Chapter 16: The Cyrus Temptation

There is a passage of Scripture that has done more work in the last decade of American religious politics than almost any other, and it is a passage the vast majority of the people quoting it have never read carefully. It is Isaiah 45. It is the passage in which God addresses Cyrus, king of Persia, and calls him his anointed. To Cyrus, whom I have taken by the right hand, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed (Isa 45:1). The Hebrew word translated "anointed" is mashiach. The Greek New Testament will later transliterate a related word as christos. Cyrus, in this passage, is called God's messiah, in the small-m sense of a divinely chosen instrument.

Over the last several years, a great many Conservative American Christian leaders have picked up this passage and used it to defend the enthusiastic religious support of a specific American politician whose personal life, business record, verbal habits, and stated values are wildly inconsistent with anything a plain reading of the New Testament would call Christian. The argument runs like this. God used a pagan king to accomplish his purposes. God can use any leader he wants, however imperfect, however unchurched, however coarse, to bring about what he wills. So do not judge our support for this leader by his character. Judge it by the fact that God is using him, as God once used Cyrus, to protect the church, to defend the faith, to bring back what has been lost.

I want to sit with that argument, because it is the most theologically dressed of all the arguments Conservative American Christianity has made in defense of its recent political entanglements, and because it is, on inspection, the weakest.

Who Cyrus Actually Was

The historical Cyrus was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the sixth century before Christ. He conquered Babylon in 539 BC. His most celebrated act, from the perspective of the Bible, was the decree recorded in Ezra 1 and 2 Chronicles 36, in which he permitted the Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple that Babylon had destroyed. He returned to them the temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had carried off. He funded the work out of the royal treasury. He did not convert to the worship of Israel's God. He remained a Zoroastrian by conviction, or at least a Persian polytheist by cultural default. But he freed the exiles, and he sent them home, and he restored their capacity to worship in their own land.

That is what Isaiah is celebrating. Cyrus is called anointed because he did a particular thing at a particular moment, and that thing was the freeing of a captive people and the rebuilding of a burned sanctuary. He did not enrich himself off the deal. He did not demand religious loyalty from the returning exiles. He did not brand the reconstruction project with his own name and image and demand tribute for himself. He signed a decree, funded a rebuilding, and let a people go.

Cyrus, in other words, was a Cyrus figure because he did the opposite of what an American political figure is doing when he is called a Cyrus figure. Cyrus released. Cyrus rebuilt. Cyrus returned what had been stolen. Cyrus did not make the released people vote for him. Cyrus did not shake them down for donations to his monuments. Cyrus did not deploy them as an army to persecute other captive peoples. That is not the picture. That is the exact opposite of the picture.

If a Christian wants to identify an American Cyrus, the biblical shape of that identification is a leader who releases prisoners, cancels unjust debts, funds the rebuilding of what previous regimes destroyed, and does all of this without demanding religious loyalty in return. That is a very specific job description. Almost nothing about the recent politicians for whom the label has been dragged out fits it.

The Cyrus Argument Cuts Both Ways

Grant, for the sake of argument, that God can and does use imperfect and even pagan leaders to accomplish his purposes. Every reader of the Bible has to grant this, because the Bible does it all the time. God uses Pharaoh in a sense. God uses Nebuchadnezzar. God uses Cyrus. God uses Caesar Augustus, in the small sense that a Roman census delivers Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem at the right moment (Luke 2:1). The Bible does not restrict divine agency to the pious.

But notice what the Bible does not do when it says God uses these figures. The Bible does not tell God's people to love them. The Bible does not tell God's people to defend their character, celebrate their vices, adopt their rhetoric, or organize a political movement around their persons. The Bible tells God's people to notice that God is at work, and then to hold themselves to a different standard than the man God happens to be using.

Pharaoh is used by God to make a display of divine power at the Red Sea. This does not mean the Israelites throw a party for Pharaoh. Nebuchadnezzar is used by God as a rod of discipline against a corrupt Judah. This does not mean Judah's remnant sings hymns to Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus is used by God to free the exiles. The exiles rejoice at their release. They do not build a temple to Cyrus, or a chapel with Cyrus's face on the stained glass, or an altar to Cyrus alongside the altar to the God of Israel. They walk out of Babylon carrying the vessels and go home.

