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The Independence Podcast helps everyday people discover that true freedom isn’t found in self-reliance but in total dependence on Jesus Christ. Each episode blends honest conversation, biblical truth, and practical application to help listeners move beyond emotional devotion toward consistent, daily surrender. Whether you’re new in your faith or longing to grow deeper, you’ll find encouragement to trust God fully, live from His grace, and follow Christ with courage in a world that celebrates independence but neglects dependence on the One who truly sets us free.
Bryan Dunham (00:00)
Welcome my friends to the Independence podcast episode number 17. And on this podcast, we discuss what it means to be a fully dependent follower of Jesus. I am your host, Brian Dunham. And this week is a big one for me. I have been wrestling for months now with a question. And that question is how
Do we as Christians, how do I as a Christian respond and engage the world I see around me today, particularly in the United States? ⁓ A world that looks like it's gone off the rails. When I first saw the movie Hunger Games, like the wild caricatures, the hair, the makeup, the strangeness of the show, it was a wildly entertaining movie, but
It feels more and more in many ways, like what I'm seeing in society looks more like that. mean, with politics and news that turns suffering into entertainment, the political arena increasingly feels like it's less about governing and more about just performance outrage with viral clips, takedowns, like gotcha moments.
In the political process, even like with elections, no matter who wins, the system seems to just remain and elections feel less like problem solving moments and just more like season finales, emotionally charged with narratives that are fairly fixed and framed and structurally repetitive. What I mean by that is just the same fights, arguments, platforms reappear.
over and over, it's just new costumes and political opponents like one side of the aisle versus the other side of the aisle, they identify each other as threats, not just people who disagree. Like opponents aren't just wrong, they're evil. They're not misguided, but they are dangerous. And once we allow those frames to set in, cruelty will become justifiable.
It feels like we are at a place where politics has become entertainment. Citizens have become contestants and power no longer needs to persuade. It just simply needs to provoke us. And the idea of the Hunger Games, it's just about a system that survives by keeping people distracted, divided, and in many ways desperate. The people in Panem, like in the Hunger Games,
retired, they're, they're, tired people are much easier to govern. And I don't know about you, but I have certainly felt politically exhausted, ⁓ cynical, growing numb towards things. And that's, that's what that kind of constant crisis that gets presented in front of us every day does it, it can dull, numb us. And it, it kind of distorts what should be moral clarity.
And it turns the populace into basically pawns of the state, again, that no longer need to be persuaded to achieve anything. They just simply need to be provoked. And this really hits close to home to me. And so I've been struggling with how, how do, how do I approach this? What is my place in this? ⁓ How do we engage in this? And so.
Enter Jesus, one of the most politically subversive people to ever walk the face of the earth. What does he have to say about how we engage this world? So today we resume our series Bound for Freedom, in which we're dissecting the Sermon on the Mount, which is the most cohesive block of Jesus's teachings we have in scripture. And we're trying not only to understand it, but how does it
form how we should live our daily lives as followers of Jesus. And so today we're going to be in Matthew chapter five, verse nine, and that is, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God. All right, let's begin with where we have with all of these Beatitudes. It's this word blessed.
You know if you've listened to any of the previous episodes in this series, this word blessed is the Greek word makarios, and it means those to whom God extends his favor. So the one whom is receiving God's favor in this verse are the peacemakers. And it's important to highlight this does not say peacekeepers, it is the peacemaker. It isn't the one who is keeping the peace.
It's the one who is creating peace in a situation, which obviously implies that there isn't peace. And so what is a peace maker? Well, first, let's try to understand where we typically begin. What do you and I understand peace to mean? Like, what does that mean in our day and time and in our context? And for us, peace really is the lack of something. It's the lack of conflict, the lack of tension, the lack of hostility. It's no drama.
It's something ⁓ that exists. Peace is something that exists when nothing is wrong. So if conflict shows up, then peace is broken. And in our context, the way we think about peace, peace is something that you passively protect and you do that by avoiding conflict. Okay, that's how you and I understand peace. Well, let's then go the next layer deeper, which is what is this Greek word ⁓ for peacemaker? And what does it mean?
