"If you participate in a corrupted system you are enabling it to continue on and become even more corrupt. If you choose to leave and refuse all benifits from it then that system has no more power over you and will eventually crumble.
This can only work if your heart can fully trust in THE greater power that is above all and that has and will overcome all evil. If you are truly Yahwehs servant then no power on earth can touch you unless He allows it."
7 comments:
Interesting. Participation is support, huh? Does that count for volleyball too?
So very true!
Psalm 147:6 "The LORD lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground."
Psalm 33:10-11
Isaiah 5:20-24
Romans 12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
29For our God is a consuming fire.
is the system corrupted or just the people that run it?
Kinda depends what system you're talking about... ?
I think it applies either way though. By supporting the system you support the people that run it. Or if you're supporting the people you're supporting the system.
Can't say I agree with this. (Woah, I'm in a blunt mood today.) Frankly, I don't see Scriptural support for this position. Scripturally, I do see a precedent of participating in and using the benefits offered by a system of government.
Acts 25:11,12 - "[Paul said], 'If, then, I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything worthy of death, I do not refuse to die; but if none of those things is true of which these men accuse me, no one can hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar.' Then when Festus had conferred with his council, he answered, 'You have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you shall go.'"
Acts 26:32 - "And Agrippa said to Festus, 'This man might have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.'"
Paul "participated" with an outwardly-just but inwardly-corrupt system, run by one of the worst persecutors in the history of Christianity.
@april We are in this world but not of it. John 17:15-17 And we are not supposed to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers 2Cr 6:14
I see the fact that he would have been set free if had not appealed to Caesar as proof of what I am saying. Paul was not perfect ... he was a man like the rest of us and I don't think that in this case we can say what he did was the right thing to do. If he had not appealed to caesar then he would have probably been set free. But God used the decision Paul made(whether it was the right or wrong) for good.
I guess this is where our differences of opinion about Christians' responsibility toward government comes in. I will grant you that it doesn't say Paul was specifically right in appealing to Caesar...then again it doesn't say he was wrong to do it, either. How you take/apply the passage really has to do with how you view a Christian's attitude toward and responsibility to government.
(P.S. I'm still not scandalized...at least not about this...the Asian food thing, however... ;-D)
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