Lux Lucet

I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.

• Psalm 120:7

It seemed like déjà vu.  Watching video of angry protesters storming the American embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, I couldn’t help but recall similar scenes from 1979.  I was thirteen when angry crowds of demonstrators took to the streets against the Shah of Iran, swept the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in that nation, and captured the American embassy in Tehran, holding fifty-two American hostages for 444 days.

There was, as you may suppose, a good deal of anger directed at Iran from the American public.  Pictures of the scowling Ayatollah, a man whose menacing face seemed to be everywhere, served to drive home the seriousness of the ongoing hostage crisis.

For my part, I recall not so much being angry with Iran as I was puzzled by the whole affair.  Here were people on the other side of the world, in a country I had barely heard of, marching, burning American flags and calling America the Great Satan.   The whole thing just seemed bizarre to me.  As far as I was aware, I had never harmed an Iranian, nor did I harbor anything like hatred for the Iranian people.  So why did these people, seemingly out of the blue, one day start proclaiming how much they hated my country?  It was as if Iran was a nation full of nothing but lunatics.  At least that’s how it appeared to me at the time.

Sometimes I wonder how those too young to have lived through the Iran hostage crisis view that event.  Do Millennials or Gen-Z even know about it?  If so, do they realize how big a deal it was at the time?  This one event dominated the news for over a year.  It even spawned a new news program on ABC called Nightline hosted by Ted Koppel and dedicated to providing the latest hostage crisis updates.  If memory serves, it used to come on weeknights at 11:30 pm after the local evening news.

That was then.

As the Apostle Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”  It took some time, but with reading, reflection and maturity, I came to have a better understanding of the origins of the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis and the ongoing conflict between America and Iran.

My aim in this series is to share with the reader what I’ve learned about foreign policy over the years.  Specifically, I aim to bring the light of Scripture to matters of foreign policy, in particular, America’s foreign policy as it relates to the Middle East.

For some people, it may seem a bit odd to even talk about the Bible and foreign policy in the same sentence.  After all, when secular people think about the Bible, if they think about the Bible at all, they tend to see it as an old book that may have some value in teaching general ethics.  But the idea that these ancient Scriptures could really speak authoritatively to today’s foreign policy issues, well, that would be just plain superstition.  If it’s answers we want, we need to go to the Council on Foreign relations or read a book by Henry Kissinger.

On the other hand, Christian people often miss the Bible’s teachings on foreign policy, but for different reasons.  One common reason for this among Christians – when I say Christian here, I mean by this, not nominal Christians or liberals, but actual saved believers – is that we are not trained to think of Christianity as an all-encompassing system of thought.  This was the case with me for many years.  Yes, I believed the Bible was the inerrant, infallible Word of God and that it taught the way of salvation.  But, much as did the secularists, I tended to think that to get answers to question of foreign policy one had to go to “the experts,” by which I meant the afore mentioned Henry Kissinger, various political pundits, and maybe even a secular philosopher or two.  This is a mistake.

The Bible, as John Robbins has correctly noted, has a systematic monopoly on truth.  It’s not as if we find some truth in the Bible and then go out on our own steam and discover additional truth through our own experiences and observations.  Truth, like righteousness, is a gift that men receive from God alone.  This includes truth about foreign policy.

A second reason some Christians miss the Bible’s teaching on foreign policy is patriotism.  This is not to say that patriotism is itself wrong.  Nations are a creation of God himself and are his gift to mankind.  As Paul remarked during his address on Mars Hill, “And he hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).  The purpose for God’s creating nations, as Paul tells us in the next verse, is “That they should seek the Lord.”

Even when held captive in a foreign land, the Jews in were told to “seek the peace of the [foreign] city” where they dwelt and to “pray unto the LORD for it.” Peter enjoined his readers to “honor the king.”

But although Christians are called to promote the good of their country, that is to say, there is a Biblical sense in which they are called to be patriots, the love of one’s own country can become an idol as well, even for Christian people.  That American Evangelicals struggle at times with this problem was dramatically shown during the 2012 Republican presidential primaries.  During one of the televised debates, Ron Paul made the comment that America should observe the Golden Rule in foreign policy.  Speaking to an undoubtedly heavily Evangelical audience – the debate was held in the Bible Belt state of South Carolina – his remark was greeted with raucous boos.  Those Christian who would boo the application of the Golden Rule to foreign policy are both greatly deceived and in need of repentance.

