Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why Christians who quote Romans 13 every time a state officer kills someone misunderstand the Bible … Where I land in an argument between two storytellers on whether their craft is to blame for all the bloodshed around us … How to find out what you want when you don’t know anymore … A Desert Island Bookshelf from just outside Washington, DC … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13
An ICE agent shot protester Renee Good through the head this week and killed her. Videos record one of the agents cursing her as she died. I knew immediately that many Christians would be morally shaken by this, and rightfully so. And I knew many of them would soothe their troubled consciences with a predictable passage of Scripture, and it isn’t “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Instead, whenever an agent of the state kills a person in morally questionable circumstances, many Christians go right to Romans 13, quoting it before the blood is even cleaned up from the ground.
What people reference when they say “Romans 13” is the argument the apostle Paul makes in that chapter: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed” (vv. 1–2, ESV throughout). What some Christians draw from this, then, is that whatever the state does in using lethal force (or bearing “the sword” as Paul put it in verse 4) is morally legitimate and those who question it are wrong.
Some Christians quoted Romans 13 to oppose the American Revolution. Some cited it to oppose efforts at civil disobedience, such as the Montgomery bus boycott or the nonviolent resistance to police forces in Birmingham or Selma. And certainly people pull out this passage as a kind of moral trump card to silence questioning when they see the protester as not on their side or the person in power as on their side. That Romans 13 is most often invoked not when the state is acting justly but when Christians feel the urge to quiet their consciences ought to trouble us—not because this habit puts too much weight on biblical authority but because it attacks it.
The problem is not with Romans 13 itself, any more than the cocaine dealer quoting Judge not, lest ye be judged is a problem with Jesus. Should we refrain from quoting Psalm 91 because the Devil quoted it in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–11)? Not at all. But we also have no excuse for allowing ourselves to use that verse to make the same satanic case.
The Book of Romans did not come to us with chapter and verse distinctions; it was one continuous argument from the apostle. The argument in Romans 13 continues that of chapter 12, in which Paul exhorts the Christians to “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (v. 12) and to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (v. 14). He has just implored these readers not to seek vengeance on those who mistreat them: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (v. 21).
Paul then makes a very similar argument to one the apostle Peter makes elsewhere, in which Peter argues that those who are now “sojourners and exiles” should “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:11, 13–14). Peter goes on to apply this posture by telling his readers not to use freedom as a “cover-up for evil” but to bear reproach for the sake of Christ.
Romans 13 makes a very similar case, with Paul writing—as did Peter—to people without badges or guns or even voting rights, telling them they can exist alongside their neighbors even as they wait for the kingdom of God. The powers that be, Paul argues, have a real and legitimate authority, and obeying that authority is not a break from obeying God but an extension of it. That authority exists for something: restraining wrongdoing, protecting the vulnerable.
That neither Paul nor Peter was giving moral carte blanche to the state is obvious not just in other Scriptures but also in their very lives. After all, both were later killed by the sword of Caesar (figuratively in Peter’s case, literally in Paul’s). Was the decree to behead Paul or to crucify Peter therefore morally right? No. Were the Christians who refused to say “Caesar is Lord” and were thus hounded, marginalized, or beheaded sinful in their refusal? Jesus said that, in that case, those who obeyed earthly powers were the ones bringing judgment on themselves (Rev. 14:11–12).
Moreover, the use of Romans 13 as a refusal to question the morality of a use of force is, ironically enough, a violation of the passage. We might well ask, what would Paul have written if Romans 13 were addressed to the authorities rather than to those under their rule?
Well, we actually know the answer, because the same Spirit who breathed out Romans 13 also breathed out John the Baptist’s instructions to tax collectors and soldiers. John told them not to extort money from anyone, implying that they would be held responsible for the misuse of their power (Luke 3:12–14). The same Spirit also favorably portrayed Paul’s interaction with the police who told him and Silas, on behalf of the magistrates, to leave quietly, to which Paul replied, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out” (Acts 16:37).
Paul knew of what he spoke. In his prior life, he had persecuted the church—with legal warrants and the full force of law. He did not see that legality of that action as being in any way an excuse (1 Tim. 1:12–14).
