Is Jesus for “Law & Order?”

[JohnH]

Another model I have seen in many Protestant churches: multiple services in different languages, with overlap. People who speak each language also participate in services in other languages. Leadership is shared. Potlucks are shared.

In an English service, people may also learn a Swahili hymn or a Spanish hymn as a way of expressing unity.

And none of that changes anything I said. God has still ordained that people speak mutually unintelligible languages, and indeed a formerly mutually intelligible dialect continuum tends to, over time, become mutually unintelligible.

Actually, people do learn other people's languages. The entire Bible is full of people communicating with each other even though they grew up speaking different languages. Moses spoke both Hebrew and Egyptian. People negotiated across languages, welcomed refugees across languages, married across languages ... Babel did not establish some law that two people who speak different languages can't learn each other's language or communicate with each other meaningfully.

If we want to know what God ordained, it's probably good to respond to the biblical arguments people are making, taking the Bible seriously.

I think God ordained the New Testament.

Sure, someone can become bilingual or trilingual.

That doesn’t change the fact that:

- God ordained confusion of languages and that people be divided by being unable to understand each other’s tongues, and that hasn’t changed.

- A congregation will have a dominant language or set of languages.
People who don’t understand that language will be unable to be an effective part of that congregation.

- Peole who learn 3, 4, or 5 languages still are unable to communicate in the mother tongue of most people. There are 20 languages understood by about half the world’s population, and the rest understands languages more obscure than that.

Every congregation will have a dominant language (or rarely, two co-equal languages, where to fully participate you must know both, like Amish where a member needs to know English, PA Dutch, and in some cases liturgical German to fully participate).

God has explicitly not ordained that we speak a common language, merge into being able to understand every other Christian, or even come close to being able to understand just a fraction of all the Christians out there.

And overall, denial of this obvious fact leads to what is actually happening: English eventually becomes the dominant trade and liturgical language everywhere, and minority languages will be “accommodated” with Google Translate or other AI based translation tools, as sinful man attempts to rebuild Babel.

[ken_sylvania]

And again, Genesis 11 makes it clear that the language and cultural divisions of Babel are the result of human sin, not God's intentions. Why do you deny the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit in Acts that calls the church to move beyond those cultural and linguistic boundaries?

Why do you insist that that the divisions caused by human sin are what God desires?

What sin specifically were those language and cultural divisions the result of?

[Praxis+Theodicy]

I think that Christ is for law and order. I don’t think he is for the kind of rioting that we witness where people get hurt.

I think Jesus is generally for law and for order (both can be argued from different Bible passages). However, I agree that he would be very against the brutal tactics that police use to enforce law and order, and thank you Valerie for making that point. Law and order are important, but will not be achieved through the brutal police behavior we have seen throughout history right up to today.

[Jazman]

If we care about justice, mercy, and the weightier matters of the law, I think that means caring for refugees, outsiders, the displaced, and the disadvantaged. That's what Jesus demonstrated in his own life, and it is one of the things that many religious people objected to. That's what we see in the early church. We can decide to be like Jesus, or we can decide to be like the Pharisees.

I think that was one of the central questions I wanted to dig into with my original post. As much as this thread has gone down the bunny trail, I think the argument that separation of people by culture and language is part of God’s divine plan is an excellent example of how worldly political order gets confused with God’s intentions and plans.

Yes, there are Scriptures like Romans 13 that instruct believers to obey the government, but there are plenty of other scriptures of defiance and prophetic criticism towards unjust powers. Moses confronts Pharoah. Nathan confronts David. The Old Testament prophets confront Israel’s kings. Jesus declares the truth to Pilate. I think this tension between obedience and prophecy embodies the challenge of what it means to be faithful under human power and authority.

I guess I should read the whole thread, but from these later posts, it looks like one bunny trail it's going down is echoing shades of the arguments of (Herr) Wolfe made in The Case for Christian Nationalism. Why does that happen whenever topics like Bootstrap lists come up? ("justice, mercy, and the weightier matters of the law, I think that means caring for refugees, outsiders, the displaced, and the disadvantaged")
I find it sadly interesting that one of Wolfe's main points, which you succinctly phrase, "the argument that separation of people by culture and language is part of God’s divine plan" continues to interject itself into discussions among us Christians. I agree with the rest of your description of that idea as a "worldly political order". I think the key word is "separation". I believe God loves diversity and heterogeneity rather than homogeneity and He desires that that diversity live together rather than separate. I think that was His plan; but He intended for that to happen in a different way than worldly sinful man goes about it, justifies it and in many places, tries to enforce the "separation".

[Valerie]

I think that Christ is for law and order. I don’t think he is for the kind of rioting that we witness where people get hurt.

I think Jesus is generally for law and for order (both can be argued from different Bible passages). However, I agree that he would be very against the brutal tactics that police use to enforce law and order, and thank you Valerie for making that point. Law and order are important, but will not be achieved through the brutal police behavior we have seen throughout history right up to today.

