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» Christian Message Boards   » Bible Studies   » Bible Topics & Study   » The Birth Of Civil Disobedience

   
Author Topic: The Birth Of Civil Disobedience
Sa:ji:sdo:de
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Take for another example the dilemma wherein Christian ministers find themselves in Muslim countries where it's illegal to preach Christ and/or teach the Bible.

According to Matt 28:18-20, and the pastoral epistles of 1&2 Timothy, Titus, and to some degree 1Peter, Christian ministers are required by God to do just exactly what the laws of those countries forbid them to do.

Christian ministers in those countries are in a Catch-22. No matter which direction they take, it'll lead to trouble. If they comply with God's requirements, they risk arrest on Earth for breaking the law. If they comply with the State's requirements, they'll be shamed in Heaven for insubordination and dereliction of duty. In those kinds of situations, Christian ministers faithful to Christ are pretty much forced into breaking the law.

†. Acts 5:29 . . Peter and the apostles answered and said: We must obey God rather than men. (cf. Luke 10:27)

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Sa:ji:sdo:de
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Civil disobedience is essentially a criminal activity; it's the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws of the state, and/or demands, orders, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power; i.e. non compliance with constituted law and order.

Secular humanist Henry David Thoreau insisted that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice.

At first glance, Thoreau's ideas makes good sense. However; it's important to take into account he refused to acknowledge the dictates of a supreme being whose commandments, laws, rules, statutes, and edicts take priority over all other forms of government.

Thoreau's concept of civil disobedience foments anarchy which, according to Rom 13:1-5 and 1Pet 2:13-15, is strictly forbidden for Christ's followers.

Here's a biblical example of acceptable civil disobedience.

†. Ex 1:15-17 . . The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

From a strictly legal perspective, the midwives' conduct was criminal due to their wanton refusal to comply with constituted authority. But God approved the midwives conduct; and the reason He did so is because the women defied Pharaoh due to their loyalty to a constituted authority superior to his. (Ex 1:20)

Though it would've been perfectly legal to exterminate the Hebrews' baby boys, it would have been perfectly impious to do so; the primary reason being that according to Gen 9:5-6, Pharaoh's superior does not approve the taking of innocent human life. Had the midwives complied with Pharaoh's edit, they would've been murderers.

But Adam had no excuse. Neither conscience nor piety influenced his decision to taste the forbidden fruit. Nor was his conduct inadvertent; it was willful; i.e. done in full understanding of both the ban and the consequence.

†. 1Tim 2:14 . . Adam was not deceived

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Sa:ji:sdo:de
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†. Gen 2:16-17 . . as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it; for in the day you eat of it, you shall die.

The first thing to point out is that in order for the threat to resonate in Adam's thinking; it had to be related to death as Adam understood death in his own day rather than death as modern Sunday school classes construe it in their day. In other words: Adam's concept of death was natural rather spiritual.

As far as can be known from the Bible, the tree of life was located only in the garden and nowhere else on Earth; plus the Hebrew word for "garden" indicates that Adam's food source was fenced; i.e. walled, no doubt to protect it from foraging critters.

Both those points suggest very strongly to me that only human life was meant to continue indefinitely; viz: humanity is the only species that God created with the potential for immortality; as a result, expiration was common in Adam's world by means of plants, birds, bugs, and beasts so that "death" wasn't a strange new word in Adam's vocabulary; i.e. God didn't have to take a moment and define it for him.

†. Gen 3:6d . . she took of its fruit and ate.

You can just see Eve's eyes brighten from the sugar rush as she realized the Serpent was right after all-- she didn't drop dead. So the woman brought it home and convinced her man to try it too.

†. Gen 3:6e . . She also gave some to her husband, and he ate.

Eve didn't drop dead the instant she tasted the fruit, and neither did Adam. In point of fact, he continued to live outside the garden of Eden for another 800 years after the birth of his son Seth. (Gen 5:4)

So; is there a reasonable explanation for this apparent discrepancy?

The catch is: Adam wasn't told he would die the instant he tasted the fruit. God's exact words were "in the day"

According to Gen 2:4, the Hebrew word for "day" is a bit ambiguous. It can easily indicate a period of time much, much longer than 24 hours; viz: the day of Adam's death began the moment he ate the fruit; and according to Rom 5:12-19 the day of everybody else's death began at that moment too; making human death universal regardless of age, race, gender, or class distinctions.

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Sa:ji:sdo:de
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†. Gen 2:8-9 . . Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-- trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

†. Gen 2:16-17 . . The Lord God commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat of it; for in the day you eat of it, you shall die.

†. Gen 3:4 . . And the serpent said to the woman: You are not going to die,

There we have what's known as a half-truth; which Webster's defines as a statement that is only partly true and that is intended to deceive people. In other words: half-truths contain a kernel of truth but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The Serpent somehow knew that the forbidden fruit itself wasn't lethal, i.e. Eve wouldn't die from eating it like hemlock or a Night Cap mushroom. He was 100% right about that. Her death, though related to eating the fruit, would come upon her from a very different direction; one that Eve apparently never suspected; though it was right under her nose the whole time.

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Posts: 1245 | From: Oregon | Registered: Jul 2016  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
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