We Have no King but Caesar

John 19:15

Introduction

This essay was written in the mid-eighties. At that time I was a rector of St. Mark's, Haines City, Florida, and a member of the Social Concerns Committee of the Diocese of Florida. Prior to my position in Florida, I was in California working on my Ph.D. There I had done some work on behalf of a Nuclear Freeze, a national effort asking the United States government to freeze nuclear weapons production.

Once in Florida I continued that effort, principally as a member of the Social Concerns Committee. We presented a resolution to the Diocese of Central Florida in favor of a freeze. This turned out to be a rather painful enterprise. At first we were successful, but eventually, the clergy and laity defeated our efforts. In the process I ran into a wall of resistance, hypocrisy on the part of the clergy, indifference, and low-grade antipathy.

To make sense of this, I wrote the following essay. I was, even at that time, still haunted by the horror of the things that I had experienced in the late sixties in regard to nuclear war and universal suffering. Some of that is reflected in the essay. I was also influenced by Karl Barth, especially his essay Community, State, and Church.(1) It was there that I made a connection between justification and the role of the state. These ideas, coupled with the ideas of Jerome Frank, led to the present essay.

The Essay

Dr. Jerome Frank, a psychiatrist, has written a book entitled Sanity and Survival.(2) He presents the results of a number of psychological and historical studies which investigate how people feel and behave toward their country, and how this relates to the arms race. The aim of this essay is to take his data and conclusions and coordinate them with a number of biblical ideas. My primary conclusion is that citizens attribute functions to the state that properly belong only to God, and that the resulting idolatry increases the probability of destructive conflict between nations.

How do people feel about their country? There are, of course, varied answers to this question. There are always a minority of super-patriots who identify intensely with their country, just as there is a minority of people who do not like their country or affirm its values. The majority of the population, though not as vociferous as the two extremes, are generally quite positive in their estimation of their country. They affirm its way of life and espouse its values. In times of national danger, the overwhelming majority of a country's citizens can be expected to rally to the defence of their country, regardless of whether it is right or wrong.

Why do most people have such a positive regard for their country? The state is a social entity that creates a sense of community, protects the individual from foreign threats, affirms and celebrates values that its citizens have learned to love, and gives a sense of meaning that transcends the individual.(3) Religion provides transcendent meaning and social unity as well. Since the state's functions are similar to those of religion, the state is usually fortified by religious ideologies and clothed with divine attributes. Although these divine attributes may not always be consciously affirmed, they do, however, function as such in the feelings and thought of a country's citizens. I must now examine how this is so, but first a short biblical excursus is in order.

From the point of view of the state, the Hebrew religion, at least initially, represented a radical departure from the religions of the surrounding nations. The dominant religious ideologies of the time affirmed the state, represented by the king and his attendant priestly and military class, as the expression of a eternal divine order. The king himself was the representative of the gods, and as such, the owner of the land and its people. By contrast, Hebrew religion rejected the belief that the state or its representatives could in any sense be proclaimed as divine. Only Yahweh was King. Even under the davidic kingship, the King was never the epiphany of God, but always subject to the Word of God which could and did, as seen in the witness of the prophets, come upon the king and the state as a word of judgment. Jesus was in this tradition. He represented the will of Yahweh as a Word against the sin of his time and its embodiment in the social and personal relationships of his day. As a result of his prophetic ministry, he was put to death. It is no accident that Jesus was put to death by his government -- by the Sanhedrin (the ruling religious/governmental Jewish body), the foreign Roman power, and the consent of the people who clamored for his crucifixion.

The circumstances of Jesus' death reveal a fundamental human idolatry. Human beings prefer the rule of the state, its decisions and its righteousness, to the rule of God as manifested in and proclaimed by Jesus Christ. Although Pilate sought to release Jesus, the chief priests, with the backing of the multitude, cried out "We have no king but Caesar," and thereby denied the Lordship of Yahweh as their only King, and the depth of their and the world's sin in that it affirms its leader's judgments as the embodiment of the right, rather than believing in Jesus Christ as God's righteousness made manifest.

