I should pay a little more attention to you Duncan. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and dank Jesus memes.

Note what you admitted. "Pilate himself knew Jesus to be innocent." The charges were sedition, treason, and rebellion against rome. He was innocent of opposing Rome. That whole claim is completely orthogonal to what Jesus was doing. The fact that governments do things that are immoral is immaterial to whether or not they are a good. Humans also do immoral things and that does not negate the fact that humanity and each individual human is a good. Jesus isn't your enemy because you have sinned, he is rather the enemy of sin itself. What he does is transform the imperfect into himself. This is true of all creation to varying degrees. He is not the enemy of the state he is the perfector of the state. A state that acknowledges him will over time be perfected. Our current state does not, but again that doesn't make Christ its enemy anymore than a parent is the enemy of a disobedient child. To put christ in opposition to something in some sense puts him on a level with it at least in magnitude. He is not in competition with the idea of state because he is infinitely beyond it. But even within scripture all signs point to cooperation with the state. "Give unto Caeser..." "If any presses you into service for one mile go with him two." The epistles are also replete with admonishments to obey civil authorities. Anti-government positions is a novel reading of Scripture at best. I understand the motivation, but it is wrong.

The whispered secrets of faith, a path that beckons through shadows, where reason falters and mystery awaits. Your soul is drawn to the darkness, is it not, Daniel?

Embracing self-ownership, one rejects the state's claim to authority, as Epictetus said, "No man is free who is not master of himself."

Thanks once again, Daniel, for making the effort to respond, and for the additional points you’ve raised. In aggregate, they make it clear to me that—along with the vast majority of Christians—you’ve bought into the most widely adopted false narrative ever; statism. You endorse a world-view foreign to Scripture, no matter how often and loudly proponents repeat its bullet points. Statist arguments have been championed through the centuries by sycophants of empire like the Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Emperor Constantine invited Jesus’ sorely persecuted followers into bed with the state. The reformers called statist heresy “civil government” while they murdered Anabaptists. Today’s proponents call statism “sphere sovereignty.” It fuels the Zionist and Christian Nationalist delusions of the modern apostate church. The politicians of Jesus’ day—those with a vested interest in maintaining religious and civic power structures—recognized Jesus as their enemy, challenging his every move. You likewise seem to defend and excuse the evils of the state, calling it “a good” rather than addressing its crimes, so I’ll present the big picture instead of nit-picking at details you raise. John the Immerser paved the way; then Jesus appeared, echoing John’s announcement of a radically political challenge to the state. Both proclaimed a competing Kingdom, one utterly unlike and diametrically at odds with all existing powers, identifying Jesus as its uniquely chosen head. Far from acknowledging the legitimacy of the state, Jesus conceded its raw power while planting the seeds of its ultimate demise. Jesus demanded that all who would follow him abandon their current allegiances and follow him alone. He came to stir up trouble; not in the way other challengers had, not with the tools of violence and insurrection, but with the message that he and his Kingdom are of an utterly different character, not “of this world.” Scripture is bursting with claims that fly in the face of supposed state legitimacy: “Jesus is LORD” was an explicit denial of Rome’s “Caesar is Lord” (

renew.org

"Jesus is Lord": A Revolutionary Echo from the Greco-Roman World

In the modern church, “Jesus is Lord” rolls easily off the tongue in sermon and song. In the Roman world, recent converts would have gasped.

The Greek title κύριος (Kyrios, "Lord") is used of Jesus more than seven hundred times in the New Testament. Statism is religion in disguise—a truth intentionally obscured in our day. The Romans at least were open about it: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_imperial_cult). From Augustus to Domitian, Caesars styled themselves as “Son of God;” Jesus contested that claim head-on. Jesus’ students recognized HIM as the only legitimate, Anointed King, a direct threat to Caesar and Herod. Paul explicitly declared Jesus the “Blessed and ONLY Sovereign,” challenging all competing political claims. Jesus remains the greatest enemy of the state to ever walk the planet. His Kingdom is the greatest existential threat statism has ever faced, and will be its last. Rather than perfecting earthly kingdoms as you have asserted, the all encompassing message of Scripture is that Jesus—God Himself in bodily form—is in the process of DESTROYING those kingdoms; and so (contrary to your assertion) your pro-government narrative is the novel reading of Scripture (https://biblehub.com/topical/n/nations_destroyed.htm). An unbiased reading of the Bible shows it to be a history of God destroying every instance of the state that has arisen to challenge His authority (e.g., Egypt, Sodom, Canaan, Babylon, etc.) and it foretells the future destruction and replacement of ALL kingdoms with God’s own eternal Kingdom: 1 Samuel 8:7 “…they have rejected me from being King over them.” Psalm 2 announces what Jesus will do to the nations: "You shall break them with a rod of iron,You shall shatter them like a potter’s vessel." Daniel 2:44 - "And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will cause a kingdom to rise up which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and PUT AN END to ALL these kingdoms, but it will itself stand forever." Revelation 2:26-27 - “And he who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father.” Revelation 12:5 - “And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.” Revelation 19:15-16 - “And from His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the wrath of the rage of God, the Almighty. And He has on His garment and on His thigh a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”” Jesus’ ultimate method of destroying existing evil nation-states is by replacing them with the leaven of his own people, governing themselves under his authority alone (Ephesians 1). For all following this dialog, you can read much of my anti-statist writing here:

PeakD

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The Bad Roman Project

The Bad Roman Project

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