And it's Irenapoias, Irenapoias, the Greek word for peacemaker. It's only used once in the New Testament here in this verse, Matthew 5, 9. It's a compound word coming from two Greek words, Irenae, which means ⁓ wholeness. We get our English name Irene from this. And wholeness here in this particular context means when all the parts are pulled together. So
⁓ Iron a and then poyo is the two words that are used to make this bigger word. I run a Poyas, which is peacemaker. Poyo means to make her to do. this word transliterated means to produce wholeness by joining the pieces together, ⁓ not tear apart, but to repair, not to separate, but pull something together. So to try to put back together the broken pieces. ⁓
I have this.
It's a ceramic piece of art. It's Precious Moments, if you're familiar with that brand. And it is a picture of a father and a daughter sitting on a couch watching a football game happening on the screen. ⁓ The daughter has a foam finger on. There's a little puppy dog watching TV too. And this particular one is Dallas Cowboy themed because my daughter Rachel and I are big Cowboy fans. And it says, the title of it is Every Day is a Touchdown with You. And I purchased this.
I think when she was five years old and down through the years, I knocked it off the shelf once and the TV broke. ⁓ I picked it back up, got some super glue, put it back together. You couldn't tell at all that. mean, I did a pretty good job. If I do say so myself, you could never tell that it was broken in the first place. Well, then over the weekend, my granddaughter came to visit and she was hanging out and playing and rolling around the floor and her little leg. Sweeped up and kicked this particular.
piece again off onto the floor and it actually broke the little girl's head like the daughter's head in the in the ceramic figurine knocked it clean off and ⁓ I'm going to find some additional super glue haven't done so you have to put that back together again but but ⁓ that's what we do when we have something that's meaningful to us like if that was just something I didn't care about and it was broken I'd throw it away like a dish
that I drop in the kitchen and it breaks into 15 different pieces. I just scoop it up, sweep it up and throw it in the trash. We don't really try to put those things back together, but when they mean something to us like this to me, we do put it back together, but at least growing up, like, try to put it back together where it doesn't look like anything was ever broken in the first place, but there is an alternate idea that is called Kintsugi. And if you're familiar with this, it's the Japanese art form.
And kintsugi literally means golden joinery. It is the practice of repairing broken pottery with lacquer that is mixed with powdered gold, sometimes silver, sometimes platinum. But when you when you do this, when you put something back together in this way, it's very clear that it has been broken. It's actually intentionally highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them.
And as an example, Rachel and I also, about the time she was five or six, we went to a pottery place and we created a ⁓ tea container. Like you'd put tea bags in it and at the bottom you'd draw them out. And we painted it particular colors that we liked and we left it there and they fired it. And we came back and picked it up eventually. And it was sitting on my bookcase. Well, a few months ago, I...
was carrying something, I hit it, knocked it in the floor and it shattered into, know, shatters probably not the right word, but it broke into about 15 different pieces. And it's a little small thing. Well, on ⁓ New Year's Eve this year, I decided one of the activities that she and I would do would be put this back together again, but we would be using a Kintsugi kit, like this art form of creating, using lacquer and mixing it with gold, which is what we did. And then we put the piece back together again and
It's very obvious that it's been broken because it has these jagged gold lines through it. But the purpose behind this idea of kintsugi is the break becomes part of the object's story. It often makes it more beautiful. And in this case, I would say that's true in Japanese culture. Oftentimes it makes it even more valuable. So kintsugi is this art of restoration that honors the fracture treating
brokenness as a feature rather than a failure. And this is a very biblical idea. Paul said that he was going to boast all the more in what? In his weaknesses, in his failures, because God's power is made perfect in weakness. That is brokenness as a feature and not a failure. And this idea of peace, the subject of
conversation today, like it is rejoining, like pulling together the pieces to make something whole again. It's rejoining those essential pieces. is, ⁓ Kintsugi is a picture of that. And this is also not just what the Greek word means, but this is a very Jewish idea, a very Hebrew idea. And remember,
Jesus, when he says blessed are the peacemakers, like the peacemakers are those to whom God extends his favor, when Jesus says that, he's a Hebrew, he's Jewish, he's talking to Jews mostly. And this idea of peace, which is the Hebrew word shalom, is a very significant part of Jewish history and Jewish religious thought. Shalom.
