Jamin Bradley

Over a decade ago, I watched the movie “Machine Gun Preacher” starring Gerard Butler. At the time, I found the film very compelling. It was based on the true story of a man from Pennsylvania who traveled to Sudan and began rescuing children from the oppression of Joseph Kony, and placing them in an orphanage he had founded. To pull this off, he had to walk into many dangerous places with guns blazing as he shot down his enemies.

As a big-budget film, it’s pretty good. You can’t help but see the pain of the oppressed and feel the passion rise up in you to do something about it. Indeed, I’ve sat in many human trafficking seminars and watched several people raise their hands to ask, “Why don’t we just kick in their doors and rescue them already?” Machine Gun Preacher tries to convince you to do just that.

At the time, I thought it was an amazing movie. But over the next few years, I began reading books that focused intensely on Jesus’ teachings, particularly those found in the Sermon on the Mount. I found myself deeply convicted as I recognized that the movie I had endorsed to others was so deeply incompatible with Jesus. How had I not seen it before?

This led to new theological studies around themes of violence, domination, and justice. I had become a Jesus-centric pacifist, and I was now considering new ways forward in justice issues that didn’t revolve around killing and destroying, but around abundant life. Pacifistic aggression agitates the dynamics around us by partnering with the wisdom of God. The outcome of such efforts looks like Jesus and the fruit of the Spirit.

Along this journey, I learned about the domination cycle: a theological system in which the human ways of killing and destroying always lead to the same outcome. It’s an age-old system, one that is sophisticatedly portrayed in John’s Revelation and Tolkien’s Catholic work, The Lord of the Rings. When you use power to overthrow power, you partner with the enemy to install the enemy afresh. The foundation is the same, and the new system is primed for Baby Babylon to mature into an adult all over again.

This is the kind of system that Jesus taught us to undo. How? Through the means of self-sacrifice. The enemy can’t steal something from you that you give freely. Babylon can’t grow where you’re not planting its seeds. We must find the Jesus-way forward that truly changes things.

This brings us to today, with the sudden capture of Nicolás Maduro. His crimes are great, and justice is sorely needed. But the foundation of his removal is Babylonian. The government has boasted of the great power of our military to achieve this. They violated the norms of international law and, by doing so, have effectively changed the game of what a country (and Trump) can get away with. After this successful capture, Trump announced that the United States would now take charge of Venezuela’s future, though time will tell as to how this works.

Because there are significant justice issues associated with this matter, Americans are deeply divided over Venezuela’s liberation. On the one hand, we all share the joy of those who were once under Maduro’s control and are now free. But this never seemed to be about morality to the American government before. The administration often seemed clear that oil was a big part of this.

To get this oil, America had to test the waters—literally. We bombed what were stated to be Venezuelan drug boats, raising eyebrows across the world. By bringing drugs into the picture, Americans might now consider Venezuelans to be an enemy that we need protection from. And so we went in with force, and in an odd turn of events, we somehow became the heroes of Latinos overseas, while many Latinos at home have suffered greatly over the last year.

From what I can tell, this movement is founded upon lies, deception, manipulation, and, primarily, greed. No justice movement is completed with one action, and we have no idea yet how Babylon will mature through the seeds we’ve planted. Babylon always has side effects. Power, pride, and greed corrupt, and we will feel it in the ripples.

America is defined in the Bible as a Babylon, so we must recognize that she can only ever reproduce herself. We cannot expect the state to heed the ways of Jesus, as nice as that would be. That job will always belong to the Christians. And it is for that reason that I write posts like this, for how we Americans behave in the coming days will shape us as a nation. We must work to ensure full justice for Venezuela and repent of our varied sins in the midst of this.

I am a theologian, not a politician, so if you find this post lacking on the political side of things, take it for what it’s worth on the theological. The Bible has a lot to say, not specifically about America or Venezuela, but about the pattern of this moment. May we celebrate with our liberated friends, as no one wants Maduro and his oppression there, regardless of how they view this issue. But may we also recognize the wider theological and political picture at play here, so that we may be awake and sow good fruit.