[The art is a piece “The State vs Jesus Christ” by Nathan Moon who submitted this to us for use in an article]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In a vlog post titled, “Marxist or Man of God?,” the Orthodox Christian priest “Abbot Tryphon” tries to make the case that anyone who might exhort a police officer to leave their job working as one of Pharaoh’s plunderers is a “Marxist.” In his mind, if you don’t think we should be joining Pharaoh’s bootboys to rob the people, or at least “backing the blue” from the sidelines of the robbery, you’re not a man of God; godly men (supposedly) support Pharaoh’s extortion agents, and those who don’t are “Marxists.”

A false dichotomy

Under this false assumption where Marxists are supposedly anti-police and police are supposedly pro-God, “Tryphon” feeds us this false dichotomy where you’re either (1) a Marxist (who supposedly opposes police states), or (2) a man of God (who supposedly supports them) — where anyone who calls for police to repent and quit their “jobs” carrying out the plunderous decrees of politicians is (supposedly) an ungodly “Marxist,” and where the “Christian” position (supposedly) is to tell them to remain on the force as one of Caesar’s goons.

This dichotomy he sets up conveniently ignores another alternative of Christian anarchism, which is neither Marxist nor in support of statist police monopolies. (Though we shouldn’t even need to explain this, because there is no such thing as non-political Marxism, notwithstanding Marx’s claim that the State would somehow “wither away” after having been expanding to totalitarian proportions. Socialism is a political agenda, and thus every attempt socialize society requires police).

Even though police, military, and all the other (monopolized) services of the government are inherently socialistic being that they are funded through taxation and forced upon the people as “public goods,” Tryphon presents those who are opposed to these monopolies as being the socialists! (Though, again, he wrongly classes Marxists in with those who genuinely oppose police states). This is along the lines of all other conservatives who are so ignorant about their own state worshiping and socialist tendencies, that they think anyone who opposes them is a “democrat.” This is the typical ignorance of people who have never seen the Christian anarchist position and think our world is either “Democrats and Republicans,” when they are both socialists. 

He cries about the “demonization of police officers” among the small portion of the population who have anything bad to say about police and thinks that everyone who sees police as robbers working for Pharaoh is a “Marxist.”

Typhon’s message is basically this: Be a man of God, and “back the blue.” Wow. He is one of those false prophets from the Bible who, rather than call the wicked plunderers to repent, “has encouraged the wicked not to turn from their evil ways to save their lives” (Ezekiel 13:22).

The title would be close to right—Marxians are ungodly—if he didn’t go on to say that police are among the godly anti-Marxists, when indeed they should be camped among the socialists who uphold the decrees of the statist-collectivist society we live under. If you’re serving the socialist state (like police officers are), you’re not walking with God.

But not everyone who is opposed to the police state is a Marxist, and Marxists arguably are not even genuine in their alleged anti-statism, since their program is most certainly a political one. They are, at best, only opposed to the current government, not the State itself, which they wish to control. (Tryphon should know this as a former Trotskyite who agitated for socialism in the 1970s).

But this isn’t what Tryphon says. He says that anyone who exhorts others not to serve socialist systems like the government is not a man of God! What a perversion!

Avoiding evil “jobs”

Contra Tryphon, calling men to repentance is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing. Everywhere in the scriptures, we are called to avoid walking with the men who do violence, which most certainly (probably more than anyone else) includes those (e.g., police) working in the enforcement wing of the political order to maintain the corrupt status quo.

“Do not set foot on the path of the wicked or walk in the way of evildoers. Avoid it; do not travel on it. Turn from it and pass on by. For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; they are deprived of slumber until they make someone fall. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence” (Proverbs 4:14-17). 

We were not supposed to be tempted into joining police brotherhoods that rob people for a living, prey on them in traffic, carry men off to cages, and share the booty among their friends. 

“My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause, Let us swallow them up alive as the grave, and whole, as those that go down into the pit; We shall find all precious substance, we shall fill our houses with spoil; Cast in thy lot among us; let us all have one purse: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path; For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk secretly for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy of gain, who taketh away the life of the owners thereof” (Proverbs 1:10-19). 

