Peter Thiel and Elon Musk — key bros in the “PayPal Mafia” who went on to lucrative projects after PayPal was acquired by eBay in 2002, have now gone on to government-breaking so they can perfect their power-grabbing. Thank God people are talking about Palantir all the time!

The unexpected consequences of the bros’ brazen tech-authoritarianism is an outbreak of creativity on the part of the resistance. For instance, Governor Newsome’s Trumpesque Tweets are a hilarious and creative way of asserting California’s right to exist without thugs in their faces (as they experienced when Newsome spoke about redistricting the other day). Old ladies fomenting “Be Brave Day” last Friday is anther version of resistance; they were saying “No! We exist.” The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church titled his Fourth of July message: “Once the church of presidents, The Episcopal Church must now be an engine of resistance.” That’s unexpected!

There are a lot of smart, energetic people out there creatively resisting! They are not shutting up (even though you can get fired for saying the wrong thing — like my friend was fired from her job last month for being outspoken about starving Gazans). For instance, two months ago Tad Stoermer decided to speak up and made this video about the difference between protest and resistance. It finally caught up with me as it wound its way through the algorithm. He insists the present broken time is not calling for reform but for creative transformation.

Existence is resistance

Back in 2011, “existence is resistance” became my new favorite phrase. I learned it from Palestinians, like those from Stop the Wall, and from the Christian Peacemaker Teams in At-Tuwani, south of Hebron. They were creatively resisting. They certainly did not expect Israel to reform (and it did not!); their only hope was transformation. And that begins with their insistent existence. Their continual “No!”

In At-Tuwani, our MCC Learning Tour delegation met a woman from Switzerland who had been living in the village for six years as part of CPT’s work of support. That’s committed resistance. She was about ready to return to Europe, since the villagers were organized enough to do without the protection of witnesses from the U.S. or Europe.

At-Tuwani was in “Area C” of the apartheid system Israel was perfecting in its occupied territories. That means the village was under direct military control. Living in Area C meant that almost anything could happen to a Palestinian for “security” reasons (some say the U.S. is following the Israeli model now). It meant one’s rights were adjudicated by military justice. Practically, it meant one’s land was subject to seizure and the housing developments being planted on your grazing and farm land could supplant your long-held practices – and would be protected by the military (which, by the way, is still protected by the United States). The village was something of a showcase for people devoted to nonviolent resistance. They have been dedicated to the proposition that existence is resistance (and they are still hanging in there).

at-Tuwani 2011

We listened to one of the village’s activists talk about the awakening that caused him to be a leader in direct nonviolent action. When the nearby Israeli settlement was built, it disrupted all the village’s ways. The “settlers” commandeered farmland and claimed grazing areas for their use. One day they beat the man’s mother when she dared to graze sheep in land they were trying to control. As we looked over the village he described how he had participated in securing its ongoing existence against the constant pressure and harassment of the Israeli settlers, military and bureaucracy. Their existence is resistance.

Slaves of Christ

It seems like the Church is usually in need of a refresher course on being an engine of resistance. It is usually the oppressed of the world who can provide the seminar.

In 2017 our old church did some refreshing theology. As I look back on our work from the era of Trump 2.0, I like our thinking even more. Our work came to some truth about our calling to resist antichrist powers — which the Church had been downplaying right down to the way it translated the Bible!

We were concentrating on Paul’s “two-tiered” theology applied to our “social action.” You can see my treatment here in this article.

One of the places where we could see Paul’s thinking was when he related to slaves. In our day, when people are into the idolatry Trump preaches, in which young people are chained to their survival jobs and debt, when white supremacists are trying to re-enslave African Americans, and in which we are all tempted to bow in fear before the Tweeter-in-chief, we may need to think about freeing the slaves more consciously than ever.

Be small

First, if we want to get anything out of Paul’s thoughts on slavery, we have to remember that when he speaks to women, Gentiles and slaves seriously as members of the church, his respect is subversive. Some of us forget, as we turn our “imperial gaze” on the “others” who are so-called “minorities” and so marginalized, that Paul is writing as one of those “others.” He and his little groups of persecuted misfits who are beginning to infect the Roman Empire are not speaking from a position of privilege and power. His view is small; he has become small; the people in his church plants are the “others” in their towns and villages. So he writes from “under” not “over.”

One of the first tasks in understanding him is to let go of any imperial outlook, the supposed privileges of being an American citizen, the protection of the huge military apparatus, even the exceptionalism of being a better Christian than others, and become small enough to need a Savior, to act as a slave of Christ.

