A Home-made Theology of the Judgment of the Nations

A HOME-MADE THEOLOGY OF THE JUDGMENT OF THE NATIONS

Sat. June 23rd, 2018

Tex Sample’s article "Teaching Biblical Patriotism as Pastoral Care: God, Country, and Stories of Working Class Pain" is dated June 13th of this year and can be read at https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/8958/teaching-biblical-patriotism-as-pastoral-care-god-country-and-stories-of-working-class-pain.  It is a many-faceted essay on working class pain, and what our country needs to do to address this problem.  The article begins:

“Patriotism is an important part of traditional conservatism, a cultural resource for most working-class white Americans. Without question, love of country can be both a motivation for the good and a problem. Love of country can become idolatry. Such patriotism can be an inordinate love that leads to excesses and extremes, to militarism, to an ethos of violence, and to a regimented mindset.

“At the same time, love of country can also be valuable. To love this land, to love its people, does not require that it be idolized. Love of country does not have to be . . . white supremacist. It depends on how wide the reach is of those to whom we belong.”

The problem of working class pain is one of the biggest problems facing the United States today, and I want to write about it.  But not until I have read more about it.  Tex Sample is writing a book about it; his article is a shorter version of the book and what you might call a "down pay­ment" on the book.  The book has been entitled Working Class Rage: A Field Guide to White Anger and Pain, and it is due to be published by Abingdon Press in September 2018.  I aim to read it.

But in the meantime, I am going to address another aspect of Sample's outstanding article, the question of what the Bible, especially the Old Testament, has to say about patriotism.  What Christians need, and what I find lacking, is a theology of the judgment of the nations.

There's a lot of ground to be cleared, but I am going to start by explaining why I use the term Old Testament, and why I like it.  In the wake of Hitler, many liberal Christians have taken to using the term Hebrew Bible instead of the term Old Testament.  This trend is closely tied in with the post-Hitler need to respect Jewish things -- Jewish beliefs, Jewish books, Jewish people, Jewish cemeteries, and all things Jewish.  I do respect them.  But a disagreement about Jesus remains.  The turning point for me -- the "hinge" on which the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament turns -- my proof text -- is at Luke 24:13-27, the passage which we Christians call the road to Emmaus.  Jesus has a certain tendency -- completely out of fashion among teachers in my time -- to call His followers stupid -- or maybe was Jesus's Aramaic more slangy, like saying dumb instead of saying stupid? -- when they don't catch on to things He says.  Verses 25 to 27 tie up the story of the road to Emmaus:

" 'How dull you are!' he answered [Jesus answered his two followers who were walking to Emmaus].  26  'Was not the Messiah bound to suffer in this way before entering upon his glory?'  27  Then, starting from Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them in the whole of scripture the things that referred to himself."  [It does not matter which translation I quoted, but it is the Revised English Bible.]

The question is, where did I get the idea that the Old Testament prophesies the coming of Jesus, the Messiah?  The answer is, I got that idea from Jesus himself.  He said it at Luke 24:26-27.  That is why I refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament.  The Old Testament -- the English word testament used to mean covenant or legal document -- is the left wing of revelation, the New Testament is the right wing of revelation, Jesus is the heart of revelation, and Luke 24:25-27 is the muscle that connects the two wings of revelation to the heart.  That's why I call the Hebrew Scripture the Old Testament.  But saying "Old Testament" changes absolutely nothing about my duty to protect Jews from people like Hitler.

With that said, the Old Testament speaks often of the nations, but when it speaks so, it does not include Israel (or Judah).  The nations is a translation of a Hebrew term which means, in its usage if not in its literalness, foreign countries.  To opine for a moment about the English language, "foreign countries" is a tremendously useful term which means "all countries but our own."

The God I believe in is a God of all nations.  When the God I believe in judges the nations, he judges my country along with the other countries.  I follow Jesus, and that means I believe whatever is said about Yahweh in the Old Testament is said about my God.  Yahweh judges the nations = My God judges the nations.  But -- important point which I am saying a second time and emphasizing here -- when God judges the nations, he judges my country along with, and at the same time as, the others.

Sample's article addresses what the Bible has to say about the judgment of the nations.  He writes:

"the nations of the world will be judged ultimately by how they meet raw human need (as with the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31), even as they march in that final eschatological parade (Revelation 21). And yet, in the midst of all these teachings, we are called to be subordinate to the ruling authorities (Romans 13), albeit in a biblical context."

(We have expanded Sample's abbreviations for the books of the Bible.  Our gut feeling, evidently not shared by tons of people, is that writing down the extra letters, so that the whole word of the name of the book of the Bible is written down, is a sign of respect.)

So next, I look at these Bible passages that Sample refers to.  I read Revelation chapter 21 looking for the nations.  I find Revelation 21:24: "By its light [Jerusalem's light] shall the nations walk, and to it the kings of the earth shall bring their splendour."  Sample calls that the "final eschatological parade" -- but those Bible words really fail to say anything at all to me about the judgment of the nations. 

