5:17! And the strangest thing about it, I fancy, is that, while I knew I needed to study the Scriptures on my own, I did not do it. I mention this only because it introduces a salient theme in my own teaching, namely that every Christian has a chrisma, an anointing from the Holy One, and has no need for any man to teach him (1 John 2:27). Of course, it is a man (the apostle John) who teaches us that!

Growing up it seemed to me that the pedestaled curates were more intelligent than anyone else, that they alone had access to the truth of the Bible. For that reason I listened to the “experts” and even got involved for a while with a group of Thieme-ites in Waimanalo, who were slavishly devoted to their teacher. I thus confined myself to a glass of milk when a wealth of steak and lobster was there for the taking. I suppose in some hazy and hearty fashion I was making progress in holiness, but I missed out on many an ample and sumptuous meal by my neglect. My own growth – personal spiritual growth – began at 16 years of age when I fell in love with the Scriptures for the first time. I began to read and to study, almost “without ceasing,” a Bible called Good News for Modern Man, line drawings and all. From this time also dates the first faint beginnings of my own divergence from the evangelical group-think of my day on such issues as the Synoptic Problem. I now take great pleasure in challenging my own students to question the status quo and the caricaturists of biblical Christianity by exploring the Scriptures on their own.

If solid biblical teaching is necessary for Christian living (and it is), it is less clear to me that teaching must always take place behind the “sacred desk.” In my mind there is simply no justification for our over-dependence on specially gifted teachers for our spiritual diet. Nor should believers depend on professionals to do all the burden-bearing, visiting, or admonishing that is needed in our churches. No man can (or ought to) shoulder the burden of God’s people. A common ministry of mutual edification and admonition is the only way to fulfill Christ’s law (Gal. 6:1).

It is tragic, I think, that we tend to maximize the importance of the sermon and choose to neglect the renewal that comes from personal, detailed Bible study. Man’s words cannot even begin to compare with God’s Word. At the very least, I would suggest that we spend as much time reading the pure Word of God as we do listening to the sermons of men.

I shall always feel gratitude like that of the blind man in John’s Gospel who could confess, when challenged by the conventionalists of his day, “Whether the man is a sinner of not, I do not know. But this I know, that whereas once I was blind, now I see.”

February 2, 2008

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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The Man Who Stood Alone

 David Alan Black 

I’m growing a little weary of those dear souls who are always looking on the bright side. Our Lord did not come to earth to fit everybody with rose-tinted glasses. His mission was not to paint the clouds with sunshine. He was realistic. He saw things as they were and as they should be. He was no Pollyanna preacher smiling the clouds away.

The right side is not always the bright side immediately, but it will be ultimately. Some of us want to have all of our sunshine now. But our Lord, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross. The way of the crown is always the way of the cross, but we want our crowns now.

The important thing is to be on the right side, however lonely and dark. We are to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove, expose, and turn the light on them (Ephesians 5:11). Better than denunciation, though that has its place, is the light that shows things for what they are.

While the lambs were silent in the Senate on Monday—cowardly preferring a voice vote on the president’s $87 billion appropriations bill for the Iraqi occupation so they wouldn’t have to go on record—one lonely man spoke out. As the New York Times reported, “The voice vote took place late this afternoon, with only a few senators in the chamber. Although the voice vote allowed for passage without any negative votes being officially recorded, the approval took place over the conspicuously shouted ‘no’ of Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, one of the few lawmakers in the chamber.” In his speech supporting the troops, Senator Byrd took on blind patriotism, pointing out that “endorsing and funding a policy that does nothing to relieve American troops in Iraq is not a ‘support the troops’ measure.” The occupation is not working and will not work because the Iraqis are convinced our culture is offensive and our tactics are heavy-handed. Here is a “voice lesson” we sadly need to learn today, for so many of us have lost our voice. We are like Arctic rivers, frozen at the mouth. It is a “day of good tidings” and we hold our peace.

There is very little true patriotism anymore in America. True patriotism is love of country, not love of government. True patriots refuse to honor government above God. True patriots understand loyalty as adherence to the ideals upon which the country was founded. True patriots believe that eternal vigilance is necessary to keep politicians under check. True patriots believe in the old Constitution heart and soul. True patriots concur with President Theodore Roosevelt: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”

One man in the Senate understood that peace without truth is not peace but compromise. Our old, harassed world seeks refuge in make-believe—in the movies, television, religious fads, even chemically in drugs like Oxycontin. So we have pseudo-patriotism, false orthodoxy, simulated happiness. Men choose the false and God allows them to reap the consequences of their choice.

