TELEVISION AND NEWSPAPERS ARE FILLED these days with issues about religious freedom and the relationship between church and state. On the world scene the questions run the gamut from Are Christians really free in China? to Can Christians avoid persecution in Islamic countries? to What is the role of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the Northern Ireland conflict? In the United States, the questions center on issues like prayer in public schools, protection of religious minorities, and the Christian Right in politics. It is all but impossible to watch a television newscast or read the morning paper (or browse through increasing numbers of books in Barnes and Noble on contemporary issues) without running into such church/state issues.
As Scot McKnight so aptly points out in this commentary on 1 Peter, it is this concentration on the relationship between church and state in modern life that makes the first-century wisdom of this letter so relevant. Peter, in writing this text, had this relationship on the front burner of his mind. It is almost as if he were writing both to first-century Christians wondering about how to survive as aliens and strangers in the Roman empire and to twentieth-century Christians trying to live holy lives in a secularized, unholy culture. True, important circumstances have put these two communities, separated by 1900 years, on opposite ends of the social and economic spectra: first-century Christians were politically, socially, and economically disadvantaged, while twentieth-century American Christians have the numbers to be politically, socially, and economically powerful. Still, the two groups have much in common in trying to live lives of holy endurance in the face of suffering.
It is important to note a crucial difference between the perspectives given in our books and newspaper articles, however, and the timeless truth given by Peter. In the United States, for example, the public media, in commenting on both the world and national scene, always approach these issues from the point of view of human rights and legality. No matter how sympathetic to the religious dimensions of the controversies these writers are, they have no choice but to talk about United Nations policies on human rights and religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation” between church and state, the stand that various politicians take on the key religio-political issues of the day, and the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court, the final legal arbiter of such issues.
As important as these perspectives are to Christians today, however, it is instructive to note that Peter does not approach these questions from the point of view of human rights and legality. Rather, he approaches them from the point of view of our relationship to God. He tells us that Christians survive in a hostile environment not by legal proceedings against persecutors but by endurance; not by imposing a lifestyle on others through law but by living holy lives that compel others to watch us; not by destroying unbelievers with sound bites and innuendo but by respecting them even as we witness to the eternal truths of the gospel.
For Peter, the burning questions of place, rights, and attitude have less to do with legal deeds to property than with being at home in a strange and temporary land; much less to do with “I’m okay, you’re okay” relativism than with the gritty realities of family responsibilities and tough love; almost nothing to do with maximizing material advantages in the present and everything to do with seeing this world through the future-oriented lenses of Christian hope and promise. It is this spiritual/theological perspective that makes 1 Peter the primary resource for Christians trying to sort out their place in our modern world. And it is this perspective that Scot McKnight so capably opens up in the following pages for all to see and apply.
Terry C. Muck