Romans 13 is about refusing to become what oppresses you, not about baptizing whatever the oppressor does. And Romans 13 puts moral limits around what authorities can and cannot do—it tells them to use the sword against “the wrongdoer,” for instance. Paul wrote Romans 13 not to protect the state from critique but to shield the church from vengeance.
To use Romans 13 to automatically justify state violence is not the equivalent of first-century Christians seeing their calling as not to overthrow the empire. To use it that way is more like if Daniel in Babylon had said that the fiery oven is the lawful punishment for civil disobedience against worshiping the king’s image, and therefore Nebuchadnezzar is right that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should be burned alive.
There are legitimate uses of tragically necessary lethal force on the part of law enforcement officers. Watch the video, if you can, and decide for yourself if you think, morally, that this was one of them. But don’t simply turn away from the violence and refuse to ask any questions at all. And if you decide that whatever is done with government power is beyond moral scrutiny, don’t blame Romans 13. That’s not what it tells you to do.
Stories in a Time of Blood and Rage
This week, in the middle of all of the awful news about violence, murder, and war, I read a speech that Kurt Vonnegut gave at the dedication of a university library, a speech where he blamed bloodshed on storytellers such as himself.
“Gunplay is no way to live—but it’s a peachy way to end a tale,” Vonnegut said. He said the problem was that what is a technical fix for storytellers who want to wrap up a story quickly became perceived by some people as the way to live.
“Another thing that was hard to do was to hold the attention of a reader or watcher for any length of time,” he said.
It was discovered that audiences had an easier time of it if they didn’t have to care equally about all the characters in a tale. So the storytellers provided plots with characters whose destinies mattered a lot, and other characters who were as disposable as Kleenex tissues.
This, too, he said, people started to take as a model for real life. Bit players were dispensable; leading characters were not. And in the eyes of some readers, once we’ve decided who fits in which category, we can morally exempt ourselves from getting the bit players out of the way.
I can’t agree, or at least not all the way. Instead, I think Vonnegut’s contemporary and fellow novelist Reynolds Price has the better argument: that story is not the problem but the solution. The persistent need for stories throughout all human history, Price argued, is the sign of a hunger for hope—a hope for “one short tale we feel to be true: History is the will of a just god who knows us.”
“Human narrative, through all its visible length, gives emphatic signs of arising from the profoundest need of one fragile species,” Price argued. “Sacred story is the perfect answer given by the world to the hunger of that species for true consolation. The fact that we hunger has not precluded food.”
Why We Don’t Know What We Want (and How to Find Out)
You might not know who Martin Shaw is before you listen to this conversation, but I guarantee you, once you do you will not forget him. Martin is one of the world’s most respected thinkers on the subject of myth. He is the author of a new book, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us, and he lives up to that title this week on the podcast, because our conversation went into some wild places indeed.
Martin has found what I too find all the time: people who have worked hard for what they wanted all their lives only to realize they are not sure what they want. That’s why he takes people into the woods—away from cellphone service—puts them under a tent, and guides them through finding out.
His expertise is born not just of study and practice but of a life lived. He grew up in a Baptist church; walked away from Christianity for decades; and then, after living under canvas, studying the way mythology works, and seeing the need for rites of passage, reconsidered everything. After fasting and seeking, he became a Christian. We talk about how he came to see the resurrection accounts of Jesus as “disturbingly strange.”
- how both of us sat as children in Baptist churches waiting for Aslan to disrupt the service with something true and wild
- why sarcasm is dangerous and deadens us
- how rites of passage can address the adolescent mental health crisis (and the middle-age mental health crisis)
- why paganism and psychedelics don’t get people to the transcendence they think they want
- how to reclaim your attention span by memorizing a poem, with specific steps on how to do it
If you’ve ever sensed that something essential has gone missing in our spiritual lives—something older, heavier, and more human—this conversation is for you. And if you want to hear all of that delivered with clarity, seriousness, and the occasional line of poetry recited in a British accent—well, that’s here too.
You can listen to the full conversation here or at The Russell Moore Show wherever you get your podcasts.
