Trump, Kim Jong Un, and "Moral Authority"

Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who is one of President Trump's religious advisors, has announced that "God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un [of North Korea." He says this on the basis of Romans 13.

So let's take Romans 13 literally, as Jeffress wants to do. "Every person should place themselves under the authority of the government." We run into two very clear problems:

1. If you want to take every verse literally, then the leader of North Korea (and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and Russia...) could use this same verse to demand authority be given to them by the citizens of their country. The passage makes no distinction between leaders of different countries or different types of government. In fact, the only kind of government that Paul had experience with was more like North Korea's dictatorship than the United State's democracy.

2. These verses have nothing to do with foreign policy. There is nothing here about how one leader ought to treat another leader. It is all about how residents of a country should relate to the leader(s) of that country. Romans 13 actually would treat Trump and Kim Jong Un as equals, both put in place by God.

It is clear that Pastor Jeffress is reading Romans 13 to justify what he already believes (as, by the way, we are all tempted to do.)

So what is it really about?

Context matters. The early Christians were trying to live out "the Kingdom of God," a Kingdom that we modern Christians also claim citizenship in, while also living as residents of the Roman Empire. How does one go about living in two kingdoms at once? Paul speaks to them (not to the rulers!), saying that governance rather than anarchy is part of God's plan for this world. We have freedom in Christ, but we still should follow traffic laws. We should give freely to the Church and to those in need, but we also should pay our taxes. Unless the law of the State contradicts the law of Christ we are to follow both.

There is also a longstanding Christian tradition that there are times when it is a Christian's responsibility to resist the state when laws are against the Christian's calling. So, for example, a Christian pacifist ought not fight even if drafted. We'll be talking about issues like this in a three part War and Peace series at St. Paul's in September.

Should Trump "take out" Kim Jong Un? That's a question I won't presume to be able to answer. But the answer doesn't come from an isolated passage from Romans. It comes from prayerful, faithful, study not only of Scripture but also psychology, sociology, and policy. It is dangerous to reduce such complex questions to our own biased readings of a text.