Prayer, the Church and the Christian

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In my time attending fairly typical evangelical churches, I have noticed a pattern in public prayer. Those who pray about national or international situations do so with a distinctly socialist / left wing approach. The solution is always centralist intervention and control. This is the standard approach to prayer that is acceptable in most evangelical churches. Woe-betide anyone who steps outside of this script. It will be deemed as the terrible sin of ‘being political’. This is typical of a culture where secularism is by default seen as neutral and anything that challenges it is seen as religious.

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A Childlike Faith

More frequently than I would wish, I come across young Christians who are strongly socialist in their leanings. They vote Labour or the Greens. They have some knowledge of the Christian doctrine of sin, but do not seem to apply it universally. For them, individuals can be sinners. For example, landlords can be greedy when they want to raise rents. Corporations and businesses can sin, as in when they ‘oppress’ their workers by not supporting the raising of the minimum wage or sick leave entitlements. Whole classes and races of people can be responsible for sin; the current example being white privilege. Yet the strange thing is, they never seem to apply this to their political heroes. Whenever you point out that their heroes are promoting legislation that is antithetical to a Christian worldview, they reflexively defend their heroes. For example, attempt to criticise the hate speech legislation as dangerous, or point out that the conversion therapy ban is over the top and liable to lead to parents being hamstrung and they will retort with some vacuous nonsense like, “As Christians, we are called to love,” or “No one is going to punish a Christian parent for speaking biblical truth to their child when they are sexually confused.” Their naivety is culpable stupidity. They are Lenin’s apocryphal useful idiots. Their 17-year discipleship of secular indoctrination has clearly worked.

Dear young socialist Christians. Your child-like faith is misdirected. Placing that child-like faith in anyone but Jesus Christ is idolatry. Repent and develop a healthy scepticism of those in rebellion against your true king.

And Ye Shall Be As Gods

Ever since the fall of Adam into sin, the temptation to assume godlike abilities has been a natural part of fallen human nature. We think we can determine right and wrong. We think by better controlling our environments we can determine the outcome we desire. Nowhere is this temptation seen so clearly
as when a man or woman assumes political authority.

Enter statists and those who hold socialistic doctrine. Rather than allowing God to be sovereign, these men and women full of arrogance and hubris believe they can rule in place of God. They deny God and idolise the wisdom of man (usually their own) to solve problems. They take from their fellow man with greedy and envious hearts. They render to Caesar what they should render to God. 

In our age, those who aspire to leadership often cite their desire to do good to their fellow man. This always frightens me. These leaders often have an overinflated opinion of themselves and their ability to ensure good for their fellow man. For one, they assume that they know what is good for others. And secondly, they assume they know the best possible way of achieving that good. Unfortunately, the results speak for themselves. They would do better to leave us alone.

Let’s look at one example of their grasping at divinity. Consider poverty. These would be gods see poverty in some sectors of society. Denying the King’s maxim that the poor will always be with us, they try to end poverty. So they forcibly remove blessings from some elements of society so they can distribute those blessings to another. To the rescue of poor single women raising children these benevolent deities ride. Surely this is good we think. We don’t want children to grow up in poverty. Then a few generations later, there is an explosion of children being born out of wedlock and women raising children alone on a measly benefit. Consequently, there is a rise in child poverty, mental health disorders soar, more fatherless young men are attracted to gangs and crime stalks our streets. Rather than admit that their foolish pretension to the throne of God has caused these problems they dig in. More tax, more interference, more carnage. 

Whatever these men and women who have attempted to usurp Christ do, fails miserably. They are not god, and when they attempt to ascend to his throne, they demonstrate to all with open eyes that they are no gods. They cannot dispense blessing and order God’s world in such a way that sinning against the fabric of his universe bears no consequences. They did not create it, they did not redeem it and they do not rule it.

What do we the people do? We should smash our false idol of state and turn back to Christ the king. His yoke is easy and his burden light. Government was never given to us by God to fix everything. It cannot bear that weight. Government was ordained by God to punish the wicked doer, not pontificate about climate change, redistribute the blessings God has given to the slothful, or ‘educate’ our children. When we expect the government to do things God has not designed it to do, we should expect it to do these things poorly, and we should expect it to grow more and more tyrannical and swallow up the other earthly authorities that God has ordained such as fathers, churches and employers.

Wilson on Socialism

Grinding poverty can certainly come about through natural disasters – famines and so on – but the thing we really need to be on guard against is organized and coercive poverty, by which I mean socialism. Socialism is the drive to control the free choices of other people, especially in the future, in order to prevent them from doing things that seem stupid to the self-appointed organizers, but which will lead to staggering wealth, or so the organizers say, three generations from now.

Douglas Wilson – Ploductivity