Rebels With A Cause: When Defiance Becomes Duty
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Boy, the first time I ever heard Benjamin Franklin’s famous motto, I actually thought it seemed reckless. Quite frankly, it even scared the living daylights out of me…until recently when I began to understand its full meaning.
In the story of America’s Great Seal, the imagery suggested by Franklin in 1776 was the dramatic historical scene described in Exodus where the Israelites confronted their own tyrant, the Egyptian Pharaoh, in order to gain their freedom.
Fast-forward to the United States today where many of us are seeing how history is repeating itself yet again. Only, “We the People” are the ones confronting the despots, crying out for our Liberator, and tirelessly battling to keep our children and grandchildren from becoming enslaved (by the STATE).
In his book, “America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story,” author Bruce Feiler actually explains how enslavement usually begins:
“The key to making a slave is stripping away the enslaved person’s culture. Ban their religion. Deny their dress. Take away their names. If you remove essential parts of a person’s culture, you can make that person do what you want.”
Once you can remove an individual’s heritage, traditions, and especially their religion, you can break their will. Once you break their will, you can condition them to do anything you desire them to do.
This process certainly resonates with many of us today as we are witnessing the direct assault on one sacred pillar of American culture, religious liberty. In fact, the scrubbing of our Christian heritage began even before the ‘powers that be’ decided to force Christians to violate their own conscience through their new healthcare mandates. Nevertheless, with its unrestrained use of power, the White House used these mandates to stomp on the First Amendment right of many Americans, removing their ability to fully exercise their religious beliefs.
Adding insult to injury, the White House’s latest budget proposal also increases taxpayer funding of abortions, despite the tremendous opposition against it among the majority of Americans.
According to the Heritage Foundation:
“Obama’s budget includes $327 million for Title X family planning programs, a more than $30 million increase over last year’s request. Title X is one of a number of sources of government funding to Planned Parenthood, which performs roughly one out of every four abortions in the United States and was recently accused of tacitly supporting infanticide.”
It’s bad enough the White House supports killing babies in the womb (and sometimes even outside the womb). But it’s a whole new level of EVIL when it forces taxpayers to pay for it against their will.
How far are we will we go in allowing our consciences to be violated like this?
All Christians are flawed humans and certainly fall short of Christ’s perfection. But to claim to be Christian (like the president has), and YET, to not only believe, but to FORCE others to comply with something completely contrary to God’s Commandments (and principles)— puts one directly at war with God. In my opinion, the White House’s recent assault on religious liberty is not really even an attack on Christians, but a cheap shot at our Creator.
That’s why the United States Bishops stood in solidarity behind the statement: “We cannot, and we will not, comply with this unjust law.” They understand that if they are to comply with these new healthcare mandates, they also put themselves at odds with God.
But, whether an unjust law be: The STATE forcing Christians to pay for or provide abortions against their conscience; the STATE forcing churches to marry couples against their Biblical beliefs; the STATE forcing citizens to give up their arms, the STATE taxing without representation, the STATE prohibiting self-government; the STATE prohibiting the right to own, develop, and dispose of one’s own property; the STATE prohibiting an individual from making personal choices, the STATE prohibiting free speech, the State prohibiting free press, the STATE prohibiting an individual from enjoying the fruits of their own labor, the STATE invading an individual’s privacy, or any other unjust law that violates an inalienable right (that is rooted in natural law)….
The REAL question remains: Is an unjust law even a law at all?
If it’s not a law, are we obligated to follow it?
What if a human law goes against Nature’s Law (God’s order of things) and is against our God? What do we do then?
In “Foundation of Moral Law,” it states:
“…in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, William Blackstone views, that certain God-given rights were unalienable, and that no civil authority could usurp those rights, were adopted as truths upon which the revolution was based.”
Blackstone also stated in his commentaries that:
“Revealed law, which is found within Scripture, is really part of laws of nature, though superior to them. All human laws must be in conformity to both the revealed law (scripture) and the laws of nature.”