Our politicians need anything but tranquilizers. They need a dose of good old-fashioned conviction that keeps them awake at night and makes them miserable until they speak out in defense of the Constitution.

November 5, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com. He is currently finishing his latest book, Why I Stopped Listening to Rush: Confessions of a Recovering Neocon.

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   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

The “Liberation” of New Orleans

 David Alan Black 

Imagine a city undefended except for some armed civilians. At first the city refuses to surrender but eventually caves in as the enemy threatens to obliterate it by aerial bombardment. The good citizens of the municipality, upset that they had been betrayed, take to the streets in rage against the occupying forces. The enemy cracks down on the rioters in a series of savage attacks.

No, the city is not in modern Iraq. It is New Orleans, which surrendered to Federal forces on this day, April 28, in 1862. Its garrison troops being on duty elsewhere, the city was undefended. The Federals were led by Union Flag-Officer David G. Farragut, a former New Orleanian with an ax to grind. Being suspect because of his Southern roots, his capture of New Orleans was not only strategically important but personally critical.

On May 1, Union troops entered the city under the command of General Benjamin Butler. The mood of the citizenry was defiant, and Butler, in an attempt to squelch any opposition, cracked down on the citizens in a series of abhorrent actions that earned him the nickname “The Beast.” A certain William Mumford was immediately court-martialed and hanged for pulling down a Yankee flag from the local mint. Keep in mind this was while the city was still in Confederate hands! Until the surrender had been accomplished, New Orleans remained under the authority of its own municipal officers. Butler’s next move was to sentence a woman to two years imprisonment on Ship Island for laughing during a Union funeral procession. Similar “lessons” in civility followed. Soldiers ransacked homes looking for weapons, and everyone over the age of 18 had to choose between taking an oath of loyalty to the invading army and being exiled from the city with the loss of all personal property.

It was Butler’s “Woman’s Order,” however, that took the cake. The good ladies of New Orleans, utilizing every opportunity to show their contempt for the ruthless invaders, would dump their chamber pots over the heads of passing Union soldiers. Butler’s Order #28 stated that any woman who henceforth showed disrespect for the Federal forces would be considered “a woman of the town plying her trade”—in other words, would be used as a prostitute. The order had its intended effect: Keep silent on the streets or risk being raped by the Federals. Its issuance was an offense against every concept of decency and a crime against the womanhood of a city that was foremost in the land in rendering knightly reverence to the weaker sex.

Butler’s outrageous behavior elicited the fury of the Confederate leadership. President Davis issued a death sentence for Butler, ordering him hanged if he were captured. When protests from European countries arrived in Washington, Butler was sacked and replaced by a more moderate occupying commander.

Up to Butler’s administration in New Orleans, the so-called “Civil War” was still relatively innocent in the meaning of outrages based upon malice. New Orleans was the first large city in the Confederacy to be placed at the mercy of a military dictator surrounded by his thugs.

A city, like a man, resents tyranny and is conciliated only by kindness. New Orleans chafed under the cruelty of the despot set over her. Her citizens could not fail to see it, nor could they ever forget it.

April 28, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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   restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

The Jesus Paradigm

 David Alan Black  

I’ve been rereading mybook on the Gospels. I wanted to review the portrait of Christ we find in the so-called Synoptics – Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Although my purpose in writing the book was to defend the chronological order Matthew-Luke-Mark – the order supported by the early church fathers – my ultimate goal was to restore confidence in the historicity and apostolicity of the Gospel accounts in the face of attacks from both liberals and neo-orthodox scholars.

Now that my interest has shifted a bit from church history to questions of Christian ethics, I am reexamining the Gospels to see whether or not the Christ of the machine gun can be defended. Lest youlaugh at such an absurdity, let me remind you that in recent years there has been no shortage of speculation about the nature of Jesus’ life and ministry. That He was a megalomaniac, a Zealot (or at least a Zealot sympathizer), a homosexual with compensatory sublimations, a student of the Essenes, a husband and father – all of these suggestions, and more, have been made. For what it’s worth, my own quest for the truth over the past three decades has forced me to conclude that the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christianity are one and the same. Frankly, I see no other explanation for the data. Christianity derives its ethical system from what happened in the first century. It is the tradition of Jesus, as faithfully recorded in apostolic documents we call “Gospels,” that is the normative factor which allows us to speak of a “Christian” ethic.

