Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:4–7)
The local church doesn’t experience its exile in precisely the same way as theocratic Israel, but Jeremiah’s admonition still applies: Jesus commanded his disciples (and us) to love their enemies and pray for those who persecuted them, since the Father causes the sun to rise on the just and unjust alike; Peter exhorted the church to honor the emperor as well as to worship the Triune God; and Paul admonished the Thessalonian church to seek to do good.
But what do we do when the actions of the unjust become intolerable? If it becomes clear that injustice is being systematically perpetrated against a group of people, are Christians under obligation to fight that injustice? If so, how? How can we live peacefully among ourselves when the peace of our neighbor is disrupted by violence and aggression? We asked friends and colleagues Matthew Tuininga, assistant professor of moral theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, and Ekemini Uwan, an anti-racism writer and speaker and recipient of the 2015 Greene Prize in Apologetics Award, to talk about how the church can love its neighbor while seeking the good of the city.
EU: The mandate to seek the good of the city is found in Jeremiah 29:7. At that time in redemptive history, the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, and they anxiously awaited God’s deliverance from captivity. The Lord, speaking through Jeremiah, commanded the Israelites to settle in Babylon by entering into the covenant of marriage, bearing children, building houses, praying on behalf of the city, and seeking its welfare. Like Israel, the church is also in exile as we await Christ’s return and our deliverance from the sin, death, and misery of this fallen world (Heb. 11:13–16). As Christians, we are Christ’s representatives on the earth, so we are not to be found idle as we await our deliverance. We are to seek the good of the city by praying for it and seeking the welfare of the city. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, a few ways Christians can do the latter might include attending local civilian oversight meetings that hold police officers accountable, or creating an independent police review board if your city does not have one.
On this side of the cross, the second greatest commandment that Jesus gave us is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39). We cannot seek the good of the city without first loving our neighbors comprehensively, in both soul and body. With regard to the soul, we share the gospel with unbelievers in our respective spheres and urge them to be reconciled to God. With regard to the body, we seek the welfare of our neighbors in every way possible, which includes seeking justice on their behalf.
With the in-breaking of the new age, we experience its attendant blessings of joy, peace, righteousness, and justice, which are just a foretaste of the many blessings of the new age that will be consummated upon Christ’s return. As Christians, we have access to these blessings, and we ought to bring them to bear in the lives of our neighbors during this present evil age. In essence, people should experience some measure of relief from suffering. Notice that I said some measure of relief, because although the new age has broken in, the present evil age is a reality we must contend with until Christ returns and consummates his kingdom.
In addition to my earlier suggestion about attending local civilian oversight meetings, the church should support families whose loved ones have been killed by the police. There are countless family members who have been left behind, devastated and stigmatized by the death of their loved ones. In this way, the church can be the hands and feet of Jesus by seeking out the surviving family members and giving emotional, spiritual, and financial support. This same principle can be applied to those who have lost a family member to the prison system. These are some basic ways we can love our neighbors and seek the good of the city.
MT: I agree with everything you say here. But, although I think our situation is analogous to that of the Israelite exiles in Babylon, I do not think it is exactly the same. And that is because we live in light of what Christ has already accomplished in his reconciliation of all things and in his ascension to lordship over all things (Col. 1:18–20; Eph. 1:19–23). To be sure, we experience this in the context of the dynamic tension and overlap between the present evil age and the age to come, the already and the not yet. Thus we should not confuse the kingdom of Christ with the institutions of the present age. At the same time, our calling is to witness to the righteousness of Christ’s kingdom in every area of life; and I think the gospel calls us to do that in a more aggressive way than Jeremiah’s exhortation to the Israelite exiles, who were simply called to seek Babylon’s welfare while awaiting their deliverance from it. In that sense, I would say it is the gospel of the resurrected and ascended Christ that should guide the way in which we seek the welfare of the city we inhabit.
Calvin points out that when Jesus proclaimed kingdom blessings on “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” and on those who “are persecuted because of righteousness” (Matt. 5:6, 10), he was not just thinking about our witness to or suffering for the gospel. He was thinking of our hungering and suffering with respect to any just cause. As Calvin puts it in his commentary on Matthew 5:10,
This is descriptive of those who inflame the hatred and provoke the rage of wicked men against them because through an earnest desire to do what is good and right they oppose bad causes and defend good ones, as far as lies in their power.
For Christians, witnessing to the kingdom and witnessing to its righteousness and justice go hand in hand. They are inseparable from each other. We cannot love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength unless we also love our neighbors as ourselves.
