Soveriegnty is not ours.

The Lordship and rulership of this world is not given to us.

We can’t control it. No matter how good our engineering, all we can do is mitigate disasters. They happen. When the land beneath the foundations of your building liquifies, the craft with which you built the foundations is naught.

Samuel was confronting the people of Isreal who no longer wanted to wait for a judge. They were reaching for security. They now wanted a king, like the nations around them.  When they lost the kingship (for neither the people nor the king followed the law consistently) then they looked for the coming king. But Jesus’ kingdom was not built in slaughter and battle.

I Samuel

12But when you saw that King Nahash of the Ammonites came against you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us,’ though the LORD your God was your king. 13See, here is the king whom you have chosen, for whom you have asked; see, the LORD has set a king over you. 14If you will fear the LORD and serve him and heed his voice and not rebel against the commandment of the LORD, and if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the LORD your God, it will be well; 15but if you will not heed the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then the hand of the LORD will be against you and your king

Luke 23

1Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. 2They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.” 3Then Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He answered, “You say so.” 4Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.” 5But they were insistent and said, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.”

via Daily Lectionary Readings — Devotions and Readings — Mission and Ministry — GAMC.

Since we are not sovereign, we must all submit to the will of the soveriegn — that is Jesus. Like soldiers, we are under orders. And like an army, there is a structure in the way we should order our church: The eldership guide the deacons and head of families who have the duty to teach their children. God’s intrusive: and the most systematic set of rules of living (developed by our Catholic brothers and sisters) gets quite direct about what should happen, even inside the marriage bed. My understanding of this is that it can be simplified by men to two commands and one piece of guidance.

  1. Love your wife as Christ loved the church.
  2. Do not oppress her.
  3. Use both Islam and feminism as a guide. Both are deeply in error, so if they advocate something, it is probably wise not to stray to that course of action.

2 thoughts on “Soveriegnty is not ours.

  1. Ha ha; love your #3. Indeed, surely with pretty much anything that Islam and feminism find common ground on, they’re most certainly both wrong.