Of Idols and Kings

Addressing envelopes, running errands, attending civil disobedience trainings, doing radio interviews, sitting, worshiping, and sleeping on railroad tracks -- these activities and more crowded my time with the Rocky Flats Truth Force. When I left Boulder, Colorado to go on to other things, I felt strangely empty. At first I attributed this to being burnt out from the hard work and let down because I would no longer be so directly a part of the excitement, love, and community I had felt with the Truth Force. But when the feeling persisted despite my continuing involvement in the anti-nuclear movement, I began to realize that somewhere along the way I had lost something very important. It took a lot of prayer and guidance from the Lord to discover what.

When I first became involved with the Truth Force some months before, I did so because of my conviction that places like Rocky Flats, where the triggers of nuclear weapons are manufactured, were a denial of the message of Christianity -- temples to the false god of nuclear security. My involvement in the movement then was marked by joy, faith, energy, and a certainty that this struggle also was in the Lord's service.

When I left Rocky Flats, I was just as convinced as ever that peace through nuclear terror was at odds with God's peace through Calvary's cross. I was still sure that it was God's will for Christians to witness to his kingdom of love and reconciliation by saying an emphatic no to the worldly kingdom of death and destruction typified by Rocky Flats. But I just didn't care anymore. Converting Rocky Flats not only seemed suddenly hopeless, but worse yet, unimportant, empty.

When I finally discovered what was wrong, it seemed so amazingly simple. A simple reversal of priorities. My initial commitment to the anti-nuclear cause was merely an expression of my first and primary commitment, to Christ and his gospel. But somewhere in the process of getting more and more involved in the movement, I had made it not a means of witnessing to God's redeeming love but an end in itself. Converting Rocky Flats, stopping nuclear proliferation, had become the most important thing in my life. And when it became that, it became what all idols are -- totally empty and devoid of meaning. I realized at last that what I do in the anti-nuclear movement, or any other area of my life, has meaning and significance only because of what God in Christ has already done for me.

All of this started me thinking about what those of us who call Christ Lord bring to the anti-nuclear movement which is unique. Although many Christians have been involved in the Rocky Flats Truth Force since its inception, it happened that at the time I was most involved, most of the people I was working with were not Christians. So I was very quiet about my faith and pretended that my reasons for involvement were the same as theirs and that God had nothing to do with it. Not only was I not seeing my work in the Truth Force as an expression of my faith, I wasn't even sharing that faith and hope with my brothers and sisters in the movement.

It was about this same time that I suddenly became obsessed with getting results, and very discouraged that nothing was happening. Rocky Flats was continuing business as usual; construction was starting up again at Seabrook. The thought that echoed hopelessly in my mind was, "We aren't getting anywhere!"

Once I got things back in perspective, once Christ was first in my life again, this need to see results went away. I realized that God is not calling his people to convert Rocky Flats, to bring about nuclear disarmament, any more than he calls us to "convert" people to Christianity. In both cases, he calls us merely to be witnesses, to witness his love, peace, and reconciliation with our lives. But the ultimate results are in his hands. He is still God; he still rules the universe.

And the joy and hope of this fact is perhaps what we as Christians bring to the anti-nuclear movement, or to any other struggle for peace and justice -- provided we keep our priorities straight and don't let our causes become gods. Far from leading to the view of "God's will will be done anyway, so we can sit back and do nothing" -- a view which is really more fatalistic than Christian -- this realization frees us to become the instruments of God's will, to give our lives in his cause, secure in the knowledge that the victory has already been won, evil has already been conquered by Christ once and for all. And thus, even as we struggle against evil and oppression, we already know the outcome -- God's love does not fail.

When this article appeared, Jacquie Higinbotham practiced law in Colorado.