What we should indeed be doing to get men to walk more like Christ is calling people to stop doing their “jobs” (what a good word for justifying evil) and persecuting men who have committed no real crime but to disobey some edict of the State. But, the priest tells us precisely the opposite, virtually instructing men to remain in sin and darkness and in service to evil.

“Now is not the time to walk away from law enforcement. Now is not the time to walk away from any career because others don’t like us, or mistreat us, or speak unkindly against us.” 

But if the “job” is evil, which it is, then now is certainly the time to walk away from it. But Tryphon tries to make some case for police standing firm in the faith, as if policing is serving the Lord, and tells them to stay put. He conflates the role of being a Christian with being a police officer and says that because he shouldn’t abandon his post as a priest (even though he presumably doesn’t beat up the public for a living), neither should police (who do beat up the public for a living). “Tryphon” says,

“I’m certainly not called by the Lord to walk from what He has called me to do as a monk and a priest…Nor do I believe that those who are in law enforcement should walk away, regardless of what behavior individuals who are living in darkness cast upon them.”

This is just a perversion through and through. Now it’s the people who criticize the enforcers of Caesar’s decrees who are “living in darkness,” not Caesar’s enforcers! This is amazing! 

Forget the innocent people that police lock in cages, right? Police are the ones who are mistreated and “persecuted” for Christ’s namesake. When Jesus said, “You will be hated by all nations because of my name” (Matthew 24:9), He wasn’t talking about police officers. But, Tryphon says, “regardless of what your job is or what you do for a living, there are going to be people who are going to mistreat you,” and he calls for the police to stand firm in their positions. This is a message from the devil. Whereas God calls for people to abandon their wicked paths and follow the Lord, Tryphon tells people that anything is legitimate so long as it’s called a “job” and you’re getting paid for it. If beating up other men feeds your family, then so be it.

Who’s persecuting who?

The scriptures more or less give us a narrative of agents of the State coming down against God’s people, such as Jesus Christ himself and the apostles and the prophets who were persecuted by them and killed for following the Lord. But this priest twists the narrative and makes agents of the State out to be among the persecuted! (The “persecution” of having to leave their jobs because of the “demonization of police officers” and all that). 

In a complete perversion of Biblical narratives and teachings, he twists Christ’s warning that those who serve Him should expect persecution into saying that this applies to the police who have been chased out of their jobs by those criticizing or demonizing them! How evil and patently absurd. It is precisely agents of the state who are the persecutors! But this priest makes “the persecuted” out to be the very police officers who do the persecuting! He adopts the victim mentality of police and pretends that they are the ones being persecuted. “Everyone is being mean to them for enforcing Caesar’s laws,” is more or less what he is saying.

He makes police out to be the supposedly persecuted followers of Christ! What a perversion of the truth! He even asks on the blog page, “Who do you work for?” We might begin to wonder the same thing about him. Who has paid you, Abbot Tryphon, to make the persecutors out to be the persecuted? Who has paid you to suggest that “persecution” is defined as getting pushed out of your job (where is this even happening?) rather than finding yourself in a cage being manned by an officer of the State?

Repentance of men in the Bible 

I’m sure he couldn’t disagree that the Bible calls us to repentance. This is a relentless part of the narrative through and through, from the books of the Prophets where no one would listen, to the pages of the New Testament where men are called to follow Jesus instead. 

Repentance means that one is a changed man, is “born again,” and doesn’t continue to walk in their same old paths, such as when they used to put on boots and badges for Pharaoh and prey on people. Anyone who truly repented and wanted to follow Christ could not continue on as a police officer, notwithstanding the thousands who lie to themselves daily. 

When Matthew, a tax collector, was told by Jesus to follow Him, he abandoned his post! 

“As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, ‘Follow Me.’ So he arose and followed Him” (Matthew 9:9). 

He walked away from his job once we had seen the light. He didn’t stay on as an agent of the State, as “Tryphon” is telling police to do.