The Cyrus argument, in its American Christian version, forgets this distinction. It slides from "God can use imperfect leaders" to "we are therefore free to venerate this particular imperfect leader," and the slide is not one the Bible authorizes. The prophets rebuked Israel more than once for admiring the empires that were used against it. The book of Habakkuk begins with the prophet's shocked complaint that God is using the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation (Hab 1:6), to discipline Judah, and it does not conclude with the prophet joining a Chaldean fan club. It concludes with the prophet learning to trust God through the shape of a hard providence, while making it very clear that the Chaldeans themselves will also be judged (Hab 2). God can use a nation without endorsing that nation. God can use a leader without endorsing that leader. The people of God do not have permission to endorse what God has not endorsed.

What Israel Wanted and What Israel Got

The deeper problem in Conservative American Christianity is not really Isaiah 45. It is 1 Samuel 8. It is the older, more painful pattern the Cyrus argument covers over.

In 1 Samuel 8, the elders of Israel come to the aging prophet Samuel and ask for a king. They give the reason plainly. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations (1 Sam 8:5). They want to be normal. They are tired of being a strange, non-monarchical people in a world of monarchies. They want the security of a strongman. They want a warrior on a throne. They want a figure who will make the neighbors nervous and the enemies afraid.

Samuel is grieved. He goes to God. And God tells him something quietly devastating. Obey their voice; only warn them solemnly, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them (1 Sam 8:9). They are not rejecting you, God says. They are rejecting me from being king over them (1 Sam 8:7).

Samuel warns them. He tells them what a king will do. He will take their sons and put them in his armies. He will take their daughters. He will take a tenth of their grain and a tenth of their flocks. He will take the best of their fields and their vineyards and their olive orchards. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day (1 Sam 8:18).

The people hear the warning and refuse to hear it. No, but there shall be a king over us, they say, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles (1 Sam 8:19-20). They want the king. They want to be like everyone else. They want a figure who will do the political and military work for them, so they do not have to do the harder work of being a peculiar people whose king is invisible and whose rule cannot be photographed.

This is the passage American Christians should have been reading over the last decade. Not Isaiah 45. First Samuel 8. Because the movement that keeps reaching for a Cyrus is really reaching for a king. It is really tired of being strange. It is really nervous about being a minority. It is really unwilling to be a peculiar people whose kingdom is not of this world. It wants a king who will fight its battles for it. It wants a strongman it can point to and say, at last, the neighbors are afraid of us again. And it does not want to hear what the prophet said would happen if it got what it wanted.

The Warning Samuel Gave Is Being Fulfilled

Read Samuel's warning about the king, and then read the recent history of Conservative American Christianity, and the overlap should be uncomfortable.

He will take your sons. The movement has offered its young people to the political project in a way it never offered them to the missionary field. The energy that once went into evangelism now goes into campaigns.

He will take your daughters. The movement has trained its daughters to defend the vices of a certain kind of powerful man in exchange for the seat at the table he promises them.

He will take a tenth of your grain. The movement's giving now flows in significant part to political action committees, lobbying operations, media empires, and legal foundations whose primary product is not the gospel.

He will take the best of your fields and give them to his servants. The movement's most gifted leaders, its most articulate voices, its most polished communicators, are increasingly hired by the political project rather than by the church, and their gifts are spent defending the king rather than proclaiming the kingdom.

You will cry out because of the king you have chosen. This is the part that has not fully arrived yet. But it will. It always does. The pattern in 1 Samuel is not that the people asked for a king and got one and lived happily ever after. The pattern is that they got the king and got the taxes and got the wars and got the corruption and got the exile, and by the time they cried out, God let them lie in the bed they had made, until they were ready to remember that the whole time, there had been a different king, whose reign did not require any of this, whose rule did not need to be advertised, and whose kingdom did not need to be defended by the sword.

The Third Temptation Reappears

I mentioned in the last chapter the third temptation of Christ in Matthew 4, in which the devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for one act of misdirected worship. I bring it back here because the Cyrus temptation, at bottom, is the same temptation with a different label.