So when Jesus says this, he's going to be talking about shalom. So let's you and I understand what does shalom mean and how does that inform this verse and then also inform us. So shalom is not primarily about the absence of anything. Like when we think of peace as being the absence of conflict, shalom is not that. It's about the presence of something. Specifically, it's about the presence of wholeness. It's a wholeness that allows for humans to flourish.
⁓ It's shalom is like when things actually look like God intends them to be. So instead of asking, is there an absence of conflict? Like is anything wrong? Shalom asks, is everything ordered rightly? Like you can have shalom in the presence of conflict. So shalom is the presence of something, not the absence of something. And it's possible to have
peace, shalom, in the middle of what is conflict. And shalom is also something you pursue when you think about our ideas of peace. It's kind of you can't pursue a lack of conflict, you can't pursue, you know, the lack of something. But in Psalm 3414, we read, turn away from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.
While you can't pursue lack of conflict, you can pursue restoration. You can pursue reconciliation. And so in the American category, conflict equals the loss of peace. But in a biblical category, ⁓ the absence of shalom really has more to do with unaddressed injustice or unaddressed relational brokenness. And it's why the prophets condemn
this idea over and over again when when people claim peace, but it doesn't actually exist. This is in Jeremiah 16 verses 13 and 14. for from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain. And from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace.
when there is no peace. So here, God is saying they have healed the wound lightly. They've not done the job of restoration. And then they say, ⁓ there's peace, shalom, shalom, when there is no shalom. They're calling out a false peace. And when you do that, you're just suppressing the truth, which does not restore wholeness. In restoring wholeness,
is shalom and that is what God is most interested in. And ⁓ the idea of shalom isn't just personal peace, isn't just my peace, it's much more relational in Jewish thought and about the community. So in the Hebrew way of thinking, you don't really have peace if your neighbor is ⁓ oppressed or if the vulnerable are ignored. So Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers.
The ones who create shalom, who bring about reconciliation and restoration, for they will be called the sons of God. This idea being called the sons of God, called as Kaleo, it means to call out, or it means to name. In this instance, it means to name something. it's, you will be named a son of God. Of course, this is the idea of son in Old Testament. And then here in this verse is about the likeness, like, ⁓
You image God's ways in the world like a son bearing the name of the Father. So Jesus is saying the peacemaker, ⁓ they look like their father because they do what he does. Because God brings shalom, God brings peace. And so when we read a verse like this,
This kind of the idea of shalom, particularly when comes to the community aspect of it, kind of sits in conflict with how we operate as Christians here in America, because for us, mostly, it's Jesus and me. It's not Jesus and we, it's Jesus and me. And while that can be sincere, it's not fully complete. Like, modern American Christianity is overwhelmingly individualized.
It is my personal quiet time. It's my calling, ⁓ my testimony. Holiness is about my personal behavior. And my peace with God is something to do with me and not to do with anybody else. And none of those things are necessarily wrong, but they're incomplete. We have ⁓ quietly, unintentionally absorbed this enlightenment-shaped assumption
that the basic unit of spiritual life is an individual. And so, faith becomes increasingly something I possess or that I manage or that I protect. So, when we hear words like blessed or the peacemaker, we instinctively ask, well, how does this affect my inner life? How does this affect my spiritual life? And that question, particularly how does this affect me and my life?
That question would have sounded really foreign, almost incoherent to the Hebrew imagination. In the Old Testament, there's really no such thing as a standalone self, at least not that's broadly discussed. Identity is covenantal, it's communal, you belong to a family, you belong to a tribe, a people, a land, a story.
Even sin and righteousness are often described in corporate terms. Like one person's faithlessness or failure can shape the destiny of many people. If you think about when the Israelites, the spies went into the promised land to go scope it out before they were gonna take it. You know, the 12 spies, how many of them came back saying, let's go, we can do this? Well, it just Joshua and Caleb. The other 10s, they were in fear. They said no.