Police officers cannot say that they were formerly persecutors and violent men unless they have quit their jobs — and job that requires that they use violence to enforce the edicts of the State. This is what “law enforcement” is all about, despite “protect and serve” slogans being used to make it seem as if they exist for “law and order.” Men in the Bible no longer did the “jobs” they used to do once they knew the Lord, which any active police officer still does — that is, “going from house to house, [dragging] off men and women and [putting] them in prison” (Acts 8:3). Police officers are still doing what Paul admits he used to do before he came to know Christ. “And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women” (Acts 22:4). They are the ones who carry people into jails or seize their homes when Caesar hasn’t made “his” money. This is not Christian. How could anyone ever claim that hauling men off to prisons for failing to satisfy Caesar is the Christian position?

What is Christian, if anything, is being on the receiving end of state violence, not the violent end where police stand. A real Christian would sooner be in a cage than be a police officer carrying people to a cage, and would prefer it, too. Has “Tryphon” forgotten the work the statists did on the apostles in the book of Acts? “And after striking them with many blows, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to guard them securely” (Acts 16:23). Who were the Christians here? The jailers? Or the men in the cages? The answer is obvious, unless you’re a priest trying to twist the understanding of our world. (Tryphon apparently thinks it could be both: a Christian guard for Caesar keeping a Christian victim of Caesar in a jail).

A real Christian is more likely to be on the receiving end of police tyranny rather than one of the thugs with the boots and badges on. As Paul described his situation, after repenting from his “job” and turning to Jesus Christ, a Christian might find themselves in “harder labor, in more imprisonments, in worse beatings, and frequent danger of death” (2 Corinthians 11:23). He goes on about his circumstances once being on the side of Christ:

“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. In my frequent journeys, I have been in danger from rivers and from bandits, in danger from my countrymen and from the Gentiles, in danger in the city and in the country, in danger on the sea and among false brothers, in labor and toil and often without sleep, in hunger and thirst and often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Corinthians 11:23-27). 

Police are the thugs willing to dish out beatings and imprisonments, as well as man the cages and extortion courthouses, for the ruling elites. This is not Christian. Christians are those who follow the ways of Christ, and Jesus did not strap on boots or a badge for the ruling elites and do their bidding for them; this is precisely what he was calling people to walk away from, and people like Matthew, Paul, and others, listened and followed. 

I hate to make such big claims, but frankly, it seems “Tryphon” doesn’t know Christ if he has come to make the Lord into a thin-blue-liner. Would Jesus Christ have been riding on the side of an Armored Personnel Carrier to kick in a door over suspicions of contraband which are often not even true?  In police state America, home invasions by SWAT teams alone (not to mention the tens of thousands by regular police) are close to 100,000 per year. And yet “Tryphon” tells police to keep the badge on and keep doing their job, despite the supposedly unfounded “demonization” of police (as if this is some Marxist irrationality rather than perfectly understandable given the violent and evil work of police forces in this country).

Marxists are also for the police state

“Tryphon” also seems to not discern what the Marxists are really up to, and that they’re only opposed to police insofar as they see them as upholding a “capitalist” system. Marxists are not anarchists calling for free markets and free people. Indeed, Marxists call for a total police state to enforce their goals of all-around socialization of society (something which he should know, given that it victimized many Orthodox Christians in Russia in the twentieth century). 

Marxists aren’t truly anti-government, as Tryphon suggests, but are only opposed to a given government insofar as they perceive it to be a “capitalist state.” They are not opposed to the “socialist state” or using police to enforce it. The economist Ludwig von Mises explains how Marxists have been able to skirt these accusations of being statists, even making people think they were anarchists opposed to the State in general, by using the euphemism “society” or “social ownership” in place of the State. Mises writes in his refutation of the socialists, 

“The modern doctrine of the state understands by the word ‘State’ an authoritative unit, an apparatus of compulsion characterized not by its aims but by its form. But Marxism has arbitrarily limited the meaning of the word State, so that it does not include the Socialist State. Only those states and forms of state organization are called the State which arouses the dislike of the socialist writers. For the future organization to which they aspire the term is rejected indignantly as dishonorable and degrading. It is called ‘Society.’ In this way the Marxian social democracy could at one and the same time contemplate the destruction of the existing State machine, fiercely combat all anarchistic movements, and pursue a policy which led directly to an all-powerful state” (Mises, Socialism, p. 129). 

