A Parable
The storyteller is not Jesus, of course.
And when he heard that there were certain followers of Jesus living in a democratic republic who did not believe they should exercise their democratic prerogatives, he spoke this parable unto them, saying:
There was a certain king whose people suffered miserably under his reign, both directly from his own cruelty and indirectly from that of others in which he refused to intervene. Sadly, his son, heir to the throne, was no better.
But one day his son met a new leader, another Son, and became a follower of Him. He became a Christian. With his new faith he understood the error both of his father’s cruelty and of the others’ around him. He taught about a better world, one without cruelty. The oppressors ignored him. But the oppressed found hope, because they knew that one day his father would die and the son who promised peace would reign in his place. What a day that would be!
And the day did come. His father died. He inherited the throne. The oppressed began to rejoice in what they knew would be their soon deliverance.
But something had gone wrong. Deliverance did not come. For although the son, now king, did not commit any acts of cruelty himself, for which there was some reason to give thanks, he refused to intervene in the cruel practices of others.
Because he was a Christian, he contended, and because he was not a citizen of this world, it would not be his place to exercise the authority of the throne which had been given to him to end the suffering of the people of that land. Instead, he pleaded earnestly for everyone’s hearts to be changed. He invited dialog about the morally complex issues of persecution and cruelty. Sincere and beneficent motives intact, he believed the message itself would eventually bring relief to the oppressed—if not in this life, at least in the next.
Why should he, after all, intervene actively when he could wait for God to do it Himself?
And when he had finished these sayings, they would have condemned him, but realized they could not without contradicting their commitment to embracing and understanding variant expressions of evangelical faith, of which his was certainly one.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: Evangelicalism, Parable, Politics
good parable…if anything it would appear that our responsibility increases and not decreases when we come to Christ. how can we say that we have the truth but are not willing to live by the truth or willing to stand for the values that truth demands? pacifism is fear veiled as righteousness. tolerance is lukewarmness. peter tells us not to use our liberty as a cloak for vice which is exactly what we do when we jam our heads in the sand while the world spirals out of control.