Matthew 25:32 (Jesus speaking) tells me a little bit more:

31  'When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne,  32  with all the nations gathered before him.  He will separate people into two groups, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;  33  he will place the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left.  34  Then the king will say to those on his right, 'You have my Father's blessing . . .  35  For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger, you took me into your home;  36  when naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when in prison, you visited me.'  . . .  41  Then he will say to those on his left, 'A curse is on you; go from my sight to the eternal fire that is ready for the devil and his angels.  41  For when I was hungry, you gave me nothing to eat; when thirsty, nothing to drink;  . . . '

Here Jesus teaches important things about heaven, about being a Christian -- and particularly about the commonality of goals between people who focus on salvation, and people who focus on the social gospel.  But I do not learn much about the judgment of the nations.  I have specific beliefs about things my country has done which were wicked.  You have specific beliefs about things your country has done which were wicked.  We all have specific beliefs about things other countries have done which were wicked.  Where is the judgment of the nations?  When is the judgment of the nations?  Where in the housekeeping of heaven are nations punished for their wicked deeds?  Because "the nations" in Matthew 25:32 in Jesus' narration dissolves into a reference to God's judgment of individual human beings.

Now the Old Testament is filled with references to the earthly punishments of nations.  But nations share many moral properties with individual human beings, and one of the most important of these shared properties is that nations, like individual human beings, often get away with stuff on earth.  Evil stuff.  Nations are punished over and over on earth, but these punishments are crummier and more soiled than the justice any jury has ever given to any one human being.  On our earth, nations are repeatedly punished when they have done nothing wrong, and repeatedly not punished when they have done very wrong.  Heavenly justice is the vision of the just man and the just woman.  But if there is no heavenly judgment of nations, a heavenly justice to satisfy "those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail" (the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:6) will be totally impossible.

Ministers of the Gospel have invited me to agree with the prophet Jeremiah, when he condemns King Zedekiah of Judah for rebelling against the Babylonian Empire.  But I cannot agree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  King Zedekiah's rebellion was a disastrous error of judgment.  I am suspicious of rebellions in general -- I am always suspicious of their chances of success -- and people who consider revolution to be romantic are stark raving lunatics in my opinion.  Furthermore, the atheists are totally correct when they call a thing like King Zedekiah's rebellion "a disaster of Biblical proportions."  But our God, I say to you, does not punish human beings for being stupid; neither does He punish nations for behaving stupidly, and against their own best interests.  Every punishment which has ever come upon human beings for being stupid, or against nations for being stupid, has been a human punishment which has come from human sources.  Our God punishes people, and nations, for being wicked.  I can find a lot of bad judgment in King Zedekiah's rebellion against Babylon; but I cannot find any wickedness. 

At the end of the Concord Hymn, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson speaks to a spirit:

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free . . .

Emerson was talking about the spirit which possessed the embattled farmers at the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill.  Adult patriotism makes a person pause and reflect, that all human beings long to be the citizens of a country, some of whose people have died, in order to set their children free.  If there is an American who believes, dying to leave your children free is for the citizens of large countries; it is not an ideal for the citizens of small countries, like King Zedekiah's Judah; then I have to disagree with that American.  Is there such an American?  I don't know; but if there is such an American, then that American is completely comfortable with what the Romans did to Jesus.  The thrust of the Church as a whole, over the last two thousand years, has been to lay the entire blame of the crucifixion on the Jews, excusing the crucifiers themselves, who were Romans executing a Roman command.  And what is the outcome of that?  A small country is blamed, a large empire is excused.  Matthew has Pontius Pilate wash his hands of Jesus' blood, and if there is an American who believes that rebellions are only for large countries like the United States, then I say to you, that American is ripe to believe that the crucifiers did nothing against God's law, and any cruelty committed by the United States of America against the people of any small country in the future is similarly excused before God's throne.  But I disagree.  I say to you, King Zedekiah made a disastrous error of judgment, but he wanted to leave his children free, and I can find no fault in that.  I must disagree with the prophet Jeremiah in this matter.  Jerusalem and Zedekiah were terrifyingly punished by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; but this punishment did not come from God.  It was a human punishment.  It was a punishment for being stupid, and any punishment for being stupid is not from God, because our God is a God of both stupid and smart.  Our God punishes for wickedness, not for stupidity. 

Jeremiah, no.  I foresee a judgment of the nations by God, a judgment in which the nations will be judged on the same basis which Jesus declares to us, in Matthew chapter 25, saying, this is the basis, on which the individual human being will be punished.

Now if after the judgment of the nations, the nations will burn, then who will feel the heat of that burning?  An unknown ancient Greek poet said the mills of God grind slow.  Who will feel the heat from the judgment of the nations?  I can only understand it in this way: that when the individual human being stands before God, God will bring up the wickedness done by the individual's country, in the adulthood of that human being, listing those things mingled with the wickedness done by that individual.

If I may use commas unconventionally: The individual human being, is well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for wicked deeds.  The nations of this world are similarly well advised, to tremble at the thought of the punishment God reserves for their wicked deeds.  This is the theology of the judgment of the nations.  Loving your country is a good thing.  Sample's description of patriotism as a cultural resource is a weighty description, and it has the ring of truth!  But trembling at the thought of the punishment that waits for your country's wicked deeds is also a good thing.

Frank Newton