In other words, Blackstone believed that human law is not to be obeyed if it is in conflict with the Bible and God’s natural order.
“They Fired the First Shot” published by Caritas of Birmingham further explains:
“God’s laws are to be the foundation of all human laws. No human laws which contradict God’s laws are to be obeyed, but instead, they are to be defied by whatever means within the bounds of Christian principles, especially according to just war principles. Obama and the present rulers of the United States are rearranging the moral order, imposing an unnatural standard of law, therefore invalid law.”
Nature’s laws cannot be changed because they are made by God. Technically, the ‘powers that be’ making such unjust laws are actually the ones who are breaking the (God’s) law.
However, the tricky part— is how we go about defying such human laws (that aren’t even laws at all).
I believe the FIRST step in rebellion begins by living out our (Christian) faith unapologetically. Nothing intimidates a despot more than Christians who are “clinging” to their Liberator (Christ).
When it comes to our faith, are we ALL IN? Do we whole-heartedly believe in God’s Word (laws and principles), even though we fall short as humans?
Or, are we simply lukewarm?
In reality, the power-grabbing strategies we see being used today are nothing new. Hitler used very similar tactics. In His book, Christ in Dachau, Father John Lenz (who was arrested for being a Catholic priest in Austria) shared these insights:
“Evil does not just spring up in a nation overnight and without reason. Rather, if our Catholic Faith had really been something living, something vital to our very existence, it is doubtful whether even a portion of our people would have fallen prey to the Nazi pseudo-religion. We had been too lukewarm, and many had become blind to the truth.
Hitler preyed on lukewarm Christians and ensnared them with his propaganda. He knew they were weak and easy to persuade.
Father Lenz continued:
“The Lukewarmness of faith produced a cowardice in resisting, and for those who had rejected their Catholic Faith or stopped practicing it, the emptiness in their lives made them easy prey to Hitler’s new religion of power….Only those who lived in the light of Faith could recognize the danger behind the Nazi propaganda, harmless enough though it might at first appear.”
As William Penn also brilliantly claimed, “If man is not governed by God, he will be ruled by tyrants.”
Penn’s statement certainly applies to Lukewarm Christians as well. If we are simply going along with gravity (believing in man’s precepts instead of God’s), we are nothing more than easy prey for a pseudo-religious (atheistic, humanistic, secular) regime that doesn’t have our best interest at heart (no matter what it proclaims).
Quite frankly, Christians should be a dangerous threat to any wanna-be-despot. When we fully live out our faith, we are given the power of discernment, to recognize danger behind propaganda our enemy uses to try and ensnare us. God gives us this very power by trusting in His Word (laws and precepts). From here, we gain the courage to stand firmly against such evil.
By simply believing in God’s Word, we are already rebelling against a tyrant.
As for defying an unjust human law, all we need to do is return to the Declaration of Independence for guidance. This document is the perfect guide for the crisis we are currently facing. The Declaration of Independence gives us the moral high ground to impose upon those who wish to FORCE false laws on us, consequences for the steps they take to lead this nation toward tyranny.
According to They Fired the First Shot:
“The Declaration of Independence reaffirms truths already in existence, that men are created equal with rights..unalienable rights..rights which cannot be taken from man by the government because they are not given to us by the government, but given to us by God. These unalienable rights are laws of nature. You cannot change laws of nature because they are made by nature’s God.”
However, if we ever begin to accept the notion that our rights come from government, we will then just accept it when the government takes these rights away from us. It’s astounding how many lukewarm Christians are also falling for this misconception!
Our rights come from our Creator, and our Founding documents secure these rights because they are rooted in His natural order. That’s the beauty of the United States of America. As long as we (as a people) live out our faith (in light of the fact that we are all imperfect), and look to our Founding documents for guidance, we shall never become an enslaved people.
After all, our Founding Fathers were also guided by Divine Providence!
