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DUAL CITIZENSHIP #1
WHICH OFFICER DO YOU SALUTE?
If you’ve ever read the classic naval story, The Caine Mutiny, or seen the award-winning film starring Humphrey Bogart, there’s a moment of pure conflict and conundrum where a man, no matter what he does, is in trouble. It happens during the climactic typhoon, of course, where the erratic, off-his-rocker Captain Queeg finally snaps. His instructions are incoherent; he’s paralyzed by fear; his orders are contradictory gibberish. He’s trying to hold the Caine on the fleet’s course setting of 180, “stern to wind,” and the results are that the ship is about to founder. Finally, the executive first officer, the dependable but plodding Steve Maryk – who has long suspected that Queeg is a paranoid schizophrenic – decides he has to take over the ship according to Article 184 of Navy Regulations. He relieves the captain of his command and orders the ship brought around to course heading 000.
And immediately two men on deck don’t know what THEY should do. Ensign Willie Keith is the OOD, the officer on deck; a kid named Stilwell is at the wheel of the teetering minesweeper. And both of them have two high-up naval officers telling them at the exact same moment to bring the ship around to 000 . . . and leave it steady at 180. Which, of course, are directly opposite from each other. Who do you obey? Whose orders do you heed? If you follow Maryk, the second-in-command, are you endorsing a mutiny – and putting yourself in line to be court-martialed along with him? On the other hand, if Article 184 is legit, and the takeover of the ship warranted because the captain IS sick, and you disobey the NEW exec . . . that’s mutiny too. It’s a royal mess, and of course, the ship is pitching and heaving in the howling storm as you decide whose word is law on the drenched decks of the Caine.
Well, it’s a rollicking good story, filled with moral lessons, but still fiction. Let’s stay here in World War II, and move to the European war theater and one of my favorite stories, told in the great Christian book, Flee the Captor. A young believer named John Weidner was the leader of the Dutch-Paris escape organization, a group that helped more than 1,000 Jews and Allied airmen escape from the clutches of the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France. As he did his rescue work, it was obviously necessary for him to use a false name. That was strictly illegal there in war-torn France. The government said no, but John did it. As escape tactics became more complex, he soon had friends in government offices who helped him arrange fake papers for escapees. Obviously that was against the law too; John did it. Snipping through border fences and letting Jews through was verboten by the S.S.; John pretty much made a living doing THAT.
One day, as he was at his clothing store in Annecy, a member of the Vichy collaborationist government walked in, a Jean Massendes. And he put a question to the escape leader. “We have just arrested a man named Kanegiter, because of his underground activities. Do you know him?”
And Weidner was in a pickle. He knew Kanegiter well; the two men had worked together to help Dutch refugees get across the barbed wire fences and into Switzerland. He and Kanegiter had a scheme to use bonus coupons from his clothing store as recognition signals. And now this Nazi sympathizer was there with a point-blank question: “Do you know Kanegiter?” To say yes probably would mean arrest, and maybe an execution for both men. To say no, to lie, was against God’s law; to tell the truth was to place the lives of many innocent people in jeopardy . . . which seemed to violate heaven’s principles too. Weidner felt torn in two directions. You talk about “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”!
Taking a breath, Weidner gave this reply: “It is very possible that I might know him. I have many buyers of cloth in my store. It is just possible he might be one of my customers whose name does not immediately come to mind.” That particular white lie worked; other times his cryptic responses didn’t, and he faced the rack and the bathtub torture of the secret police.
And all through the derring-do of this wonderful book, we find the same painful balancing of loyalties. Choosing the lesser of two evils, having to shade the truth in order to save a life. Giving a carefully guarded answer designed to throw the Gestapo assassins off track. All during this terrible world war, wanting to be loyal to God’s cause, Weidner tried to avoid outright lies, but life in the underground resistance movement involved not only disobedience to the established government of Hitler’s Third Reich, but conflicted obedience to God’s eternal Ten Commandments. There were times when it seemed impossible to obey the Eighth Commandment – which requires honesty – and the Sixth, which enjoins mankind to preserve and honor life in all its forms.
Well, friend, here on a day when many of us are keenly aware of our abiding love for this red-white-and-blue authority we call the United States of America, we really have just one key lesson to learn. When two orders conflict, you take the higher one. When the captain says one thing, and the first mate says something else – unless Article 184 overrides everything – then you obey the captain. And when God’s Law says one thing, and the rulebook issuing from the Senate and the House in Washington, D.C. says something else, then you follow God. That’s the essence of “dual citizenship.”
The quintessential Bible story illustrating this point is found in the book of Acts, chapter 5. We’ll be reading a number of verses all this week, detailing how God’s people ARE to obey the laws of the land, pay our taxes, respect those in authority, adhere to the speed limit, give support to our government, pray for our leaders, etc. All of those things are biblical. Christians should be the best citizens down here because we’re first and foremost citizens Up There, as the saying goes. But here in chapter 5, Peter and the other apostles have been given strict orders from the civil authorities: “Do not preach in the name of Jesus Christ.” The Sanhedrin voted, back in chapter 4, to expressly forbid the preaching of the Christian message. It was not to happen.
The only problem was: Jesus had plainly said: “Go. Preach. Baptize. Do it in My name. Go to the entire world with My message.” That was an order backed up by heaven; Peter felt obligated to follow it. So here was a case of a ship being directed toward course heading 180 and also 000 at the same moment. “Preach.” “Don’t preach.” The battle of conscience couldn’t get any more clear-cut than that. Just like in Daniel chapter 3 where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego face the same dilemma: “Bow down” vs. “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”
And here in Acts 5:20, Peter gives an answer that has helped Christians sort it out for 2000 years now.
“We must obey God rather than men!”
Just like that. Whenever you can, you obey both. On the Fourth of July, if you’re able, you carry both a flag and a Bible. You love both. You serve both. You obey and respect both. But if push comes to shove, and if the Word of God says one thing and your mayor says something else, then you follow the Word of God. If that means going to jail for your faith, you go. If you have to die for your beliefs, you die. All 11 of the original disciples did exactly that; they died martyrs’ deaths for their Lord.
There was a beautiful picture in a recent Newsweek that showed young American soldiers being baptized into Christianity in a tub of water during boot camp. And we’ll be wrestling all this week with how a soldier can lob grenades and love the Lord at the same time, how to balance the Bible’s hard saying about punishing evil AND also “turning the other cheek.” And in their hard, military world these young men and women have to sort it all out, weighing the conflicting claims on their allegiance.
Well, friend, you and I don’t live there. But in my life, and in your life, do there come moments when the job, or the family, or the social pressures seem to say one thing . . . and our heavenly passport calls for something else? It may be part of the culture where you live that people all around you give themselves bonuses on their expense reports. The company pay isn’t worth squat, and everybody does it. Simple as that. If you can get an upgrade, you do it. But God’s claim on you is to be transparent, to be honest in your dealings. To work ten hours for your ten hours of pay. Do you do it? Do you answer to the higher call, when years of obedience don’t seem to bring any tangible rewards? Do you carry on?
For 120 years, a man of God named Moses kept following the higher set of rules. He could have been a “prince of Egypt” down here, but he passed on that. He could have abandoned the “stiff-necked” people of Israel, but he hung in there. When it came to conflicting loyalties and dual citizenship, he “refused to be known as the son of Pharoah’s daughter,” it says in Hebrews 11. He preferred to be known as a child of God.
Anytime you can make a pick like that, friend, do it.
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