Our engagement with the surrounding culture should certainly take strong cues from the early church, but our relationship to government is different now than it was in 1st Century Roman Palestine. We have a variety of avenues to influence our governments.

We can protest. We can demonstrate. We can hold rallies and we can speak out against injustices. We can also, as Christians work to bring Shalom to our broken and breached city streets, in a Jeremiah 29 kind of way. I suggest that the thrust of Brian’s post was not necessarily to plug action through either political or governmental avenues, but might leave room for such engagement.

There are opportunities for some to work in and through government and politics to realise some Kingdom goals. There is probably room for Josephs and Daniels in our current political arena as much as there is room for non-violent resistance outside of that system.

And you’re right, nothing we do in war is consistent with the redemptive character of the gospel. But how might we live out that ethic of love, or speak with a pacifist Christian voice that is a prophetic call both to the state, and to our own churches who have capitulated to Nationalist ideologies?