A third factor that causes Christians to miss the Bible’s teaching on foreign policy, especially as it relates to the Middle East, is Pre-millennial Dispensationalism, America’s unofficial eschatology. Pre-millennial Dispensationalism (hereafter Dispensationalism) has been the dominant eschatology in America for decades.  Since Dispensationalism views the return of Jews to the holy land and rebuilding of the temple as prerequisites for the return of Christ, Dispensationalists tend to be vocal supporters of Israel and are known as Christian Zionists.  Dispensationalists generally view any criticism of Israeli government policy, or failure to support said policy, as “cursing Israel” and thus calling down the curse of God upon the critic’s own head.

 

Present Danger

The events of last week, culminating with Donald Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, demand  that Christians, particularly American Christians, first learn what the Bible has to say about foreign policy and then speak out.

Far from calling for empire building, entangling alliances, preemptive/preventive war, drone assassinations, sanctions and other common tools used by America’s neo-conservative dominated foreign policy establishment, a Biblical foreign policy is one that seeks peace and friendship with all nations, sets a good example, stays out of foreign wars, and fights only in self-defense.

As surprising as this may sound to some people, America had such a foreign policy at its founding.  John Robbins noted, “The conservative movement in the United States has abandoned the American (and Biblical) foreign policy of strategic independence pursued by our government since 1776 for a policy of global interventionism that has angered many foreign nations and peoples, most recently the Muslims” (“The Religious Wars of the 21^st Century”).

Robbins wrote that essay back in 2006, but his statement is, if anything, more timely today than it was then.

 

Study Resources

It’s been my experience that there is not a great deal of sound material written by Christians on foreign policy.  One exception to that rule is the work done by John Robbins, and I highly recommend that any Christian interested in understanding God’s mind on this subject read his essays.  Robbins’ relevant works include:

• “The Messianic Character of America Foreign Policy”
• “Truth and Foreign Policy”
• “The Religious Wars of the 21^st Century
• “The Bible and the Draft”

“Who Really Owns the ‘Holy Land’?” by Robert L. Reymond is a brilliant refutation of Dispensationalism and a must read for any Christian who wants to better understand the ideas currently driving American foreign policy in the Middle East and what the Bible really teaches.

 

Closing Thoughts

In the opinion of this author, President Trump’s decision to escalate the conflict with Iran by assassinating Qasem Soleimani was unchristian, unconstitutional and, far from representing a “defense of our nation and its citizens,” puts America at a much higher risk of a serious and destructive war in the Middle East.

Some will argue that General Soleimani was a bad guy who killed Americans, that for this reason he deserved to be killed and that my stance, therefore, misses the mark.

Maybe he killed Americans, I don’t know.  But a couple of things need to be said here.  First, just because government officials claim something is true doesn’t make it so.  For what it’s worth, he and Quds, the military organization he headed, were also very effective in fighting terrorist groups ISIS and Al Qaeda, both of which we have been told at various times represented public enemy Number One.

Second, this attack has to be seen in the larger context of the decades old conflict between the US and Iran.  If one believes that America’s hostility towards Iran dating back to the 1950’s is justified, then the attack on Soleimani is also justified.  It simply represents another step in the battle to eradicate evil.  On the other hand, if America’s conflict with Iran is largely the result of an unchristian and unconstitutional foreign policy of aggression pursued by the United States, then the real blame for the American deaths attributed to Soleimani largely lies, not with him, but with the American officials who drafted and implemented the unchristian and unconstitutional policies.

In the opinion of this author, the ongoing conflict with Iran, and the latest escalation of this conflict, is principally the result of America’s decision to abandon its constitutional and Biblical foreign policy of strategic independence and to replace it with a foreign policy of interventionism.

As Christians, let us now seek the peace of the city and pray unto the Lord for it. Let us pray that wisdom prevail over foolishness.  Let us pray that we step back from what appears to be the brink of a needless war.

(To be continued…)