The offer to Jesus was: take the political power, and you can accomplish everything you want to accomplish, without the cross, without the resistance, without the slow, unspectacular work of being crucified by an empire that will keep on being an empire long after you are gone. The offer to Conservative American Christianity has been essentially the same. Take the political alliance. Take the seat in the cabinet. Take the judges. Take the platform. And you can accomplish everything you want to accomplish, without the cross, without the resistance, without the slow, unspectacular work of being a minority religious community in a country that is no longer culturally aligned with your creed. Just do the one thing. Just bow, once, to the leader whose price is your public witness. Just say, in a hundred small ways, that you support him even when he does what your Book says leaders must not do.

Jesus refused the offer. He said, worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve (Matt 4:10). He knew that acquiring the kingdoms of the world by that route would leave him with the kingdoms and without the Father. He knew that the price of a shortcut to power is always the surrender of the identity that makes the power worth having. He walked into the desert instead. He walked to Galilee instead. He walked to the cross instead. And when the resurrection vindicated his refusal, it did not do so by finally giving him the political throne he had rejected. It did so by declaring him Lord of a kingdom that never needed the political throne in the first place.

Conservative American Christianity, in taking a different route, has acquired a certain amount of political influence in the short term. It has appointed judges. It has passed laws. It has changed policies. And I am not going to pretend those outcomes are meaningless. Some of them, viewed in isolation, may even align with things the Bible values. But the price of the alliance has been the corruption of the witness. The name of Jesus has been welded to a specific political brand. The word "Christian" now means, to a large and growing portion of the American public, something political rather than something spiritual. And the young are leaving the church in numbers that should terrify anyone who cares about the actual gospel, in part because they have watched the movement trade the reputation of Christ for a seat at a table Jesus refused to sit at.

The Actual Cyrus Test

If a Christian wants to know whether the leader his movement supports is really a Cyrus figure, the Bible does provide a test. It is a specific test. It is not "does he say he loves us." It is not "does he appoint people we like." It is not "does he go to prayer breakfasts." The test is simpler and harder. Does he release captives. Does he fund the rebuilding of what has been destroyed. Does he return what has been stolen. Does he demand no religious loyalty in exchange for what he does. Does he leave the people he serves freer than he found them.

If yes, the label may apply, though the Bible would still not authorize the church to venerate him or to build its identity around him. He would still be a pagan king used for a specific purpose, whom the church is called to notice and thank and then step back from.

If no, the label does not apply, and using it is not merely inaccurate. It is a lie told about the Bible to sanctify a decision the Bible does not sanction. It is taking the name of the Lord in vain in the deepest sense of that commandment, which is not about profanity but about attaching God's authority to actions God has not authorized.

The King Who Will Not Fail

The Bible does have a picture of a king it wants its people to trust. It is not Cyrus. It is not Saul. It is not David, whom the Bible loves and whose failures the Bible refuses to hide. It is not any historical figure the reader has ever heard of at the local political rally.

It is the shepherd of Ezekiel 34, who searches for the lost, brings back the strayed, binds up the injured, and strengthens the weak, and who judges between the fat sheep and the lean, and who says, I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep (Ezek 34:15). It is the king of Psalm 72, who delivers the needy when they call, and the poor and him who has no helper, who has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy, and from oppression and violence redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight (Ps 72:12-14). It is the servant of Isaiah 42, who does not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; who does not break a bruised reed, or quench a faintly burning wick (Isa 42:1-3).

That is the king the Book is pointing at. Every other candidate is a Cyrus at best and a Nebuchadnezzar at worst, and the Book has never once asked its readers to organize a political movement around any of them.

The great American Christian mistake of the last two generations has been to look at a Nebuchadnezzar and call him a Cyrus and offer him the worship a Christian owes only to Christ. The way out of the mistake is to read the Book again, to see what a real Cyrus does, to see what a real king does, to see what the man from Nazareth said about power, and to stop, quietly and firmly, calling anything by a name it has not earned.

Where do your ethics actually live?

If they live in the Book, they will not live in a throne room. They will live in a manger, and a boat, and a garden, and a cross, and an empty tomb. That is enough. It has been enough for two thousand years. It will be enough after every American Cyrus has been forgotten and the shepherd is still doing what the shepherd does.