We're going to die. Our kids are going to die. This isn't going to work out well for us. And so as a result of that, the entire nation wandered around the wilderness for 40 years. Joshua and Caleb, who were faithful the whole time, who believed in God, had to pay the price of the lack of belief of the people around them. And so when scripture speaks of shalom, of the kind of peace Jesus is talking about here, it's never merely internal calm.
It is the health of the whole, the health of the community. So, shalom exists in this context when relationships are rightly ordered. It doesn't mean lack of conflict, but it means rightly ordered, moving towards reconciliation, moving towards wholeness. Justice is practiced publicly. The vulnerable are protected. Worship of God is faithful worship.
And then the resources of the community are shared without exploitation of people that are vulnerable. And that is ⁓ not in totality, but that's a lot of what shalom or peace means when Jesus talks about this. So you wouldn't be able to meaningfully say, hey, I have shalom, I have peace, if your neighbor's being oppressed. And that's why the prophets are so relentless about the idea that...
Israel seems religiously satisfied at times with their sacrifices and with having the temple and going to worship. But the whole time they're doing that, like in Jeremiah, in Isaiah, in Amos, those prophets just be, I mean, they tear them up because the poor are neglected and injustice is becoming normal. And so the prophets are trying to tell them that
Shalom is about the community and the integrity that happens within the community, not just private, not just a private serenity. And so here is in our modern version of Christianity, our individualism of our faith that Jesus and me kind of approach. Peace becomes just my own emotional regulation. Holiness becomes about my personal moral behavior. ⁓
Sin is when I commit it, it's a personal failure. It's not, has nothing to do with a fracture that potentially now is in the community. And reconciliation is, you know, if I, if I feel peaceful about my life and my relationships, then there's no need for me to attempt to do any reconciliation. ⁓ And we end up with believers who surely are spiritually sincere. I'm not doubting that.
but we're socially disengaged, not just nationally, but the people immediately around us. Like we're able to pray fervently for ourselves and our needs, but there are broken relationships all around us. Again, not just nationally, there are those too, and I'm gonna talk about those in a minute, but right across the road and...
not attempting to address those things, being disengaged from ⁓ the peace, the shalom, the wholeness, being disengaged from how our communities are fractured and not attempting to help pull them back together, whether that's individual relationships with people or with broader groups that are apart, that is not living towards shalom. It is not peacemaking. Like if we're not engaged there, we are not...
being peacemakers that Jesus calls us to be. so in our current context, in our current Christian culture, it's really not, this isn't biblical peace in most of our communities, it's managed isolation. And that causes pain and it causes hurt.
And this is because we live in a culture that prizes autonomy and avoids conflict. It privatizes belief. It treats community as optional. We talk about how badly we need it and we want community, but it is optional ⁓ when it comes to true engagement in our minds. Like, I don't really feel like going there right now. I have my own things to worry about kind of thing. So when scripture calls us to pursue peace, we
These days can often hear it as just stay calm and avoid the drama, but in Hebrew, the category shalom requires confrontation at times, confession, definitely repair, active attempts, sacrifice on our part for other people because the goal's not personal comfort, but it's honesty and wholeness within the community. So we will ask something like, am I at peace? But the biblical peace, biblical shalom would ask, are we whole?
⁓ So you cannot live this way that Jesus is talking about. You cannot live in Shalom by yourself, which means that we cannot stick our heads in the sand and pretend we don't see what's going on in the lives and in the world around us and not only talk about ⁓ how that exists, but what does that look like when we start to take action? Like what kind of action should we take here? Like personally, how do I respond to the things I see going on like in the country?
instance. Nationally, I personally have been very alarmed at the over-association with ⁓ evangelical Christianity and the political right, specifically the Republican Party and Christianity, like the ⁓ over-association of that. And as a Christian, we have a king and we have a kingdom, and it's not this one.
