Faith, Policy and Liberation Theology in the Church and State
The doctrine of the kingdom in liberation theology is developed primarily from the Exodus event, the prophets, and the gospels, leaving out the epistles because this literature is notably more passive and obedient relative to the existing political and social orders and thus contrary to the political agenda of liberation theology. Couple this with the fact that Jesus, for all His political machinations, did not join with the Zealot movement of His day, an obvious parallel to liberation theology. All of this points again to liberation theology’s myopic view of Scripture and the kingdom (Saucy, page 257). This position of the kingdom and the gospels is not shared by the apostolic literature of the Epistles or book of Acts. While we cannot separate redemption and salvation from a manifestation of the kingdom on the earth involving politics and economics, we also cannot separate the Christ of redemption from the Christ of history and thus only see Jesus as a model of liberation, thus reducing Christology to anthropology.
There is much more to be said about economic policy. But for now, let’s move on to God’s Top Ten List for a society, which is found in the Ten Commandments (see Ex. 20), which served as a moral code for a whole nation, not just an individual moral standard, and which were also either quoted verbatim or in principle numerous times in the New Covenant.
For the sake of brevity, we will only deal with the last six of the Ten Commandments, which deal with our horizontal responsibility to our neighbor.
The first of these is the Fifth Commandment, which regards honoring fathers and mothers.
It is no coincidence this is first because marriage between one man and one woman is the building block of all of society. This is why in Gen. 1:27 we see how God created men and women in His image and He joined them together as one flesh in the next chapter. Marriage was before human government, the Law of Moses, and every other human institution because, as we see in Gen. 1:28, marriage is the building block of all of society which is inevitably supposed to lead to God’s kingdom having cultural dominion on the earth.
Because of this, biblical marriage has to be upheld as the norm because males and females committed to one another, as one flesh in holy matrimony, is the primary expression of God’s image on the earth to the next generation of humans. When the president endorsed same-sex marriage, he was attempting to shift God’s primary building block for society. A weakened nuclear family gives more responsibility and power to the state in the long run, because fragmented families produce more children who are used to being dependent upon entitlements. Marriage, at the end of the day, trumps immigration reform—by the way, the Obama administration has deported more undocumented people than the previous administration—economic policy, issues of justice, gun control laws and poverty because, without intact families, children will not have God’s complete image reflected to them, which will actually cause more poverty, crime, abortions, and incarceration in the long run. Marriage and family built upon faith in God is the primary foundation of a healthy society; If marriage goes down the tubes, then it will be almost impossible for the church to preach the gospel, disciple future generations and have healthy churches because alternative families sow confusion in young people leading to them lose their sense of identity, normal sexuality and purpose.
President Obama not only supports same-sex marriage but he has instructed the Justice Department not to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and is pressuring developing nations to legalize same-sex marriage and abortion in return for foreign aid.
The Sixth Commandment (which is the second in importance in regard to God’s moral law dealing with our neighbor) is related to not murdering another human being. Since 1973, our nation has legally terminated the lives of about 50 million children and our president is the most pro-abortion president in the history of our nation based on his voting record, starting as an Illinois State Senator.
Quoting Rick Lowry: “In the Illinois legislature, he opposed the ‘Born-Alive Infants Protection Act’ three times. The bill recognized babies born after attempted abortions as persons and required doctors to give them care. About a year after his final vote against the bill, Obama gave his famous 2004 Democratic convention speech extolling post-partisan moderation.
“But he couldn’t even bring himself to protect infants brutalized and utterly alone in some medical facility taking what might be only a few fragile breaths on this Earth. Some moderation. The federal version of the bill that he opposed in Illinois passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. Some post-partisanship.
“President Obama is an extremist on abortion. He has never supported any meaningful restriction on it, and never will.
“He opposed a partial-birth abortion bill in Illinois, even as the federal version passed the House with 282 votes and the Senate with 64 votes and was signed into law by President Bush in 2003. He arrived in the U.S. Senate in time to denounce the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the ban.” (see Barack Obama the Abortion Extremist, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/80013.html)
