Surprising Conclusion

So the last post was about reading "Christian Ethics" and I was just getting into the section on war. The conclusion was that Christians should only participate in "just" wars, which would be wars that their own country did not start and were for primarily defensive purposes only. I can agree with that. But what was surprising to me was the next chapter, on Revolution / Civil Disobedience.

The essence of the chapter is that since governments are God-ordained, we are to submit to them, as long as they are not requiring us to do something that is sinful or against an overriding command of God himself. That is, we are to follow the path of "Refusal", rather than "Revolt", when it comes to disobeying government. These two methods are compared as follows:

Revolt: Revolt against it violently, Fight it, Reject its punishments.
Refusal: Refuse to obey it nonviolently, Flee it, Accept its punishments.

OK, I can accept this much - that nonviolent, nonagressive refusal to commit acts against God's law is better than violent, aggressive pursuit of overturning authorities that have been placed over us. But what really surprised me was the logical conclusion that Geisler then put forth: that the American Revolution was unjust and, as such, should never have been supported by Christians. Instead, they should have submitted to the king and his commands, working within the system to change the laws, rather than revolting against it and overthrowing the king in favor of their own authorities.

Mr. Geisler concludes this section:
"It is understandable that everyone would like to believe that the revolution in his country was just, even if those in other countries are not. But in all honesty, given the biblical criteria listed here, it is not possible to justify the American Revolution either. What then should American Christians do on the Fourth of July? Can they really celebrate American independence from Britain? In response, a distinction should be made. There is a difference between what is born and how it is born. We are certainly glad for every human being born of fornication or even rape, although we certainly do not approve of the way they got here. Likewise, and American Christian can celebrate what was born of the American Revolution (a great free country) without thereby approving of the way it arrived."

My interpretation is this: we can't judge the action (the Revolution) by the result - nor can we judge the result (a fine, free country) by the action. The Revolution may have been unjust, but the resultant place to live, worship, and work is a wonderful thing. Would that it had been born out of magnanimous free gift of the king, but it was not. Therefore we can argue against Revolution, we can (and should) choose not to participate in the next one if it comes along, and we can celebrate all that has been done in the past 225 years, and we can do it all with a smile. We just can't argue that the Revolution itself was justified, no matter how much we would like to.