Your allegiance is not tied to an earthly kingdom. As Christians, like regardless of where you fall politically, I'm not saying you shouldn't have political thoughts or, you know, views, but I'm saying above that, above anything you think politically, based off of what we are called to be as Christians, we have to care about the sanctity of life, of justice and righteousness, of religious liberty, of
the poor and the vulnerable and those that are easily exploited and about truth, about order, about moral accountability, like all of these things that can sometimes feel like they're in conflict with each other. As Christians, we have to be able to hold them all at the same time, theologically, but not tribally. So, what I mean is our first loyalty is not to a party, it's not to a nation, it's not a movement, but it's to a crucified king whose reign
exposes every human power structure for what it is and that is a false power structure that cannot last and will ultimately implode on itself. And when Jesus is presented with the political power that we have a tendency to try to grasp and hold on to, he rejects the idea of himself being a political messiah in John 6.
He refuses to be weaponized against Rome. He tells Pilate, my kingdom's out of this world. Like if it were, know, my followers would fight, but they're not going to because this is not, you know, where my kingdom is from. none of those things that means that Jesus is apolitical, like he doesn't care, it just means he's politically subversive. Like Jesus critiques every system that tries to claim
some sort of absolute allegiance on your life, whether that's Caesar or whether that's material wealth. And my concern is when the word evangelical becomes shorthand for Republican, the gospel quietly stops being good news for all people and becomes a tribal marker. And at that point, Jesus is no longer our Lord. We've made him a mascot. Jesus is not coming back wearing a MAGA hat and he doesn't wrap the Bible
in an American flag. I am personally concerned that as Christians, our biblical illiteracy has led to a situation where we've lost the plot. So, you know, as someone who is a former police officer and a political conservative, but who is first a Christian, I've been struggling. All honesty, I've been struggling. Where to place myself in the middle of everything going on in the world stage?
inside our borders and outside our borders. I mean, when you think about the seizing of the Venezuelan oil tankers, blowing up the boats that maybe contain drug traffickers, military operations, removing ⁓ the Venezuelan president, bringing him here, like to the desired takeover of Greenland? I mean, Epstein, ICE, like, let's get back to the Bible because as Christians, this is our one rule and measure above all else.
Nothing and no one trumps it, pun intended. So let's look at what the Bible has to say about governmental authority, governmental enforcement actions, and what we can see historically. And I'm not saying we're going to come to an easy, clean-cut answer, but certainly this is where we have to start when it comes to forming our thoughts and opinions around what we see happening in the world.
So the Bible does give principles that can be used to justify, of course, enforcing law and order, not just here in our country, though, even beyond our borders in limited cases. And we'll talk about that in a second. Clearly, scripture supports authority, justice, and sometimes intervention, but it always places strong moral limits on how power is used.
So Romans 13, one through four tells us that there is no authority except from God, that all the authorities that exist in place on this earth are under God's rule, meaning he has either put them in place or he has allowed them to be there. And then it also tells us that those that work for governments are our servants for our good, or if we're not being obedient to the governmental law,
they're an avenger who carries out God's wrath on those who do wrong. So Romans 13, one through four clearly establishes government has legitimate authority and that authority exists to restrain wrongdoing and that the use of force is sometimes morally permitted. That's clear in those verses. And that principle is not limited to domestic policing.
In the Old Testament, God regularly uses nations to restrain or judge other nations. International action is assumed as morally meaningful and not inherently evil. And so, like, some examples of that are Assyria is used by God to discipline Israel in Isaiah chapter 10. Babylon is used as an instrument of judgment in Jeremiah 25.
is authorized to restore order and to rebuild Jerusalem, and this is in Ezra 1. So, these same nations though, that God uses to judge others, are also judged for their brutality and their pride, at times in executing what God is asking them to do. So, the Bible's logic is, ⁓ God may use some governments internationally, but they're still morally accountable for how they act.
So cross-border enforcement or intervention is not inherently unbiblical.
But justice also includes protecting communities from harm. So Proverbs 24, 11, rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. Like if you were to take that and apply that at national level, this could be used ethically to justify stopping human trafficking, preventing organized crime.
disrupting violent networks. So if a government is acting internally or abroad to stop trafficking, to disrupt cartel operations, to enforce lawful extradition, there is a biblical category for that being morally legitimate in principle. It's a key word, in principle. But this is where scripture is going to get uncomfortable for all governments. God condemns oppressive
enforcement. Ezekiel 34 for with force and harshness you have ruled them. Isaiah 10 1 & 2, woe to those who make unjust laws to rob the poor of their rights. enforcement that is cruel, that punishes the vulnerable or ignores proportional justice is explicitly condemned even if it's done quote unquote illegally.
quote unquote, even if it's done, quote unquote, legally.