What, then, is the “paradigm of Jesus” we find in the Gospels? And how should Jesus’ model affect our contemporary moral struggles? Can, indeed, the portrait of Jesus in the Gospels be considered normative? I must ask myself these questions even though I am not a Christian ethicist, because it has become clear to me that violence and power-brokering are not excluded from the “Christian ethics” of a good many of my contemporaries. I feel that I have the responsibility of bringing to the total social order of which I am a small part a Christ-centered and Christ-honoring perspective. Above all, Christ’s love and redemptive action should find a consistent expression in my ministry of service to others.

I recognize that on this issue, as on many others, conscientious Christians will differ in their understanding of what it means to obey Christ. Speaking personally, and only personally, there is no doubt in my mind that America is moving toward a permanent militaristic outlook. The public now accepts as normal and inevitable that the nation must be prepared to go to war at any moment. The conclusion I derive from this is that America is not guided as much by evidence as by custom. A classic case in point is Iran (see my essay on this subject). A kind of unthinking pragmatism has settled upon us like dust. If we flex our muscles the world will respect us – so we argue. We have forgotten the servant role of Christianity. We attempt to exploit the powers rather than persuade them to conform to the way of Christ. We have forgotten that we need to make it clear that our loyalty is to Christ and not to the state. Indeed, uncompromising loyalty to Christ is the best way to render service to the state and, at the same time, to engage in prophetic witness to the world around us.

When one reads the Gospels one arrives at an inescapable conclusion: It is the suffering of Jesus that is the paradigm of the Christian life. The well-known axiom from Martin Kähler that the Gospels are “passion narratives with extended introductions” certainly applies. Jesus is the “king who didn’t reign,” in contrast to the false triumphalism found in the Hellenistic tradition of the “divine man” who masters the cosmic forces of evil. The Gospels proclaim “Christ crucified” every bit as much as the apostle Paul does. They warn us against the moral distortion that runs rife in our churches. Insofar as the Messiah was understood as a political deliverer, the Gospels are not only apolitical, they are antipolitical, for the Christ they present stands in diametrical opposition to the conventional messianic hope of the day.

The cross thus appears as the hermeneutical key to understanding the revelation of God in Christ. Is there not a clear parallel between America’s theologia gloriae and Peter’s protest against Jesus’ passion in Mark 8:32, with its overtones of ethnic triumphalism? Mark’s Gospel soberly recognizes where Christ stands with respect to the structures of power, whether in Jerusalem or Rome – or even the United States. The only question for the church is: Are we willing to follow Jesus “beyond politics,” that is, beyond the cultural optimism that encourages us to think that the most serious problem in the world today is the absence of democracy?

How this model of Jesus is to be transformed from the pages of the Gospels to the dilemma of modern life remains, of course, to be fleshed out. After all, the example of Christ will perforce have a potent effect upon one’s moral understanding of Christianity, unless of course we shunt it aside. James Douglass, in his book The Non-Violent Cross, is convinced that political pacifism is the only logical outcome of the paradigm of Jesus:

It is evident that the doctrine [of a just war] is too weak in its theological presuppositions to be able to support the cross, either the cross of conscientious objection or the cross of unilateral disarmament. The foundations of a just-war theory do not have the strength to sustain adequately the kind of witness demanded today by its own moral logic, which taken by itself compels one to relinquish all recourse to modern war (James Douglass, The Non-Violent Cross [New York: Macmillan, 1966] p. 172).

For myself, I have found no pat way to deal with the questions being asked by pacifists. I dare not assume that just because I am a Christ-follower I am incapable of gross moral evil. My position on war and peace is not neat and tidy. I continue to struggle with the questions, and my struggles belie neat schemes or solutions. My dilemma is perhaps best captured in the oft-quoted statement of Bonhoeffer: “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”

In the end, if I am moved by the compassion of our Lord Jesus to eschew violence and to participate in God’s reconciling activity in the world, it is only because His Spirit casts out all fear.

July 3, 2008

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.

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