Why does this occur? Why was Jesus put to death by the representatives of the state with the consent of the multitude? As an institution, the state is well suited to solve a fundamental human problem. That problem is the problem of evil. A primary human need is to be loved, to know oneself as good and right, and to believe and feel that oneself, and others like oneself, are worthwhile and good. The major obstacle to feel good about oneself is sin. People are evil. They do evil things, they do not love and affirm each other, and they are terribly vulnerable to the guilt and self-denigration that results from seeing themselves as evil. It is one of Frank's most documented facts that the state can and does work to solve this problem. How does that happen?

The state provides the rhetoric and behavior that affirms its citizens as good and worthwhile while, at the same time, disguising the evil that afflicts them.(4) It does so by identifying the self with the state's way of life which is then celebrated as the good, and by projecting the nation's social evil, as well as the personal evils of its citizens, onto the enemy. "Unlike animals, humans can discharge their aggression on substitute victims by 'projecting' onto the object their own unacceptable feelings and attacking him for harboring them. Projection justifies and intensifies their hostility, and relieves their own feelings of guilt."(5) When the enemy is seen as evil, it can be blamed for both social and personal wrongs, and the wretched feelings of sin and guild can be alleviated.(6) Governmental rhetoric plays an important role in creating and maintaining these projections.(7) The enemy is consistently depicted as the source of evil in the modern world, while the home country is seen as exactly the opposite, the patron of freedom, benevolence, and virtue. The vociferous super-patriots seize upon this rhetoric with intensity. They have an excessive need to use the state for the maintenance of their sense of worth and goodness.(8) Conversely, there is usually a dissident minority who, with equal intensity, use their own country in exactly the opposite fashion. They project their own and the world's evil onto their own country, and utilize other movements or countries as the focus of the good. These two extremes carry on a verbal, and sometimes violent, battle with each other, predicated on the belief that the other is the "true enemy." Under normal circumstances the less vociferous majority is less swayed by the official rhetoric, or by the pros and cons of the minority positions. Most of the time they are too busy worrying about their own needs and wants to investigate the various positions. By and large, however, and especially in times of crisis, they identify with their country, and they usually make good use of the projects offered them by their government. They usually make little effort to know the truth or falsity behind their government's official rhetoric, nor do investigate the morality of government action.

Most people do not want to assess the moral integrity of their collective behavior for two principle reasons. First, the state possesses tangible, real power. To scrutinize a nation from an ethical perspective is to run the risk that its collective behavior may actually be evil. At that point one is faced with the unpleasant prospect of having to do something about it.(9) This may entail saying and doing things that the majority of the public, as well as the state itself, would prefer to have left unsaid or left undone. In the face of state power, the individual, as well as institutions such as the Church, may well feel powerless, if not actually subject to reprisals. Secondly, to judge the state on the basis of right and wrong means that the state can no longer function as a means of justification. One can no longer tacitly believe that one's way of life and national activities are good, and thereby identify oneself with its goodness while projecting one's evil onto the enemy. As a result, most people prefer to avoid the messy and complicated business of sorting out the rhetoric, making value judgments, and attempting to discover what their country is really doing.

Is there really any pleasure in discovering that one's nation is in the wrong? Can people actually continue to feel good about themselves when they realize that they are participating in national evil? Suppose, for example, that we discover that our nation has consistently expanded its nuclear arsenal and avoided a sustained effort to impose limits on the arms race. Would we feel happy about the tax money we have poured into armaments, and might we not wonder about the words of Jesus when he told us to be peace-makers, or that we should first take out the beam in America's eye before screaming about the mote in the Soviet's eyes? Is it not possible that there may be a conflict between what God in Jesus Christ is calling us to do, and what the state is actually doing? These questions are best left unanswered, and they are left unanswered. The result is public apathy.

There is, however, an alternative to public apathy. The public could believe that God justifies in Jesus Christ. God justifies by exposing our sin and proclaiming His forgiveness. In Jesus Christ He tells us that we are free to see ourselves just as we are, and that we have no need to hide from our national shortcomings. On the whole, the public does not want to hear this message. It prefers to allow the state to hide its sin and to project its evil onto the enemy. By giving the state the power to justify, rather than granting God the sole right of justification, the public tacitly attributes to the state a divine function and thereby makes it an idol. Normally, the citizens don't consciously deny God, they simply use the state to justify themselves, and avoid learning the truth about the state's actions on any issue that might endanger their belief in their nation's inherent goodness. Usually, this public idolatry, manifested as public apathy, remains hidden. But there are times when the idolatry bears its inevitable fruit.

