Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime. He was imprisoned and hanged for his involvement in a plot to kill Hitler.
As he watched the National Socialists rise to power and begin their reign of terror, he struggled greatly with the theological question, “What is the Christian’s responsibility when facing a government that is actively destroying its own people?”
This is no new question. Neither has it grown irrelevant with the passing of time. It’s still a question worth serious thought.
With the prevalence of commands to come to the aid of widows, orphans, and strangers, what do we do about a government that tends to mistreat them all?
I’ve given away the major plot point regarding Bonhoeffer’s solution. He concluded that the assassination attempt, though distasteful, was warranted.
The pastor explained some of his reasoning with a fascinating metaphor. Imagine a horse-drawn chariot. Smoke and flames billow from the horses’ nostrils. Driving them at a furious pace through the land is the tyrant, a vicious ruler. He doesn’t care that he’s running people over, smashing whole villages under the wheels, and so on.
What can be done? What must be done? Bonhoeffer’s answer is three-fold.
First, the Christian can and should speak to the insane chariot driver. Christians have a duty to question the course of action and call the chariot driver to stand down. We see examples of this throughout the Scripture, as the prophets declared to kings that they must repent. John the Baptist is a great New Testament example, in his faithful preaching to wicked King Herod.
Second, the Christian should come to the aid of those who are being run over by the chariot. The Good Samaritan helped the man assaulted by robbers. We must help those crushed by robbers, including robbers with government titles. In ancient Rome, this meant going out at night to the places where unwanted infants were left out to die of exposure or be eaten by wolves. (Saving those babies was against Rome’s law, but was in accordance with God’s.) In Nazi Germany, this often meant hiding Jews.
Third, if the first two steps do not stop the psychopathic chariot, at some point it becomes necessary to undermine the tyrannical power, with an eye toward its downfall. In other words, the third strategy is to spike the chariot wheels.
One biblical example is Rahab (Joshua 2). She aided the spies in Jericho, which undermined the king’s ability to maintain his kingdom.
The preaching ministry of Jesus was characterized by this sort of undermining. Most of what he taught was rightly perceived by the ruling class (the Pharisees and Sadducees) as destroying their authority.
Ultimately it was a threat to their whole position, place, and lifestyle. He spent his public life spiking their wheels, and they finally spiked him to a cross.
I hope these strategies help you in your own mental wrestling on the topic of church/state relations.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: