My knowledge of the literature on Christian nonviolent resistance is far from comprehensive, but I’ve yet to find a reference to 1 Timothy 1:13 as a verse supporting the doctrine.
“Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.”
This is an incredible verse. Paul lumps his violence (Acts 7:58–8:3; Acts 9:1–2; Acts 22:4–5; Acts 26:9–11) in with blasphemy and persecution. He isn’t saying “I was a persecutor of the Church” and letting it go at that. He’s listing these three actions as sins of rebellion against God in their own right.
In the original Greek, the word we’re looking at is “hybristes.” That is the root of our word “hubris”; here it doesn’t just mean “big ego.” It referred to a person who actively uses power and position to shame, mistreat and bully others.
Paul admits that his religious zeal was actually fueled by a proud, overbearing desire to dominate and hurt others.
Yet, God showed him mercy.
God showed Cain mercy. He gave the killer of Abel a mark so that he would be protected against retribution. God could have just taken Cain’s life as punishment, but he allowed him to live and flourish.
And Paul’s sins deserved death, but God, as he does for all of us, showed him mercy on the Road to Damascus.
Paul was transformed from a man of violence to a man of peace.
We see in Acts that Paul turns from violence to nonviolent resistance, even to the point of taking a beating or a stoning without retaliation. (Acts 16:35–40; Acts 21:37–22:21; Acts 23:1–5; Acts 9:23–25; Acts 14:5–7, 19–20; Acts 17:5–15)
This is a sharp rebuke of today’s theobros, those Christian men who try to weaponize Christianity to support the use of violence. Paul is explicitly calling out those who would try to justify the use of violence in the name of Jesus.
I’ve come across MAGA Christians who love to compare Donald Trump to Samson, the manly warrior, in their view. Christian nationalists have an interesting fixation on Samson as some sort of role model. The man who did not faithfully fulfill his calling to begin delivering Israel from the Philistines was haunted by his own insecurities, driven more by personal grievances than by divine blessing, blurring the line between justice and revenge. A tragic figure whose greatest strength became his greatest liability, enabling his worst impulses.
Many commentators have suggested Samson is perhaps more of a terrorist, rather than displaying the wisdom of a judge acting in God’s spirit.
In the end, Samson kills himself and many Philistines in a temple in Gaza. This may be a partial fulfillment of his calling, but it does not bring lasting deliverance; generations later, David still has to confront and finally break Philistine power. If there is any benefit to God in his act of vengeance, it is that God’s name is vindicated in the destruction of Dagon’s Temple.
The biblical narrative doesn’t conceal any of Samson’s faults, consistent with scripture’s fealty to a witness to people’s full humanity. There is no gloss because the ultimate story is about God’s glory in the midst of man’s folly. Far from a hero, especially a warrior to exemplify, Samson is fatally flawed, doomed by his own hubris and lack of faithfulness. He’s hardly a role model and certainly not anybody we would want our national leaders to emulate.
This is the story of how I arrived here, in this moment, as “a voice in the choir.’
On July 16, I received an email from a childhood best friend who reminded me of something we did together when he was 8 and I was 6. It was something significant that I had forgotten.
The date is relevant because I had spent the previous three days in great anxiety about the state of the world.
I had grown up in a Nazarene Church, attended a Nazarene college, and was pretty well grounded in scripture (or so I thought). I traced my conversation to about 7th grade, when our pastor preached a sermon on the coming tribulation and the antichrist. That scared me and got me on my knees at the altar, with my friend’s mother joining me.
I hadn’t attended a Sunday service in more than 30 years. My late wife and I had left our church in San Diego after a political kerfluffle. It soured us on church.
I tried to be a good person on my own for a couple of decades. Then, in 2016, after a year of studying economics, human behavior, probability theory, and human history, I decided, at least in my own mind, that I was a materialist. The material universe is all that exists.
I didn’t share my new insight with my wife because I didn’t want to sway her away from her faith. I kept it to myself because her hearing about it second-hand was a risk.
My libertarian bent also meant I didn’t feel it was my place to try to persuade anyone to my way of thinking.
After my wife died, there was a series of events that I’ll keep private that started to erode my faith in materialism. I became a spiritual seeker. I was interested in a more spiritual life but not necessarily Christianity.
During all my time as a materialist, the Christian part that was still in me worried about Christianity. I saw Donald Trump, with so many Christians falling for his congame, doing grave damage to the Christian witness. An odd position for an unbeliever, but I couldn’t fathom Christians falling for him.
Then that email arrives, three days after an attempt on Trump’s life. My anxiety level was high. My friend asked me if I remembered when I asked him to explain Christianity. He did. And then I asked him to pray with me.
I wept.
I realized I was saved when I was six, and now God was calling me back.
I started that day rebuilding my faith brick by brick.
From the start, I felt this compulsion to start writing about Trump and Jesus. I resisted. I was chased out of a church because of politics.
It seemed so wrong to mix faith and politics. I firmly believe Jesus is apolitical. All four Gospels tell me so.
I spent months wrestling with God about this. I resisted the idea.
During that time, I grew as a Christian and came to understand obedience to God better than ever before, also I felt impressed upon my heart in a way I had never experienced before a real compassion for the poor, the oppressed, the foreigner, all of those on the outskirts of society, and in context of Old Testment justice and mercy concept of God.
I came to realize:
I’m a writer. That’s how God made me.
I’m a decent researcher as a lifelong journalist.
I am drawn naturally to news of current events.
I then understood that obeying God meant using his resources — in this case, me — to serve his kingdom on earth.
I needed to write for God and about issues I believe grieve Him.
Initially, I thought I needed to make a maximum impact, so I planned to write for magazines. That isn’t farfetched. I’ve done it before. But it’s also hard to get editors who have never worked with you to accept articles for publication on a timely basis. This is a problem for articles tied to current events.
The other problem I saw was that there are so many Christian writers in the world. I thought, “Does God need another Christian writer? Can I make a difference?”
This became a new struggle. What should I do? I started to think about Substack, which meant perhaps writing for only a handful of people.
My girlfriend suggested that I not worry about how many people I reach. I should just write.
So I set up a Substack and started tinkering with it. But what should I call it? After wrestling with that question for a couple of days, I decided to use just my name.
While doing the dishes one evening, I thought what a blessing it has been to find so many faithful Christians on social media who also reject Christian nationalism. It reinforced that I am not alone, and I’m not insane.
Then I heard in my head, “Be a voice in the chorus.”
That’s it: I’m just going to be another voice in the choir so that perhaps others will be encouraged to know they are not alone, that they are not insane.
That would be an encouragement to all who read this and also resist Christian nationalism from a faith-based, scripture-based perspective. Be a voice in the choir. Sing proudly the truth of God’s love, justice, and mercy for all of our fellow image bearers.
