Most Christians, including Zomis, in Myanmar deliberately hold a futuristic eschatology. Thus, regarding the relationship between church and state, they interpret Roman 13 on face value. The Myanmar Christians have to re-read Roman 13:1-7 in order to transform the society and establish the kingdom of God in the land.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.[1]

The Myanmar Baptist Churches literally interprets this text and they said that we have to completely obey the state for God ordains- its government. However, this text seems to be difficult to accept in the context of Myanmar, especially that God institutes the government and therefore Christians are to obey their government. The problem here is as to what extent Christians should obey the state in a country where there is …….. In his book, The Many Faces of Jesus Christ, Volker Küester says that “in the contextual theologies the biblical stories and the Christian traditions (text) on the one hand and the local human experiences (context) on the other are related dialectically in the hermeneutical circle”.[2] Today, Romans 13:1-7 has become a disqualified text because it is no longer speaking to the present realities of Myanmar context. Thus, the Myanmar Baptists desperately need to re-read it in order to empower themselves to confront their social-political realities because as some have claimed “theology is by the community and for the community”.[3]

According to Pau Khan En, the Third World churches read the Bible according to the text and interpret it into their own context, which is called text-oriented interpretation, for many centuries. He went on to say “the methodology of interpreting the Bible is to be shifted from a ‘text-oriented’ to ‘context-oriented’ interpretation in order to make the Bible more meaningful”.[4] This means that we have to re-read the Bible and formulate it according to our own context to understand it as a meaningful text. Pau Khan En also says that Roman 13 “should not be interpreted without proper hermeneutical consideration even though the Chapter suggests the role of both the citizen and the authority as well”.[5] In this regard, the well-known Argentine specialist in Semitic languages and biblical archeology, J. Severino Croatto says with regards to Biblical hermeneutics:

The Bible is our “word of God”. It is the recollection and regathering of the meaning of God’s salvific deeds. It is not only a text to be read, it is also a word proclaimed, which reinterprets the text, for life. We have seen that, just as event becomes word, and word emerges in text, so text, in turn, calls for a new word, to reread it.[6]

From the above, it is clear that the Myanmar Christians, including Zomis, need to reread the Bible in general and Roman 13:1-7 in particular in order to confront the present socio-political reality and transform the society into the kingdom of God. To be contextual or to be meaningful for the Myanmar Christians, this text should not be interpreted without appropriate hermeneutical thoughtfulness. This text proposes that the role for both the authorities and the citizens as well. Pau Khan En says that for Myanmar, to interpret this text as a biblical basis for absolute obedience to the state is to sin against the whole procedure of hermeneutical principles. For instance, the thirteenth chapter of the book of Revelation depicts the state in a different form, which is tyrannical for humankind to be submitted to. Therefore, one has to reconsider and reread Romans 13:1-7 from the perspective of the present Myanmar context. For that reason, the Myanmar Churches need to differentiate when to obey and when to disobey authority.[7]

In order to be actively involved in transforming the society, the Myanmar Churches, including Zomi Churches, way of interpreting the Bible should be properly studied and correctly applied. They need to study how the Bible speaks to their own context, and take a fresh look at the data and read anew and reformulate the message so that it may have a relevant message for them particularly in this context of political instability.[8]

C.S.Khai
The University of Hamburg, Germany
9 November 2009

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