The crucifixion of Jesus was such a time. Because of their apathy, the crowds did not follow Jesus as the truth, and did not know him as the truth. They followed him because he healed them of their physical and emotional problems. He even fed them in the wilderness. They shouted "Hosanna in the highest" when he came riding into Jerusalem, and a few days later they insisting they had no king but Caesar. They wanted Caesar to live and Christ to die. Since they didn't really know how he differed from the powers that be, they were putty in the hands of their chief priests who stirred them up to agitate for Jesus' death. Consequently they killed him. In the moment of crisis the Son of God himself became the enemy, and bore in his own flesh the hostility and anger of the multitudes who clamored for his crucifixion. The Sanhedrin and Roman state received the sanction of a public who really didn't care to know the Truth, about themselves, their governments, and about Jesus. In this way, through these events, God revealed the idolatry that lies hidden in every national state. It was a time of judgment, not only on individuals, but on the state, represented by the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate.

What happened then goes on today. The amount of public ignorance and apathy in the face of the nuclear weapons build-up has been extraordinary. We may well be destroyed by these weapons, but it is still assumed that the fault for their continued creation and production lies with the enemy. By believing these claims, generally put forward by politicians and promoted by those who profit from arms production, the citizens are doing today what was done in the time of Jesus. It seems obvious to me that we have enough bombs to destroy the world many times over, but still, we do not have enough. The American public believes government rhetoric in regard to the arms race because they do not want to complicate their lives, they need an enemy to bolster their sense of goodness, and finally, it requires going against the grain of public opinion.

It is not my purpose, in this article, to argue the "relative fault" of the Soviets and the United States as to what degree each is at fault for the arms race. The point here is that the official justification for such a terrifying buildup should not be accepted at face value. We are deceiving ourselves as to our real motives when we, without examination, blame the enemy for the present state of affairs. Perhaps God in his mercy will spare us the time of crisis which can result from America's general apathy and indifference. This is possible, God is merciful. But God is also just. Judgment has already occurred in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There we can see what we have done and are doing. There we were forgiven, and this forgiveness can be actualized today. Apathy is a sin. We are called to repent. There are choices that lie before us. The choice is to accept God's justification, or to continue using the state's rhetoric as a means of escaping responsibility for our collective and personal behavior. Repentance means making the effort to find out what is going on, and then acting in light of our best sense of God's call on our lives in this matter.

Finally, what does the Church need to do in these circumstances? The Church needs to proclaim justification, that God forgives sinners, not only for their personal day-to-day sin, but for their social and collective sins as well. We are far better off knowing the truth about ourselves and joyfully receiving forgiveness, than avoiding the truth or even engaging in exercises to convince ourselves that we are the best of all possible people. We have received the freedom of Jesus who, though he made it clear to those around him that they were sinners, did not hesitate to forgive, and counted it a privilege of his ministry that he could associate with his forgiven friends. His associates were far better off in his presence as forgiven sinners than the chief priests and Pharisees who preferred to justify themselves by other means. Furthermore, we are better off as people, even thought it is uncomfortable, and may even appear to be of no immediate benefit to us, to begin to act as forgiven people in this matter of the arms race. Jesus was put to death by the state, its tangible and real power meant crucifixion. But the fact that God raised him from the dead means that he lives on in victory in his Church, people whose actions are made effective in the world by his presence in the Spirit. For this reason, the Church is not powerless. There are things to do. Jesus Christ has overcome the world, and he continues to overcome the world. Therefore, the Church, as the community of forgiven people, needs to go forward in that victory by seeking God's will for what we do in the public arena. The Church needs to be the place where people stop using the state, whether overtly or tacitly through indifference, as a means of justification. In this way Christians are given the freedom to scrutinize the state more carefully and to participate more effectively in its political processes. The task is to see a bit more clearly, to recognize not only the nation's positive possibilities, but also its evil, and to not only recognize the evil of the enemy, but also recognize that they are human and under God's providential care. God can use all things for good, and that path needs to be discerned. Unless a nation can see that path, it will inevitably create its own destruction. It will be blind to the evil effects of its own actions, and fail to recognize opportunities for good which may emerge from the other side. When that happens, suffering is the inevitable result.

