It’s not a good witness.
Like Kim Davis, I am a Bible Believing Christian. I share the same faith and convictions: The Bible is the inspired Word of God. Jesus is the only begotten of the Father, the Son of God and Savior of humanity. Jesus died on the cross, was raised again on the third day. Jesus is Lord!
Kim’s Lord is my Lord.
Nevertheless, I think she is behaving wrongly. Kim Davis disagrees with, and therefore chooses to defy the Supreme Court ruling on the issuance of marriage licenses for gay people. In her position as County Clerk (Rowan County, Kentucky), she had stopped issuing marriage licenses altogether for that reason.
She claims that she is acting under God’s authority. That was her response when she was asked by what authority was she presuming the right to deny issuing a marriage license to a gay couple intending to be married.
Several principles come into play here. First of all, there is the principle of separation of Church and State. Out of that comes the principle that distinguishes between a Secular Government and a Theocracy—a God Rules Government. The U.S.A. is not a theocracy. Indeed, Kim Davis does have personal religious freedom; churches have institutional religious freedoms as well. However, Kim Davis is also an elected official working for the County of Rowan in the State of Kentucky. She is not legally allowed to apply her own personal faith convictions in her government role as a County Clerk, representing the State of Kentucky. If she were allowed to do so in that role, what would happen if a Muslim believer were elected to that same position and therefore wanted to apply Islamic Sharia Law in the same capacity? We’d have a problem with that, wouldn’t we?
Alas such arguments obviously mean nothing to her. And I am not surprised. But the real argument I would have as a person who shares her faith in the Living Lord, Jesus Christ, is that she is fighting the wrong battle for the wrong reason. Rather than being a positive and loving witness to the grace and mercy of God as found in the Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, she is coming across as arrogantly self-righteously judgmental, ungracious, unmerciful, and condemning.
It is clear that she believes herself to be a kind of martyr for her faith, willing to go to jail for her beliefs. However, if she is willing to make such sacrifices, she should merely resign from her position and thus sacrificially lose her job as a statement of her faith and convictions. She is mixing up Secular State authority with Kingdom of God Theocratic authority.
The State is not asking her to deny her faith in God, nor is it asking her to renounce her commitment to Christ. However, the State is asking her to do something that she believes is condoning of immoral behavior—homosexual marriage. In that case, to be consistent with her convictions, she must resign working for the State altogether.
The United States of America is NOT equivalent to the Kingdom of Christ. It is a secular government, run by human beings, not Christ and his angels. We Christians are IN the world but not OF the world. The U.S. does not belong to Christian Evangelicals, nor does it belong to Muslims who may wish to apply Sharia Law. Thankfully we have religious freedoms and religious rights as to our faith practices and beliefs. But they are not guaranteed as long as we live in the world but are not of the world (My Kingdom is not of this world, said Jesus; see the Gospel According to John chapter 17).
It is interesting that the Apostle Paul had this to say about unbelievers choosing to live lives that are contrary to Biblical mandates: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexual immoral persons—not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world…. For what have I to do with judging those outside…. God will judge those outside.” See 1 Corinthians 5:9-13.
Paul makes a clear distinction between those inside and those outside the Fellowship—believers versus non-believers in Christ. Non-Believers will live and do according to their unbelief. That’s all there is to it. Christians must simply accept this. In such an environment Christians are to be the salt of the earth and light of the world to bear witness to a better way, the Way of Christ. See 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, where Paul summarizes his motives and says, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the Gospel.”
It seems to me that Kim Davis is not doing this “for the sake of the Gospel.” Rather she is engaging in a power struggle with the State and with unbelievers. She seems more concerned about her personal self-asserting rights than about her witness for the Gospel that she might save some—perhaps the very people with whom she’d come in contact, but for her refusal to respectfully serve in her role as County Clerk. The point is that one need not have to agree with non-Believers in order to serve them or to live side-by-side with them or to respect them. Respect is a two way street.
But Kim Davis is showing neither respect for the law (regarding a Supreme Court ruling), nor respect for persons who have no conviction or ownership of her faith. Ideally she could give witness to her faith and love for Christ by, let’s say, volunteering to care for and serve those who are dying of AIDS and because of this have been abandoned by their own family and friends. Then shall the love and grace of Christ penetrate what may once have been a hardened heart to the mercy of God. Now THAT is living by ones faith in the Grace of God, by the mercy of Christ, in the power of His Spirit!
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