It seems to me that the need of the hour for many Christians—in light of police brutality, systemic racism, Black Lives Matter, and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency—is to rediscover who our neighbors are. Many white Christians, for instance, are known for their hunger and thirst for justice for the unborn or for religious liberty for Christians, but they are less known for their determination to stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters of color when they experience poverty and oppression. That’s why many of these brothers and sisters experienced the overwhelming white evangelical support of Donald Trump as a betrayal—an exchange of the welfare of ethnic minority Christians for the causes near and dear to white evangelicals.
Yet in my experience, black and white evangelicals don’t often understand one another very well. And the reason for this, for the most part, is that we don’t have much to do with one another. We aren’t worshipping together, let alone listening to one another’s cries or bearing one another’s burdens. Perhaps the primary question facing Christians is not, how should I love my neighbor, but who do I regard as my neighbor? And here Jesus’ answer is quite clear. We show who we truly regard as our neighbor through the actions that demonstrate who we really love.
To devote ourselves to the cause of our suffering neighbors is not to abandon our fidelity to the spiritual kingdom but to make the righteousness of that kingdom a reality in our lives. To speak out against a government that dehumanizes those made in the image of God is not to dishonor that government but to call it to its highest purpose and meaning under the lordship of the ascended Christ. To do all of this while maintaining respect for those in authority, seeking peace and reconciliation where there is conflict and alienation, and suffering violence rather than inflicting it is to witness to the gospel in the best possible way.
EU: Matthew, I am in complete agreement with you. For the sake of clarity, I am not saying the Babylonian exile the Israelites were subjected to is identical to the exile the church is currently experiencing. There are parallels, but they are not identical for several reasons; the salient one is that the church is in a different epoch of redemptive history.
That quote from Calvin serves as a strong indictment against the evangelical church. When was the last time the evangelical church truly inflamed the hatred of the wicked for the sake of the good? In light of Calvin’s words and your mention of white evangelicals’ overwhelming support of Trump, this presidential election presented the perfect opportunity for white evangelicals to do the very thing Calvin spoke of. Sadly, 81 percent of white evangelicals chose to align themselves with Trump, instead of standing with women, immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, Hispanics, immigrants, and other marginalized people on the receiving end of his hateful words and actions.
In a discussion of God’s communicable attributes, Herman Bavinck wrote:
Righteousness is and remains a forensic term; but in the Old Testament it was viewed as the most important task of people and the strongest proof of righteousness for them to protect the oppressed and to save the wretched from the injustice and persecution to which they are exposed. (Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, God and Creation [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004], 225)
In light of this Old Testament reality, The Westminster Larger Catechism Question 136 says this about the sixth commandment (“You shall not murder”):
What are the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment?
A. The sins forbidden in the sixth commandment are, all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others, except in case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defense; the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful and necessary means of preservation of life; sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations; provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.
If white evangelicals adopted a full-orbed view of justice that involves correcting oppression (Isa. 1:17) in all forms—including abortion, threats to religious liberty, the school-to-prison pipeline, education inequality, unequal pay for women, housing segregation, the absence of paid family medical leave, mass incarceration, and police brutality, to name a few justice issues—then they would ignite the hatred of the world (Matt. 10:22; John 15:18–19), including those on the political Left and Right. Then the evangelical church would truly be the city that shines on a hill (Matt. 5:14), showing that the kingdom to which she belongs is not of this world (John 18:36).
MT: I sympathize with what you are saying about the white evangelical vote for Trump. I and many other evangelical leaders made our opposition to Trump clear during the months leading up to the election. At the same time, I think we need to be careful when judging the votes of our brothers and sisters, whether Democrats or Republicans. A vote for a presidential candidate is an enormously complex thing.
Many evangelicals who voted for Hillary Clinton due to concern about Donald Trump’s racism, misogyny, or incompetence found themselves voting for the most pro-choice candidate in American history. Clinton did not defend the legality of abortion as a necessary evil; she praised it as a positive good that should receive federal funding. Yet they supported her because they felt her to be the lesser of two evils.
For their part, evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump due to concern about Clinton’s views on abortion, same-sex marriage, or lack of trustworthiness found themselves voting for a candidate whom many of their own brothers and sisters experienced as an existential threat. Many of them had opposed him throughout the primary process precisely because of his racism and misogyny and only voted for him out of desperation as the lesser of two evils.
I see no moral high ground here on either side. At the very least we owe each other charity, humility, and the effort to sympathize with and understand one another. As John Witvliet, my colleague at Calvin Seminary, puts it, “I mourn for a world in which we are forced to choose which part of what we believe to be a consistent life-affirming ethic that will guide us as we engage the political process.”
