Can A Nation be Good? Or Bad?
At the time of the writing of the Scriptures, Babylon was the definition of a wicked world power. The Jews had spent a long Babylonian exile in slavery. In the history of the Jews, the legendary wickedness of Babylon was followed by the wickedness of Rome. The wickedness of a nation was determined by the presence of a government which used its power to enslave. Babylon and Rome were defined and sustained by slavery.
Now, in many parts of the world slavery is forbidden by law.
All laws reflects someone’s idea of right and wrong. “There ought to be a law.”
There are laws… and people decide right and wrong through these laws. For example, if abortion is legal, it must be right… maybe it is even an irreplaceable good without which we cannot exist as a society. Some thought that this was true of slavery. That’s a lie; societies do not need wickedness to maintain their existence.
But can we really have a good nation? How do we know if our nation is good? Who decides? Who has the last say?
God does. God never makes anyone or anything by mistake! God’s creation exists to perpetuate goodness through time.
Those who say “You can’t legislate morality” are trying to sell you something that you don’t really want. Something wicked.
In the surprising and enlightening analysis contained in this week’s sermon about the whore of Babylon, Deacon Michael brings to us a very relevant view of who we are as individual persons, and as a nation.
written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
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Ancient Rome was really a bunch of nasty people and in the reading that we have in Revelation, Babylon is referred to as Rome. And the people in Babylon itself have been not a really nice people.
The Babylonians, the Romans, they would conquer people, and the one I always remember is when Rome fought Carthage and when they beat Carthage they destroyed every single building in the place and salted the entire area so it would never, ever come back.
Pax Romana was simply, "If you get out of line, we kill you." It's real simple, Think of the Pax Romana in the context of the Passion and Death of Christ. He got out of line; they killed him.
So also in the Revelation reading we see this being extrapolated into other times. The Roman Church has been called the whore of Babylon. Many times in the Revelation readings about Babylon and the fall of Babylon, the horribleness of Babylon, which, again, equated to Rome, has been applied to the Church. It has happened throughout history. The United States has been called the whore of Babylon.
And then we see in the gospel reading the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was destroyed. We have the temple wall in Jerusalem, that's all that remains after the Romans finished conquering Jerusalem, because they were sick and tired of the Jewish people and in 70AD they destroyed it. It’s gone.
This raises a very interesting question as we are preparing ourselves for Advent. Punishment. The looking at our sins. Asking for mercy.
And it's the issue of, we know in the Old Testament we see the many examples where the Jewish people have been punished because the Jewish people didn't do what God wanted them to do.
The Babylonian captivity is probably the best illustration. He warned them with the prophets: "Do this!" "Stop doing this!" "Don't do this!" They did it and everything fell apart and they went into the Babylonian captivity.
There is a recurrence of those events. But we are looking at a situation that I am going to refer to as corporate guilt. A guilt of an activity taken by a group of people who are identified by a classification. We see this. There is an inclination to do this: "All men are bad!" There is a corporate identity that is given and to that corporate identity there is a guilt imputed. Again, this is very much of an Old Testament concept of punishment.
Now, in the Old Testament we also deal on the level of "Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people," and how do you figure out what is going on. And that is the book of Job. So we have the individual responsibility and the corporate responsibility.
In the Gospel reading we see a transformation that has occurred with the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ. First, we see the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem for its sins. But we also see a major transformation in how we approach it. "But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect, raise your heads, because your redemption is at hand.”
One of the things that Jesus did that was transformative is that he basically removes corporate guilt and makes it individual. Jesus did not come and say, "Israel, as a people you have to do this..." He didn't say, "United States, you have to do this..." But he put it on an individual basis of loving God and loving neighbor. Those are individualistic things.
However, He makes it very clear that there are consequences that come from the activities of the corporate entity that have ramifications on the individual.
Which leads us to the question that we deal with when we are looking forward to Advent and to examining ourselves. It is comparatively easy to say, "Do I love my neighbor if I slap my neighbor up the side of the head?" No, you're not going around knocking the heads of people you don't like. They're your neighbors. You're called to love them.
But, as far as the responsibility of loving thy neighbor, are there consequences that when you live in a society where the entity itself is so imbued with wrong activities? The Jewish people, for example, really were doing some bad things. The Romans were truly horrible. Other entities, again, people point to the United States and the horrible things.
On the level of Christianity and our responsibility as members of the Catholic Church and followers of Christ, how does that have the effect on us? We can go, "Oh, I'm not in the government. Oh, I'm not doing all those things. Those people are simply doing it in my name. What can I do?"
A nice Roman citizen sitting in Rome, getting free bread, living a nice life, says, "I know the horrible things the Roman emperor does. I know the horrible things that the army does. But they are necessary to preserve my way of life and, I'm not doing it myself."
Is that an articulation of loving God and loving neighbor if that person in Rome happened to be Christian? Is it following loving God and loving neighbor to be a citizen of a country or a state or a city, whatever you want, and that corporate entity is doing something wrong that we are not challenging. That we know that on an individual basis, were I do do it, I would be violating the commandment of loving God and loving neighbor.
If the consequences that come from those sins that are being done on a corporate level come to me on an individual basis, which they do, in fact, is there not, commensurately, an obligation on our part, as a member of a corporate entity that is doing something wrong, to comply with the commandments of loving God and loving neighbor, of trying to do something about it? To do something about it so that the entity through which we interact in the world is not a source of evil.
And I think that part is something that we need to explore in the Advent season.
Yes, Mayve is sweet… wonderful person, loves her grandson, loves her husband, nice, but she works for the evil empire of the government of Farmers Branch. If Farmers Branch is doing something that violates the commandment of loving neighbor, which it did a few years ago, what is her obligation as an employee of the evil empire and what are our obligations as citizens of the evil empire, to change the policies of the corporate entity? And if we do not, if the wages of sin is death, if there is a punishment and, in fact, by not acting we are violating the second great commandment, what are the consequences?
And I think that in this Advent season, it's certainly something I'm going to be thinking about is, what are our obligations? What are we called to do? What are we mandated to do by the command of love thy neighbor?
November 29, 2018 3