DAY 3--AND UNTO GOD...

For nearly two millenia Christians have struggled to bring about the marriage of God and Caesar. And for two millenia each effort has failed, besmirching the name of Christ with the countless atrocities committed in service of that marriage by those who bear His name. One wonders where we went wrong.

After all, the theory of the Byzantine emperors (who started the whole thing) seemed so sound, based as it was in the fundamental potential for sanctity present in the created order due to Christ's Incarnation. We do affirm, after all, that creation was intended to exist in communion with God (and hence to be holy), that through the fall of man creation was estranged from God (man having been created as the head of creation), and that the Incarnation, death and Resurrection of Christ has made possible the restoration of that communion, inasmuch as Christ bridged the gap between the divine and the created in Himself. And is not the state a part of the created order?*

So it is, but the question of by what process precisely creation is made holy must first be answered in order to determine what is the state's potential for holiness and how it might be achieved. It is a question which, unfortunately, most seem to have neglected.

In the Christian schema a human person (created as the head and steward of Creation, remember) becomes holy by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, an indwelling made possible only by the continuing assent of the individual will in surrendering one's own passions and desires and submitting to the will of God, allowing the Holy Spirit to make Himself present in one's life and make it holy. Put more simply, holiness is a result of an individual's willing love for God.**

This willing love must be given freely by each individual. No one can give it for them.*** It cannot be coerced. It is, in fact, an act of will which a state can never make. Any state which sets out to be Christian (that is, Christ-like and therefore holy) will be forced to coerce those who are unwilling to submit their will to God, to essentially force them to love God and demonstrate it by keeping His commandments. (I consider this definitionally self-evident--any "Christian" state whose populace is not Christian is itself not Christian) By that coercion the state will betray a fundamental tenet of the Christian Faith--God desires love, and love must be given freely, else it is not love, but fear.

Hence a state truly founded on Christian principles would paradoxically take care to impose very few Christian morals on its populace--the laws would be limited to the minimum necessary for basic domestic order and security, leaving each individual free to choose in what manner he/she would live, free to choose whether or not to offer themselves in love to God. God created us free in this way--the state should not interfere.

The Church in such a state would thus be forced (as it once was) to earn converts solely on the virtue of the fruit it bears, rather than the political clout it wields. And it seems to me that a Christian church that focused its energies on worthily bearing the name of Christ, rather than on enforcing a legalistic morality on the rest of society, would find itself facing an influx of converts instead of the solid wall of opposition it faces today.

For it is evident to me that we ourselves have built that wall. Too often we have excused ourselves from bearing fruit worthy of repentance, excused ourselves by devoting our energies to imposing a law which not even we can follow upon those we perceive to be worse than ourselves. For far too long, we have neglected mercy and justice and faith, paying our tithes in the mint and anise and cummin of political evangelism. We must awaken to the fact that, to those outside the church, the history of our dabbling in politics over the past 17 centuries looks like one long betrayal of the love of Christ. By our own standards they judge us, and we are indeed guilty.

Instead, if we truly have faith in Christ, then let us leave this fruitless politicking, commit ourselves wholeheartedly to His service in love, and trust his words that it is by our fruits that the world will know us to be His disciples. Meanwhile rest assured that the fields white for harvest do not lie beneath the United States Capitol Dome, and that the nation whose God is the Lord is the nation whose people bear His Law inscribed on their hearts, not in their law books.

But that nation will indeed be blessed.

*In returning to the Byzantine theorists, I would like to set aside the theological justifications upon which the Protestant/Evangelical/Conservative theorists base their movements, which justifications seem to rest either upon the ancient and relatively universal assumption that religion is and must be the fundamental common bond of any human society or upon the ancient Hebrew notion of covenant which essentially melds the state and the "church" into one entity. Neither argument is predicated on specifically Christian presuppositions--the first is more or less a common human tradition, which the second is predicated on a unique historical instance in which God made a covenant with a people/tribe/ethnic group, thereby uniting their religious and legal institutions/jurisdictions. Both justifications for a religious government are, I think, inimical to an authentic Christian worldview.

**In an attempt to head off those who will say that I have just articulated a works-based salvation/holiness, I offer this more detailed description of the process. In the Orthodox mystical tradition, this process is experienced as a growingly acute awareness of one's sinfulness and destitute state, which in turn drives an increasing dependence upon Christ's love and mercy. The result is a person acutely aware of God's love for him/her, and hence a person desperately in love with God and wholeheartedly committed to the fulfillment of God's will, out of love, not fear. Reference Luke 7:10-50. We are saved by grace and therefore dedicated to good works.

***I suspect that some will argue that the Orthodox practice of infant baptism contradicts this assertion. On the contrary--as I said, the act of love must be continual. Therefore even though we baptize our infants and raise them in the Faith, it is incumbent to them to allow the Holy Spirit to act. They are not coerced, and the decision is not made for them. Rather they are set upon a path, one on which they can remain or which they may leave. It has always been the right of parents to show their children how to live, and the children have always seized the right to weigh that way of life for themselves.