The Case for Christian Nationalism
8. The Right to Revolution | VI. Romans 13 (Part 2)
Previously:
Paul’s silence with regard to revolution is easily explained by the fact that commanding it at the time would have been absurd.1
The remainder of the section expands upon his eisegetical base and is not worth addressing, save for this attempt to inject intent into the inspired word of God. One must ask Wolfe if he really believes that God intended for most of the New Testament to contain instructions for disciples to be peacemakers, to the point of accepting violent attacks in peace (1 Peter 2:20-25), but that He intentionally did not inspire a description of justified revolution, in order that it could be inferred by a political theorist, two millennia later.
As mentioned above, it is unlikely that Wolfe has spent time at a forward operating base in a combat zone, and therefore probably does not have first-hand experience with day-to-day life in a war-torn country. I hope that he reads this book and, in particular, the story I am about to tell; perhaps it will cause him to rethink bringing such horrible things to those whom he loves most.
Deh Rahwood, Afghanistan, is a sixty minute helicopter ride north of Kandahar. I was stationed at the forward operating base there for the last month and a half of my time in country. The town is situated on the eastern side of the Helmand River, Afghanistan’s largest, and our FOB was on the opposite side, looking down upon the town. We were stationed there with a Special Forces team and, since there were no hospitals in Deh Rahwood, their officer medic acted as the town’s primary doctor.
Being that I was the radio operator, my schedule was different than the majority of the men in my platoon. I often walked around the base, doing my personal chores at odd hours while others were pulling guard, doing patrols, or sleeping, so I regularly wound up being pulled in as an assistant when locals came to us with medical needs. Mostly I assisted with minor injuries; one instance that stands out is when I held a child’s head while an infected tooth was pulled with a locking wrench, because we lacked proper dental tools. There was also a regular cadence of more serious injuries.
The locals fought and killed each other far more than they attempted to kill us. One time, while walking to the chow hall, I was called to a huge commotion at our gate; an older man and his nephew had been shot with an AK-47. The older man’s wounds were severe but recoverable. The nephew, who appeared to be in his twenties, had been shot through the femur, severing it, and another round had gone through his lung, causing a sucking chest wound. I was told to stabilize the broken leg as we transferred him to a stretcher, but the break was so clean that there was nothing I could do; his thigh was like jello in my hands and he screamed in agony as he bled all over me. We got him into the medical building and I assisted as we put a tourniquet on his leg; I helped my platoon’s medic as he cut open the side of the chest down into the lung, stuck a finger in the hole to keep it open, and shoved a tube in to drain the fluid building up and suffocating the man. We placed both men on a medical helicopter to Kandahar; I do not know if the younger man lived. I was told that they were shot by someone who thought the uncle had stolen a watermelon. This was, by far, not the worst thing I saw in Deh Rahwood.
One night, as I was sitting by the radio in the room next to my quarters, with several other men, someone ran in and said, “Anyone with type O blood needs to go to the medical building right now. A local’s been shot.” I asked, “Positive or negative?” He did not know and I did not ask any more questions; I grabbed my weapon and briskly walked to the building. As I approached, there was an Afghani family of about six people, men and women, huddled together outside the door, hugging each other and sobbing loudly. I trepidatiously went inside.
On the table was a boy, no more than twelve, who had been shot point-blank in the face with a shotgun. His entire jaw was gone; where it was supposed to be attached was nothing but mangled flesh that looked like a pile of hamburger meat. Hanging out of his open throat, his tongue rested upon his neck, like a dog panting. He was fully conscious. I do not know if this really happened, but I cannot remember this moment without envisioning the boy keeping his head still and following me with his eyes as I walked in. I remained in the room for a brief time, long enough to be told that I did not have the right blood type and that the boy had merely been shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The room was already full of men working to save him, so I left and went back to the radio.
I was haunted by this moment for years, thinking about it every day. Twenty years later, I still cannot think about it without crying. I had walked away from God at this point in my life, but He had not walked away from me. In that moment, He gave me an understanding of general revelation that still drives me to this day - a thought that I could not get out of my mind, no matter how hard I tried. It had such a persistent effect on me, and I so often wrestled with its truth that, at one point, I decided to move into a Buddhist monastery to become a monk, so that I could escape its ramifications. Extreme Buddhist praxis offered no solution and, within weeks, I was disabused of the religion I had devotedly practiced for several years. I moved back home, built a career, met my wife, and started a family. Living as an atheist, and then as an agnostic, I was able to function as a fairly normal and balanced member of secular society, while retaining this understanding. But the only thing that gave me the actual peace I so desperately sought was the forgiveness of God, through the finished work of His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross.
In that moment in Deh Rahwood, standing in front of a mutilated child, I immediately saw - in an undeniable, supernatural way deep in my soul - that, given the right providential circumstances, I was perfectly capable of hurting that child in the same way. What I did not understand at the time was that I was shown the naked truth of sin and my own total depravity. I know the ultimate evil men are capable of, because I deeply understand that the same evil exists in me too.
I know what horrors we will allow ourselves to commit if we drive our nation into a civil war of guerrilla insurgency.
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 351.