Nuclear weapons are a terrible threat, and therefore they represent a significant pastoral problem. A growing number of people, especially children, have become psychologically disturbed on account of the nuclear terror. Further, the possibility of no earthly future undermines people's efforts to create a better life for themselves and their offspring. The Church is pastorally responsible for its people's problems, both individual and social. It needs to clearly and gladly proclaim that Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and conquered all death and destruction, including nuclear holocaust. This does not mean that nuclear destruction will not occur, but it does mean that we have hope and meaning even beyond atomic death. Our lives are meaningful and worthwhile even if they are blown away tomorrow. This message needs to be proclaimed as the one message of hope that can counter the profound paralysis and pessimism that is gradually eating away at the roots of our civilization. The Church needs to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven, that God has already reconciled all people, even our nation's enemies, and that we may go forward with joy even in these dark times. As our Savior once said: "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world."

Questions for Discussion

1. Does the state really claim to be good? Have you, for example, ever heard a president publicly admit that what we are doing is evil? Should they? What would be the political consequences? Do people really identify with their country, and have you amassed any evidence that people actually project their evil onto the enemy? Does projection take place in terms of interpersonal relationships?

2. Have you noticed any resistance in yourself or your parishioners to investigating whether or not the Christian faith has relevance for social and political issues? If so, what are the reasons for this resistance?

3. Have you noticed parishioners expressing any fear over the fact that they may be destroyed in a nuclear war? If there has been little discussion of this fear, does this mean they have internalized the good news of God's salvation, or is this fear suppressed, but still operative in their lives? If they have received the good news, how has it manifested itself in their response to the arms race? Does the Church have a responsibility to pastorally address this problem? If so, how can this be done in the local parish?

4. The disciples deserted Jesus for fear of the state, the crowds demanded his crucifixion because of their prior apathy and indifference. Do the circumstances of the crucifixion of Jesus really tell us something about the nature of sin in our time, and if so, how should we respond to this sin today? Was Jesus a prophet, and does the Church have a prophetic role in society? If so, how can it be exercised? Would such a prophetic ministry be something that appeals to the average parishioner, and if not, why not? Should parishioners be called to this form of ministry?

5. Do people scrutinize their collective behavior from a Christian perspective? For example, the idea of "separation of church and state" has often been used to prohibit religious "interference" in the political realm. As a result, governmental actions are often not seen from a Christian perfective. Have people really investigated the original meaning of this idea? Or, has the Church, clergy and laity, investigated, in light of the entire biblical revelation, whether or not the idea of separation of church and state has any biblical foundation? Are there biblical norms for governmental behavior? Have you, or your parish, investigated these questions? If so, why, if not, why not? Are these questions really worth investigating, or are there other more pressing matters? If so, what are they, and why are they more pressing?

Endnotes

1. Community, State, and Church. Translated by A. M. Hall, G. Ronald Howe, and Stanley Godman. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1960.
2. See Jerome Frank, Sanity and Survival. New York: Random House, 1967. All the footnotes in this article refer to this book. Dr. Frank, earned his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, he is the author of a number of books and articles, a professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and a veteran of World War II.
3. See chapter six, especially the section on national ideologies, pp. 106f.
4. See the chapter entitled "The Image of the Enemy," p. 115f.
5. P. 67.
6. This is not to say that foreign governments are incapable of evil. They are always evil to some degree, and sometimes, dreadfully so. But, as long as nations projects their evil on to the "enemy," they will fail to see the consequences of their own evil, or to perceive positive opportunities for reconciliation which may issue from the other side. They will be tempted to follow a policy of increasing belligerence, and this will lead to war.
7. Frank documents this historically. For example, an analysis of John Foster Dulles' speeches between 1953 and 1959, reveals that he interpreted every Soviet action as an expression of their inherent bad faith. (p. 128.) "Experts about an enemy nation often show particular reluctance to modify their image to fit new, more favorable information. This apparent paradox is easily understood if it is remembered that they have a vested interest in maintaining their original impression intact, since it was the source of their prestige and influence." (p. 129.)
8. Studies show a positive correlation between the authoritarian personality and jingoism. (p. 122-123.)
9. Chapter two describes a number of typical psychological mechanisms for avoiding unpleasant facts and realities.

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.