In the Old Testament, the idea of the foreigner or the alien or the stranger is under God's protection is huge in the Old Testament. This is just a few sampling of the many verses. Exodus 22, 21, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him. A sojourner is someone who is in your country, but they are not from your country. Leviticus 19, 34, the stranger who sojourns with you.
shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself." Now, that does not mean no borders, no enforcement, but it does mean enforcement must not dehumanize. Refugees and economic migrants are not treated and are not to be treated as disposable. So any policy or action that systematically harms or exploits non-citizens
runs directly into the commands in the Bible about how God expects foreigners to be treated.
when nations act mainly for economic gain, for political dominance, or some type of ethnic preference, scripture is very critical. Habakkuk 2.12 says, woe to him who builds a city with blood.
and founds a town on justice. So, matters to God, not just legality. So, is there biblical justification for what we're seeing within the United States when it comes to acting outside of our borders or even some of the immigration enforcement actions that we see happening? In principle, yes, sometimes. If the action is truly aimed at restraining serious wrongdoing,
enforcing legitimate international law or protecting people from real harm, then biblical ethics can support this kind of governmental authority. now again, in principle, hear me out, in principle, but scripture does not justify blanket crackdowns, collective punishment, treating migrants as criminals by default, political theater disguised as justice.
And the Bible absolutely does not say, if it's your government, it must be right. Every nation in scripture is morally accountable to God, including the ones he uses.
Jesus himself, since we're talking about the Sermon on the Mount, does not abolish government authority. He affirms it in John 19. He also teaches though, that his followers live by a higher standard. Love of enemy, mercy over retaliation, care for the outcast. So as Christians, we can affirm lawful enforcement while also criticizing cruelty and advocating for compassion.
These are not contradictions biblically. They're held together. So biblically speaking, governments may act to restrain evil even beyond their borders. Law enforcement itself is not inherently immoral, but nationalism, cruelty, political scapegoating are condemned. They broke the law is not the Bible's final moral category. The Bible evaluates not just is it legal, but is it just?
Is it merciful? Does this protect the vulnerable? I think it could be helpful for us to look at how the early Christians operated under Rome. I mean, they were living under an empire in Rome with strict borders, with heavy taxation, forced migrations at times, frequent displacements due to war and famine. Yet their writings show a clear pattern. Again, we've already talked about Romans 13, which is acceptance of governmental authority.
First Peter 2, 13 through 17 says, submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human institution. Early Christians were not anarchists, but they treated foreigners, the alien, the sojourner, as family. This is where it gets radical. Hebrews 13, 2, do not neglect to show hospitality to the strangers.
The Didache, which is a first century kind of Christian manual, commands believers to share food, house travelers, care for the displaced. In other words, they didn't let national borders determine who deserved compassion. So we already see that there's a respect for authority, but there is radical hospitality, both at the same time. And this is critical. They did not expect the Roman government to act like a church. Okay? ⁓
They weren't trying to Christianize Roman law. They expected government to maintain order, but they took on extra responsibility themselves for the poor, the sick, the displaced, the mistreated, and the oppressed. So they weren't saying Rome had to be merciful like Christ. They were saying we must be merciful even when Rome is not. That is a crucial distinction for us today. Many of our, when we think about
the use of force as legitimate. Many of our Western ideas came from Augustine. Augustine was a fourth, fifth century famous theologian, ⁓ bishop of Hippo, I believe. ⁓ He was living during what was a collapsing Roman empire. And his thoughts ⁓ around city of man, city of God, around where we derive a lot of our Christian political ethics ⁓ helped shaped a lot of Western law. So in these
writings, he was dealing with armies, policing, rebellion, borders. ⁓ He has three core principles for ⁓ forced to be morally justified according to Augustine. The first one is legitimate authority. Like there should be no private vengeance. It must be lawful public authority for forced to be morally justified. The second one is there must be a just cause to
Some of those just causes, according to Augustine, are restraining wrongdoing, protecting the innocent, restoring justice, not revenge or domination. And then thirdly, it had to, there had to be a right intention. It had to be motivated by love of neighbor and love of peace, not hatred, not political gain, not political theater, not distraction. And this logic gets applied not just to war,
but to policing, to punishment and to border enforcement. So under Augustinian logic, enforcement could be morally justified if it's legally authorized, it aims at real protection from crime, trafficking, violence, and seeks long-term peace and stability, but it becomes unjust if it targets people mainly for deterrence optics. If it treats whole groups as threats, if it ignores
proportionality and mercy, if it uses suffering as a policy tool, even justified force becomes sinful when love is absent from intention. That's very uncomfortable language for modern politics. But biblically, when punishment is necessary, it must aim at correction and restoration. Peace, shalom, wholeness.
