Loyalty to which Gospel?

Not much is jdiid hoon (new here). I haven’t been working very hard on my Arabic though I throw in phrases here and there—I’ve been very busy with the program. With the participants here, my schedule is very full: work at the office in the morning, classes, meetings, and then socializing or activities in the night as well. It makes for long, but very fun and active days. This is a job that is a lot of work but a lot of fun because of what I’m doing and the people I am around all day.

Well I guess there is actually one thing new today—I am wearing a hamiis (shirt) that my host father, Hanna, made me. I don’t think I mentioned it in here (though there is a picture of him working at home in the slideshow), but he is a tailor. He made the shirt in the “Palestinian style” so it is very form fitting and short. Coupled with my new huge belt buckle, I look like I fit right in now—I just need my skin to go a few shades darker and to dye my hair black!

The results of my first poll from this blog are in. Apparently there are only six people who read this and they are all highly supportive of what I am doing! I hope all of you have noticed the new poll on the sidebar. In truth, this one is more of a device simply to make you think rather than to gauge your opinions, but it would indeed be interesting to see what people pick. (Ironically, the people who actually experience these things don’t have the luxury of picking—these things just routinely happen to them without anything they can do to avoid the situations.)

“To whom or to what are we most loyal?” This is a question that has been on my mind a lot since about the beginning of my senior year of college, and recently it has become incredibly relevant due to a personal circumstance in which I found myself. Specifically, I have been thinking on this question in terms of loyalty to nation and loyalty to Christ. There’s a whole lot of ranting that I could do here, but what would be most effective is for you to go buy, borrow, or somehow otherwise obtain a copy of Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s Jesus for President, and read it. And, of course, think (a lot) about your own personal loyalties as you read.

I did a lot of my own thinking while reading this book, mainly relating to the context of my home church since that is where my spiritual identity was formed and has grown for the past 17 years. Some of the results of what I thought about have been pleasing and others have been troubling.

To begin with the good: I am so grateful (and dare I say “proud”) of my church’s commitment to mission. It has always amazed me that there are so many missionaries fulfilling so many roles in so many places around the globe that are all receiving support from my church. I know that so many people start in our congregation, and end up somewhere far away or even close by where they are fulfilling the Gospel by sharing the love of Christ with others—in many different forms. It was my own experience with the people of my church sharing Christ’s love through reaching out to my family for a number of years that attracted me into the church in the first place, and my faith is now what motivates me to be out pursuing to do the same sort of thing.

In my varying endeavors, my church has shown great support for me in the financial area—one of the hardest forms of support to come by—the past two years especially, giving me a significant proportion of my funding for travelling here. When the Missions Committee approved my funding this time around, I was told that they were glad to sponsor me as the church’s “ambassador to the Palestinian people.” This is really wonderful, and it is a mission and responsibility which I gladly and whole-heartedly accept.

Yet, even with all the positive examples I can cite about my church’s loyalty to the good news of Christ, there are things that make me uncomfortable as well. This is not so much on a corporate level as it is on an individual level. I get the feeling that sometimes—sometimes consciously and sometimes without even realizing it—our loyalty gets a little muddled. Here again I pose the question: “To whom or to what are we most loyal?” But, wait a second, let me change that to simply: “To whom are we loyal?” Reconsidering the certain situation I would like to address, I don’t think the word “most” is appropriate because I don’t think our loyalty can lie in more than one place in this circumstance: to whom are we loyal?—Are we loyal to the Gospel? OR Are we loyal to a nation?

The “troubling” thing that I have observed is patriotism intermingling with faith. I feel like this has actually become an epidemic in Evangelical Christian faith in the U.S. From what I see, I have actually noticed this being much more prevalent in other places rather than my own church, but the cases where I have noticed it in my home community trouble me more since it hits so much closer to home—it is a problem with the community that I belong to, the one that has played such a vital role in my life—and therefore, if something does not seem to be right, it concerns me greatly for the welfare of the community.

I am absolutely convinced that the gospel of Christ and patriotism are insoluble loyalties. You cannot be loyal to two different things that are going in two completely opposite directions. A lot of people would (mistakenly) argue that “America is a Christian nation,” therefore seeing the two as going hand-in-hand, but I have become convinced that these two loyalties are exclusive of each other. And, flirting with patriotism while proclaiming to be sold out for the gospel is certainly cheating on Christ: is anything less than 100 percent loyalty to the gospel enough?

When my church talks about missions, it refers to them as: “Reaching out to the world with the Gospel of Christ,” not reaching out with “the gospel of an empire,” and this is certainly the correct way to view things. But, the gospel of an empire is certainly what is being proclaimed when people celebrate and support young men and women going off to war to promote our national interests around the world. This was the sort of gospel that the people in first century Palestine were used to hearing—gospels of Caesar, proclaiming the good news of victories of the Roman empire—the occupiers of that day. When the church began proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, it took the term euangelion straight from their oppressors, and turned it on its head to mean good news of the kingdom of God drawing near (Mark 1.15). (And here’s the promo for you to read Donald Kraybill’s The Upside-Down Kingdom in addition to Jesus for President.) A gospel, not of a worldly kingdom, but of God’s kingdom is the gospel that Jesus proclaimed when, not far from here in Nazareth, he read his own commissioning from the Isaiah scroll: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4.18). This is the same gospel that I am attempting to proclaim now in Palestine through my work exposing the injustice of the situation here. This is not the kind of reaching out America does—I could cite example after example after example where America has been the oppressor. The Apartheid-Separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem where I am currently residing (made possible with the billions of dollars in aid the U.S. gives to Israel) is a very stark and striking example of this, but only one tiny drop in a bucket overflowing with a history of oppressive acts and policies.

The gospel of an empire can masquerade as proclaiming freedom—something our government in particular is prone to promoting—yet, the gospel that comes with news of conquering combatants is not the same gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Christ does not come with weapons and force. It is a beautiful thing to be welcomed in; as Isaiah proclaimed: “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation…” (52.7)—not those who come to conquer, to subdue, and oppress. In a day where politics and faith are increasingly mingled, I think Christians need to be especially aware of where they are placing their loyalty. It is loyalty to a nation? (Even a nation supposedly “under God.”) Or is it where it truly should lay?: 100 percent loyalty to the gospel of Christ. Christians who would proclaim the gospel of an empire rather than the gospel of Christ have certainly diverged from the path the Prince of Peace endorsed—a deeply disturbing and saddening circumstance.

(I welcome your feedback, if not in the comment section below for everyone to see, to my personal e-mail: johnmarkstratford@gmail.com)