“The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him” [Mark 1:12-13].
A priest-friend has just emailed us an article by a keen observer and commentator of the Malaysian political scene. The article comes with a few photographs. Like most people, political headlines do intrigue us, but they nevertheless are unable to detain our attention for long. Perhaps faster than most people, our interest on secular politics wanes rather quickly and we quite naturally, and unknowingly, just move on with our work without entering into any further coffee-corner discussions on those matters.
This time, however, it is different. The article is critical of churches and churchmen who appear to collaborate with politicians, receiving big sums of cash-donations (dubbed “special grants”) from them in the midst of a by-election campaign and photo-posing with them. It leaves us disturbed, as certainly as it did our priest-friend himself. Why?
Whether the politicians were in breach of the law (the Election Offenses Act) in possibly committing “bribery” during election campaigns is a matter for the police and the courts and should not detain us. What does concern us is the obvious corruption all this is doing to the spirit of the Christian churches whose fundamental responsibility is to uncompromisingly bear witness to the Gospel of Christ. Are we so anxious to receive cash-donations that we do not care about being seen publicly endorsing the Caesar of the day? Are we not at all concerned that accepting these donations, our commitment to the Gospel and our stand in social justice might be compromised? Is money so important to us that we are prepared to gain some of it even at the expense of losing our ecclesial soul (“For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and loses his soul?” – Mt 16:26)?
What Martin Luther King, Jr. said in this regard is again worthy of our attention:
- The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
At his baptism at River Jordan, after getting his identity of Sonship confirmed as he rose from the water, and after hearing the voice of love from the Father coming from beyond the clouds, Jesus was driven by the Spirit to face the temptations in the wilderness. The three temptations described by Matthew and Luke revolve round the three P’s – power, popularity and property (Mt 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13), and the operating word in property is money. It is only after he has faced the tempter squarely, and fought him off by staying resolutely focused on God and his values, that he could emerge to singularly preach the kingdom of God, and nothing else, all the way to Golgotha (Mk 1:14-15).
Luke further tells us that Jesus began his kingdom-ministry with a programmatic-announcement taken from the scroll of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and to the blind new sight,
to set the downtrodden free,
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour” (Lk 4:18-19; Isa 61:1-2).
In the Spirit, Jesus would preach and live the kingdom values of his Father throughout his public ministry. “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” he said, but “give to God what belongs to God” (Mt 22:21). This phrase has become a widely quoted summary of the relationship between Christianity and secular authority and continues to attract different interpretations and applied from different perspectives. In the present context, the particular perspective that is of interest to us is that spiritual authority should maintain its independence from temporal authority.
Tertullian, a second century lay theologian interpreted Jesus as saying to render “the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is on man, to God; so as to render to Caesar indeed money, to God yourself. Otherwise, what will be God’s, if all things are Caesar’s?” Since we were made in the image of God, we should serve God. This resonates well with Jesus’ own teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24).
Citing the teachings of Jesus is in no way to incite civil disobedience. As St Paul has stated in Romans 13, Christians are obliged to obey all earthly authorities. Because these authorities were introduced by God, disobedience to them amounts to disobedience to God. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience: “Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. ‘Show me the tribute-money,’ said he; – and one took a penny out of his pocket; – If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar’s government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; ‘Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God those things which are God’s’ – leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.” But, we Christians wish to know. And knowing, we seek to highlight the potential and the insidious spiritual dangers of unthinking cooperation with the state, especially in accepting money in this way on the eve of an election, where a quid pro quo (an exchange of interests – you give me something; I give you something) is implied. We ought to see in Jesus’ teaching, a warning to the churches that if we collaborate too closely with the state, and neglect our responsibility to God, we may become beholden to the state and be spiritually compromised thereby.
Two cases in history capture our interest.
In our contemporary times, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who was imprisoned for life for his armed struggle against apartheid, offers a shining example of one who refused an offer of freedom from incarceration when it would cost his conscience. In February 1985 when President P.W. Botha tempted Mandela to give up the armed struggle in exchange for personal freedom, his offer was rejected. The statement Mandela released through his daughter Zindzi is to the point: “What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.” He stayed in prison for 27 years and after his release became the President in South Africa’s first multi-racial elections. The question for the Christian churches is: Just as Mandela refused an offer from Caesar with strings attached, why would not the churches refuse the money-offer from Caesar and ask him to come back after the election with an unconditional donation?
St Thomas More of the early 16th century offers another encouraging example on how best to behave when we are faced with threats of deadly punishment on the one hand and the offer of sweet rewards on the other. In his letter to Margaret, his daughter, St Thomas More who was caught in crisis and facing possible death for resisting King Henry VIII over the matter of the King’s intending divorce and remarriage, indicated that he turned to Christ to resolve his crisis. He thereby continued his Christ-centred parenting, as he wrote:
I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.
In these two figures, Mandela and More, we see a powerful display of moral conscience. In the face of protracted incarceration and even a life-and-death crisis, they would not give in to Caesar’s tempting offers. Why are churches today so fickle-minded and give in so easily? Where is our spirit? Where is our soul? Why do we allow ourselves to be corrupted in this way? Where does Christ and his Gospel feature in our eagerness to receive cash, and in the process compromise ourselves to the core? Is money more important than God? What happens to our voice of moral conscience? What are the churches teaching the people? What values are we passing on to our young people?
Copyright © Dr. Jeffrey & Angie Goh, June 2010. All rights reserved.
You are most welcome to respond to this post. Email your comments to jeffangiegoh@gmail.com. You can also be dialogue partners in this Ephphatha Coffee-Corner Ministry by sending us questions for discussion.