So enforcement that dehumanizes, that strips dignity, that creates generational harm would fail Christian moral standards, even if technically lawful. So what kind of framework does this give us today? So governments, of course, allowed to enforce the law, allowed to use even coercion, but they are not morally free to do whatever they want, whatever is politically useful or advantageous.
at the time. And as Christians, we may support lawful enforcement, but we can never surrender concern for the vulnerable. We must refuse things that dehumanize people, dehumanizing language, dehumanizing policies. And most crucially, the state is not the kingdom of God. And we as Christians are ambassadors of the kingdom of God.
living inside the state. So Christians should expect, expect imperfect justice from governments, but extraordinary mercy from themselves and from their groups.
And this is why it's so hard in our context because American politics right now tends to force people into false binary choices, like open borders or no mercy. There's law and order versus compassion, but those are false binaries, especially in scripture. Scripture insists on real justice, real borders, real compassion, and real moral accountability for power all at once. That makes everybody uncomfortable, which is usually a sign that we're pretty close to the truth.
So this circles back all the way to the Beatitude. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. Peacemakers don't deny the reality of conflict, but actively work to restore what has been broken. So in political terms, this means Christians should care about stable communities, rule of law, and reconciliation, mercy, and restoration, not just control.
foreigners, as we've talked about, are explicitly protected by God's law. And this is not a side issue in the Old Testament. Biblically, how a nation treats immigrants is a moral indicator, not merely an economic or security question.
Nations are judged repeatedly for how they treat their foreigners. God condemns nations over and over again for slave trafficking, brutal treatment of civilians, collective punishment. This shows God evaluates national behavior, not just your private morality.
And the reason the Bible comes down so hard on mistreatment because it's usually a symptom of something much deeper. Fear-based politics, economic exploitation, scapegoating during times of instability and just simple abuses of power. And it's why the prophets consistently say, when societies turn on their most vulnerable, collapse follows. Because injustice
rots social trust from the inside.
So let's tie this back to peacemaking. Peacemakers are not people who ignore disorder. They are people who reduce hostility. They step in to restore dignity and they interrupt cycles of fear and retaliation. The prophets, Jesus, early Christians we talked about all agree justice is not really justice without mercy. Jesus does not say blessed are the peacekeepers. He says blessed are the peacemakers.
People who don't confuse quiet with true shalom, true peace, true wholeness, and they don't confuse nationalism with the kingdom of God. Peacemakers don't ask, is this legal? They ask, is this just? Is this merciful? Does this restore what sin has broken? Peacemaking means refusing to let fear decide who deserves dignity.
It means telling the truth even when peace, quote unquote, would be easier. It means holding power accountable while extending mercy to the vulnerable. And it means remembering this, you cannot live in shalom by yourself. So the question is no longer, am I at peace? The question Jesus leaves us with is, are we becoming whole or are we just staying comfortable and not rocking the boat?
Blessed are the peacemakers because when they do this work, the world catches a glimpse of the Father. If you found this helpful, please share with a friend. Follow the show. Head out to the website, questionsgodasked.com. You can shoot me a note there in the contact form or check out my first book also there. ⁓ You can also get chapter one for free if you're interested there. So, until next week, my friends, grace and peace.