Recently, while on youtube, I came across this fascinating video about enclaves.
An enclave is an area in a country that is governed by another country, an island within a nation’s borders. Although the video relates to Pakistani enclaves within India and vice versa, they pop up all over the place.
One of the weirdest enclaves is a railway line which belongs to Belgium but passes through Germany. A ribbon of land a few metres wide in Germany is Belgian territory. Either side of the railway is Germany.
An example closer to home is Jervis Bay on the NSW South Coast. Parts of that area are governed by NSW, but other parts are governed by the Jervis Bay Administrative Authority which, I think, is now an agency of the ACT Government.
Many enclaves are the results of historic anomalies. Sometimes a population of migrants may end up in a region of another country and become so dominant that they demand to be governed by their homeland. Sometimes extended wars result in population movements and the subsequent settlement terms require parts of the country to be ruled by their former enemy.
This all got me thinking about another enclave- God’s Kingdom.
The Kingdom of God exists wherever a person decides to follow Jesus. From that time on, they are subject to the laws of God’s kingdom rather than the culture of the people around. We are still obviously bound to obey our civil rulers, but only in as far as those laws do not contradict God’s rules. This was established early on in the church when Peter and John were ordered not to talk about Jesus, but they responded, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than Him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)
In most Western countries, there generally is not a huge area of disagreement between christians and government at the moment, because of our strong christian heritage.
One area that is changing is the whole attitude to sexuality and reproduction. In Australia, the Government legislated to allow same sex marriage. This was an area of great disagreement between churches and government. Christian ministers were given an exemption from discrimination law to allow them to marry only a man and a woman.
Most christians would say that it would be wrong for an unmarried couple to move in together or to engage in sexual intercourse before marriage. That is considered by many in the wider community to be an odd belief.
Most christians would believe that there is absolute truth, that morality and ethics are absolute, that we should live in obedience to God’s law. These ideas are all contrary to what many people believe.
So, increasingly christians are in a kind of enclave. The values of God’s Kingdom are very different to those of the world. Every day we need to decide whether we follow the ways of Jesus or the ways of the world.
New Life Narrabri 