Olive brutality happens and it shouldn’t. Until you walk in the shoes of a police man or police woman in areas where they deal with a lot of crime we have no idea how stressful and hard and risky their jobs are. To keep general society, safe and free from what we are experiencing in many places today.
The best way to avoid any kind of police brutality is to follow the law and comply if you are pulled over or sought after. Things won’t go well with you if you try to resist, it makes you look guilty.

[Valerie]

If we care about justice, mercy, and the weightier matters of the law, I think that means caring for refugees, outsiders, the displaced, and the disadvantaged. That's what Jesus demonstrated in his own life, and it is one of the things that many religious people objected to. That's what we see in the early church. We can decide to be like Jesus, or we can decide to be like the Pharisees.

I think that was one of the central questions I wanted to dig into with my original post. As much as this thread has gone down the bunny trail, I think the argument that separation of people by culture and language is part of God’s divine plan is an excellent example of how worldly political order gets confused with God’s intentions and plans.

Yes, there are Scriptures like Romans 13 that instruct believers to obey the government, but there are plenty of other scriptures of defiance and prophetic criticism towards unjust powers. Moses confronts Pharoah. Nathan confronts David. The Old Testament prophets confront Israel’s kings. Jesus declares the truth to Pilate. I think this tension between obedience and prophecy embodies the challenge of what it means to be faithful under human power and authority.

I guess I should read the whole thread, but from these later posts, it looks like one bunny trail it's going down is echoing shades of the arguments of (Herr) Wolfe made in The Case for Christian Nationalism. Why does that happen whenever topics like Bootstrap lists come up? ("justice, mercy, and the weightier matters of the law, I think that means caring for refugees, outsiders, the displaced, and the disadvantaged")
I find it sadly interesting that one of Wolfe's main points, which you succinctly phrase, "the argument that separation of people by culture and language is part of God’s divine plan" continues to interject itself into discussions among us Christians. I agree with the rest of your description of that idea as a "worldly political order". I think the key word is "separation". I believe God loves diversity and heterogeneity rather than homogeneity and He desires that that diversity live together rather than separate. I think that was His plan; but He intended for that to happen in a different way than worldly sinful man goes about it, justifies it and in many places, tries to enforce the "separation".

His “original” plan changed because of the ways of man.
The ways of man are still inclined towards evil.
Revelation 22 reveals “the leaves of the tree is for the healing of the nations” which whatever that means exactly, doesn’t happen until the new heaven and earth as this world as we know it passes way. Until then, there doesn’t appear to be a doing away with nations and borders-and cultures. It is true, we Americans cannot travel to another country without a passport. We could also just not up and live in another country without a process.

[R7ehr]

Olive brutality happens and it shouldn’t.

Maybe so. I do like some of the results.
Check out Corning, California.

[Szdfan]

And again, Genesis 11 makes it clear that the language and cultural divisions of Babel are the result of human sin, not God's intentions. Why do you deny the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit in Acts that calls the church to move beyond those cultural and linguistic boundaries?

Why do you insist that that the divisions caused by human sin are what God desires?

What sin specifically were those language and cultural divisions the result of?

Hubris.

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
— Genesis 11:5-9

[JohnH]

I believe God loves diversity and heterogeneity rather than homogeneity and He desires that that diversity live together rather than separate. I think that was His plan; but He intended for that to happen in a different way than worldly sinful man goes about it, justifies it and in many places, tries to enforce the "separation".

Then why did God order people to scatter throughout the earth (being separate rather than together) at Babel, and also confused their languages so they could not communicate?

Man doesn't enforce any "separation". God does, because he does not enable us to be able to broadly communicate with everyone else on earth. We can only communicate with people with whom we share knowledge of a language.

[ken_sylvania]

And again, Genesis 11 makes it clear that the language and cultural divisions of Babel are the result of human sin, not God's intentions. Why do you deny the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit in Acts that calls the church to move beyond those cultural and linguistic boundaries?

Why do you insist that that the divisions caused by human sin are what God desires?

What sin specifically were those language and cultural divisions the result of?

Hubris.

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
— Genesis 11:5-9

I think that's partly right, but I do think you something by clipping out only a part of the account. In fact, just one verse previous we are told why the people wanted to build the tower - it was to avoid being scattered over the face of the earth. It may have actually been a case of direct rebellion against God. Surely these people knew that God had given command to Noah to replenish the earth, which would seem to suggest spreading out rather than grouping together. It would seem from the entire account that the scattering was not a result of sin, but that the confusion of tongues was God's way of forcing these people to do what he had intended them to do.

That being said, I don't subscribe to the theories that JohnH is promoting on this thread. I think the account of Babel is most useful as a caution against consolidating power and control and social structures, and possibly as a caution against economic power and advancement.