Believers and Despotic Government

This article comes from a recent conversation with someone living under a terribly corrupt and despotic regime. They reached out to me in response to an earlier video I had posted entitled “The Christian Response to Ungodly Government.” If you’re interested, you can find it here: https://youtube.com/shorts/gEo1Hwcb6Do?si=UiizW3UY1MJbwuFd

I hold a very unpopular view on despotic government. It is my belief that we who are in Christ are to continue sacrificially Loving those around us. I think we are called to be ready to provide an answer for the hope we have to those who ask. I believe we are to continue to express Christ in every situation.

We will fail if we try to do these things by the power of the flesh. Only the Holy Spirit within us can be the dynamo energizing us in this work.

Well known Christian leaders such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered under Hitler, have chosen to fight evil regimes. After long and deep thought, listening for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Bonhoeffer decided that he was justified in participating in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. The plan failed, and he landed in prison.

I do not think that I personally would make the same choice. However, I have not lived under such repression and overt evil.

I always come back to the same place. I look at the way Jesus and the Apostles conducted themselves during the Roman empire. Near the end of the Apostolic period, the Roman emperors had set up temples where the people were expected to worship them as gods. The Apostles never denied Christ by participating in any such thing, and they were martyred.

I see no scriptural support for behaving differently from them. They were peaceful and obedient until they were told to stop worshiping the Living God or telling others about the Lord Jesus.

A missionary to the Congo from 1953 to 1973 named Helen Roseveare experienced terrible things at the hands of those who had overthrown the government there. One time, more than one of them brutally raped her. As this was going on she cried out to the Lord asking Him why He was allowing this. She recounts hearing in her heart a question. "Can you thank me for trusting you with this even if I never tell you why?" It was a startling question. She had never thought of her persecution in terms of God trusting her.

He does trust us. Those of us He allows to be overtaken by such evil are those of us He is trusting to manifest His Love and His Life in the worst suffering evil people can inflict upon us.

I have no real idea how I would fare in such a situation, but Father sure does.
I have no idea what decisions I’d make, but Father would be on the other side of every one of them.