Desert Island Bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Rhonda Carlson from Vienna, Virginia, near Washington, DC:
- All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings by Gayle Boss: I started compiling my bookshelf list in early autumn but realized when Advent began that I had been waiting eagerly since last December to reread this book, and probably should include it. Everyone I have recommended this to has told me, “This was the perfect book for me!” Helps to be an animal lover, but even for those who aren’t, you will gain knowledge and a deeper, more detailed appreciation for the Creator of the wild turkey, the opossum, the common loon, the painted turtle, and even the striped skunk.
- The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace: I first read these books as a child, then again as an adult, then again with my own daughter. Lovelace wrote the series using increasingly advanced wording, so readers grow up alongside Betsy and her family and friends.
- The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37¾ by Adrian Plass: When I tell someone how much I have been influenced by a British Christian author, there is a little part of me that hopes they assume I am speaking of a theological giant like N. T. Wright or John Stott. But I’m really referring to Adrian Plass, specifically this delightful, fictionalized semi-autobiography that I first read as a cash-strapped college student standing in a bookstore, before finally deciding on my third or fourth trip to just spend the money and get my own copy. I now see it as “comfort reading” when life is hard and I need some solid British humor.
- First We Have Coffee by Margaret Jensen: A sweet and gentle read by the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. You can almost smell the coffee in the church basement kitchen.
- James Herriot’s Cat Stories by James Herriot: I probably would have a cat with me when shipwrecked, but if for some reason I am catless, this book would be a good stand-in. Yes, I’ve gotten into the latest PBS All Creatures Great and Small series, but nothing tops Herriot’s original books.
- German Boy by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel: Like many Americans, I’ve read a lot of World War II history. This book is written from the perspective of a young German boy suffering through the loss of family members, possessions, and childhood safety and innocence. Intriguing to see American servicemen through his eyes as the war progressed.
- MOVE and other Four-Letter Words by Joan Brown: As the wife of a US Foreign Service officer, I have packed up children, cats, and worldly goods at the behest of the State Department more times than I can remember. No matter how prepared and organized you think you are, an international move always feels like one is fleeing the country. This author, a 1950s–1990s military wife, gets it.
- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger: This book embodies the beauty in brokenness and has one of the most compelling young female characters since Harper Lee’s Scout. Good to read in a book club because you will want to talk about it after you finish reading.
- Devotional Classics by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith: I grew up in American evangelicalism and am thankful for the depth of foundation that provided for my faith. Conversely, years of living and worshiping in other countries and with Christians of other streams and traditions has expanded the breadth of that faith. These devotional articles, drawing from contemplative, charismatic, holiness-movement, evangelical, and social justice–minded Christians, fill out my understanding of and love for the global, historical church.
- All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: As I reached the final chapters of this book, I started trying to read more slowly. I simply didn’t want it to end. Doerr brought the lives of characters together and “tied up loose ends” in ways that I’ve rarely encountered as a reader.
- The Economist Book of Obituaries by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe: I married into a family of Economist readers. The last page, the obituary, was sometimes the only column I got through. Not surprisingly, no one took me seriously when I asked for this compilation for Christmas one year, so I had to order it, wrap it up, and put it under the tree myself. Inspiring and sometimes sobering to read a one-page summary of a life.
- Culinaria Italy by Claudia Piras: Not sure how long I would be on the island before someone remembered to come get me, but this book and the others in the series, at 600-plus pages each of photos and tiny print, should keep me busy for a while. Each chapter goes in depth about a food important to a certain region or subculture. A book this big could come in handy in other ways on a deserted island.
Thank you, Rhonda!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“Paganism for yourself and Christianity for others, that’s every individual’s instinctive desire.”
—Albert Camus, The Complete Notebooks
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Niall Williams, John: A Novel (Bloomsbury)
- Judd Apatow, Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures (Random House)
- William H. Pritchard, On Frost and Eliot (Paul Dry)
- Reynolds Price, A Common Room: Essays, 1954–1987 (Atheneum)
- Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye Unbuttoned: Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries, ed. Robert D. Denham (Gnomon)
- Thomas Merton, A Secular Journal (Hollis & Carter)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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