On Testing the Two-Kingdoms Taxonomy

As you know, I was in Budapest last week and wrote a post about how much I love Europe and prefer it to America. This post has generated some backlash; one commenter wrote:

I may be dead wrong on this (I hope so, anyway), but I can't remember Jason ever affirming his love for this nation, and acknowledging the qualities that made it great. I would have thought recognition of God's blessings through common grace would flow naturally from anyone so strongly committed to 2K theology.

What I find curious about this is the guilty-until-proven-innocent position that the commenter assumes. According to him, America is "great," and that unless and until I acknowledge this, I am guilty of refusing to recognize God's blessings. The option of thinking that America is only average and actually inferior to many other places is apparently absent.

He continues:

 Also, no one should get a pass when he consistently sounds like a socialist, then runs to the strong tower of 2K for shelter when he's called on it. What's good for the goose, is good for the gander. (Does that old proverb communicate today?)

I will set aside the fact that every single 2K proponent I know is either a Republican of a libertarian (and who never feel the need to ask for a "pass" about their publicly-voiced convictions), and will point out that there seems to be a fundamental failure here to grasp what the two-kingdoms idea is all about. According to 2K, the believer has liberty of conscience when it comes to matters that are not explicitly addressed in Scripture with a "Thus saith the Lord." This includes everything from politics to sports, art to economics.

Therefore under this rubric, one may believe that workers should own the means of production, that the strike zone is too small, that impressionist painting is awful, or that healthcare should be privately funded. The Bible does not address these things with sufficient clarity to demand a uniform position from all Christians, which means that we are free to do whatever study we see fit on such topics and come to whatever conclusions we desire.

Yet what I often find is that Reformed Christians espouse 2K with a wink and a nudge, while in reality using precisely these extra-canonical issues as tests of good citizenship in the heavenly kingdom. Thus if you think that tax dollars should fund programs for the poor or that the U.S. is wrong to be so militarily imperialistic, you simply forfeit your right to claim you understand the gospel (and please know that I am drawing upon years of experience here, and not just from a single blog post).

One last thing, if your reaction to this is to want to write in and debate the specific points I highlighted, you're proving that you still don't get it. This is not about which policies are best, but about whether the Reformed Church, and the 2K camp within it, are sufficiently large to have room for people with whom you vehemently disagree about earthly matters.

Well? Are they?