Marxists are statists. Socialism requires a State. They don’t really want to overthrow the government, as “Tryphon” says; they want to impose their own violent system in its place, using police forces to accomplish it. Marxists believe in political absolutism. 

That Marxists have a violent, revolutionary, statist ideology does not mean that everyone who might criticize police officers is somehow a Marxist. “Tryphon” is very confused. It is true that such Marxian tactics as these are unchristian, as “Tryphon” rather correctly points out. But it is not true that anyone who opposes police states is a Marxist. If anything, it is the very police themselves who are, through enforcing “the law” given to them by their masters, upholding our present socialist system! If he truly understood the dichotomy, he would have classed police in with the Marxists as people who aren’t walking with the Lord. 

Indeed, when “Tryphon” comes out against those who rightly criticize police working to subvert God’s kingdom, and who refuse to uphold them as gods, he sounds just like the accusers of Jesus that led him to the cross by accusing him of being an anarchist. 

“We found this man subverting our nation, forbidding payment of taxes to Caesar, and proclaiming Himself to be Christ, a King” (Luke 23:2). 

He accuses those who criticize police officers as basically doing exactly what Jesus was doing: “He stirreth up the people” (Luke 23:5). 

Tryphon sounds just like the people (that is, the police of the day) who took the apostles to their deaths by accusing them of being against the system. The apostles were accused of the same things Tryphon is accusing of those who point out the evils of enforcing the laws of the State. 

“They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, named Jesus!” (Acts 17:7).

Repentance is hateful?

Tryphon gives us another false dichotomy where we either choose Marxian hate or Christian love, where all those who criticize police as thugs are hateful Marxists and the loving Christian position is supposedly to embrace police and tell them they’re doing a great job. 

There is nothing hateful about calling men to repentance. Of course, Marxists are stuck in a hateful situation; they don’t have God on their side and so are seeking to substitute political salvation for divine providence. But how on earth does this apply to the Christian anarchist who sees that police are legalized criminals and calls for an alternate, voluntaristic society that is not based on state coercion? Tryphon simply conflates the polar opposite of Marxism (libertarian anarchism) with each other, not seeing any difference and assuming that everyone who’s anti-state is a Marxist, when Marxists aren’t even anti-state. 

Indeed, we should always try to approach the way of Christ when pointing out that people like police officers are walking in darkness: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:24). This is perfectly applicable to police, who robotically go through the motions, saying, “I’m just doing my job” — that is, “I do whatever I’m ordered to do without ever thinking about the morality of it all.” (And Tryphon leaves no room for those officers whose resignation might be a part of a moral crisis over doing the job, since for him it’s pressure from Marxists. But even it were public scrutiny, then good, this only means it’s getting harder to rob people without being criticized for it).

He’s right that we should love everyone, but illegitimately jumps from this basic understanding of Christian love to say that we should therefore morally approve of what everyone is doing and say, “Leave the police alone!” He takes the idea of Christian love to mean that we should positively embrace everyone’s actions. We can love our persecutors while at the same time calling them to repentance. There is no dichotomy here, where everyone who calls another to repent is “hateful.” To see that police are thugs with badges does not require us to have hate in our hearts. It is more so a sense of Christian justice within us. We don’t have to “give into despair and anger,” as he says, to point out these problems. 

His perversion is a great one because the people who are not walking with God are precisely men like “law enforcement officers” (and those who justify them), who he here presents as the victims of Marxian hate who are supposedly walking with the Lord, even as they shake down God’s children on the side of the road.

However, if we are judging by the scriptures rather than some priest, we would ask: Are you serving Pharaoh, or walking with the Lord? Are you a police officer, or a man of God? Tryphon’s Godly-Police-Supporters vs Anti-Police-Marxists is a false dichotomy. Police are not serving God, Marxists don’t oppose police, those who oppose police are not Marxists, and true Christians do not “back the blue.”