And that’s why a healthy two-kingdom theology is so necessary to guide the church in the way we stand for righteousness. What should define the church is not who we voted for on one particular election day when the choices were horrific, but how we witness to the righteousness and justice of the kingdom each and every day, as individuals and as communities. And it is here, where we can do so much, that we are doing so little.
Our churches, by and large, are as segregated as ever. Far too often we are entirely disconnected from our communities, unable to sympathize with (let alone help bear) the burdens of the poor and oppressed within our midst. We usually treat the diaconate as an afterthought to the more important work of the pastors and elders, forgetting that teaching, worship, and prayer are sheer hypocrisy apart from an active ministry of righteousness (Isa. 58). And our proclivity to division has turned our denominations into mere affinity groups, even ethno-cultural groups, in which we are never challenged by those who are different from us.
If we are going to witness faithfully to the righteousness of the kingdom, then we are going to have to begin breaking down these barriers, investing in our communities, and building relationships with those who are different from us, in order that we might truly learn to bear one another’s burdens and so understand one another’s concerns. Only when we become one body again, knit together in love, will we together—white, black, Hispanic, Democrat, Republican, rich, or poor—be able to lift up the cause of righteousness for those who have no voice.
I’m not talking primarily about denominational organization, as if ecumenical efforts must precede our witness to justice (which would be an excuse never to do anything). I’m talking about the church’s life at an organic level. Only when we truly love one another, across denominational and theological lines, do we demonstrate to the world in a meaningful way that we are Christ’s disciples. Attempting to witness to the righteousness of the kingdom through political activism is mere hypocrisy when we aren’t even practicing it in the church. Until we commit ourselves to practicing the gospel among ourselves as Christians—across ethnic, economic, political, and cultural barriers—as the Spirit teaches so thoroughly in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we will have nothing to offer a world desperately in need of reconciliation.
EU: The suggestion that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were equally bad candidates is a false equivalency. To be sure, both candidates were flawed and neither was ideal. However, Trump’s behavior is already sending shockwaves around the globe with his call to the president of Taiwan and his invitation to the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, to visit Washington, DC—not to mention his praise of Vladimir Putin’s questionable leadership and the US intelligence community’s revelation that Russia interfered with the US elections. Based on her previous behavior, it’s unlikely that Hillary Clinton would have committed the same inappropriate actions.
Clinton certainly holds a lamentable view of the unborn, but Trump’s rather recent “pro-life” stance hardly inspires confidence, as he said that overturning Roe v. Wade “has a long, long way to go.” Concerning same-sex marriage, Trump said that “it’s the law” and he is “fine with that.” Trump’s campaign language was frequently punctuated with bigoted, racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic remarks, so we cannot exclude those sentiments as a nonfactor in white evangelicals’ decision to vote for Trump.
Trump’s language and behavior have acted as a catalyst for the latent bigotry that still infects our country. On November 21, 2016, fifteen-year-old James Means was murdered by sixty-two-year-old William Pulliam, and his killer referred to him as a “piece of trash.” Will Sims was the victim of a hate crime and suffered the same fate as James Means on November 12, 2016, at the hands of three white men. I bring up the unconscionable deaths of these two African-American men in order to demonstrate that the existential threat Trump’s presidency poses to my livelihood and that of my kinsmen is an objective reality.
Two-kingdom theology marks the point of our theological departure, for I subscribe to neither two-kingdom theology nor transformationalism. Instead, I stand firmly rooted in the eschatological reality of the already/not yet while affirming that the church as an institution and organism is to make disciples, bear witness to the gospel, and proclaim the gospel to those who are perishing, which requires cultural, political, and social engagement.
MT: Thanks, Ekemini. I would only add that in my view, this is precisely what a Calvinist two-kingdom theology is: it is a theology of the way in which the kingdom of the “age to come” breaks into the “present evil age.” The church witnesses to its power in every area of life, including politics, in ways appropriate to its gospel mission, always mindful of the tension between the already and the not yet.
Ekemini Uwan (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) has written for The Huffington Post, Black Voices, Christianity Today, and the Reformed African American Network to name a few. Her insights have been quoted by the New York Times, The Washington Post, Mashable, and The Huffington Post Religion. Visit her website: www.sistamatictheology.com.
Matthew J. Tuininga (PhD, Emory University) is the author of Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ’s Two Kingdoms (Cambridge University Press, March 2017). He has written numerous articles and reviews for academic publications, and also writes regularly in popular magazines and online. You can follow his online writings at his website: www.matthewtuininga.wordpress.com.