Bible translators during the Reformation. And subsequently,  undermined our understanding when they decided that rendering the common Greek word for “slave” as slave was too demeaning, so they tidied things up by using the word servant, instead (which is a big difference). Philippians 2:7 in the KJV is a good example. There Paul describes Jesus as taking on the condition of a slave. But the KJV calls him a servant. I think Paul meant what he wrote. It is much more realistic, to see how humankind oppresses Jesus than to see Jesus as serving up salvation to us as we decide whether we want it or not. In order to hear what Paul, the slave of Jesus, is teaching, we’ll have to get into his slavish shoes.

Practice slaving

Once in Paul’s shoes, we can see what he is talking about. His thoughts are a lot bigger than whether a person is going to gain social or political freedom. That achievement would be frosting on his hope cake. The cake is being freed from the need to be freed from what humans do to you and being a grateful slave to the salvation that Jesus is working into us. Here’s just one example of how he thinks:

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” – Colossians 3:23-4.

That last clause could better read: “It is for the Lord (master) Christ you are slaving.” That is his first-tier thinking. He knows a truth, the Truth, the world does not know and he is living in it, no matter who he is in the eyes of the world or according to its ways.

Everyone who is thoroughly trained in democratic equality and the centrality of human choice (the general God-free zone of Western thought these days) is likely to think those lines are heresy; it might even feel icky to read them, taboo. Slaving?! Paul has none of those qualms. He finds it an honor to be a slave in Christ’s house as opposed to being a ruler in a house of lies. God is a “master” beyond anything Hobbes, Rousseau or Ayn Rand could imagine. You can see that he is not interested in reformation, he’s experiencing transformation.

So when Paul goes on to talk to slaves, getting into the matters of their everyday lives, as they are locked in their situation with masters, benign or despotic, he has a variety of options for them. His first tier thinking makes them completely free to do the best they can with what they’ve got in the day-to-day, passing-away, fallen world. So he says to his brothers and sisters in Colossae:

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord…. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.” — Colossians 3:22, 25

Note that Paul is likely writing his letter to Colossae from house arrest in Rome. His slavery to Jesus has resulted in becoming enslaved by the Romans. So he can write from personal understanding. Basically, being a good slave who resists the master by obeying out of love and freedom instead of fear is good Christianity. It is possible to exude “no” when you are doing a submissive “yes” according to Jesus. Elsewhere, of course, Paul advises slaves to get free if they can. And he tells Philemon to treat his runaway slave as a brother, or just charge him whatever it costs to set him free.

There are no disempowered people in Christ, even our suffering has the power of grace and love in it. A slave in the world is God’s free person. A free person in the world is God’s slave. This is hard to translate for people who believe the delusion that law makes them free and rational rules and education will prevent suffering. Paul might respond to such ideas, as he did, and say, “Though I am blameless before the law, I am God’s prisoner, a lifelong felon freed by grace.” Similarly, no Jesus followers merely work for human masters, we do whatever we do with the Lord. Even when oppressed, we experience the hope that we will have our reward and the oppressors will get theirs.

How do we take action?

So what do we do in the face of the oppressive masters beating down on us and the world? Pray harder, safe in our salvation? Absolutely. But that is not all. You’re probably taking action in many creative ways.

Our old church summarized what we do in our statement of our mission and put it on a t-shirt:

Loving the thirsty people of our fractured region,
we keep generating a new expression of the church
to resist and restore with those moved by the Holy Spirit.

We resist. I am Christ’s slave. That is a defiant statement of resistance. My existence is resistance. I will never be a slave to a human, no matter what one does to me: buy me, imprison me, or take away my livelihood. I will always belong to the Lord, forever. And, as he demonstrates, in a very real sense, Jesus will always belong to me, forever. He has made Himself our slave.

We restore. I am an obedient slave. My work is well-ordered. Jesus is the Lord of all and we are making that known and effective, day by day. We restore by reorienting people’s identities to align with their salvation. We restore by relentlessly loving in the face of hate and indifference. We restore by telling the truth in the face of lies. We restore by sharing our resources and making peace. And, I think most important, we restore by practicing the kind of mutuality that creates an alternative community that is not allied with the powers that dig up the world and destroy connections between God and people like hurricanes blasting through our village.

Our existence is the foundation of our resistance. We can only hope that the country will be put to right soon. But even if it isn’t, we know who we are and what to do.  Being knit together in the love of Jesus is more important than ever, isn’t it! Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are intent on taking over the world and believe they deserve to! What else would we do but resist?

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