“In our case, the story we’ve heard countless times concerns how the secular state, our supposed “savior,” came to exist. As the story usually goes, after the Reformation, Europe was torn apart with religious strife. The infamous “wars of religion” wracked Europe until finally, with a great sigh of relief, our fathers stumbled into the virtues of tolerance, and the secular state took over the public square. Our “deliverance” was that bloodthirsty religious convictions were finally banished into the realm of “personal belief”—a realm, of course, that had no effect on public behavior. In this story, not only are we saved by something other than the Christian gospel, but we are also saved from the Christian gospel. The story is compelling, widespread, constantly reiterated, and almost entirely false. Unfortunately, even many Christians have been taken in by aspects of it. This is how most Christians in the West have made their peace with the “escapist” option mentioned earlier. Religion is to have no effect on our views of what should and should not be allowed in the public square, but may be allowed to inform us what will get us salvation in the next life.”
from “Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth” by Douglas Wilson
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.
State Control and Economics
The principal effects of state economic control are familiar…they politicize life and provoke tension. They restrict the movement of people, ideas, commodities and financial resources. They curtail the volume and diversity of external contacts, and inhibit productive capital formation and obstruct both economic change and the effective deployment of human, financial and physical resources. They divorce economic activity from consumer demand…Their operation confers monopolistic or windfall profits and benefits on some people and inflicts losses on others…
P T Bauer, Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion quoted in The Poverty of Nations by Wayne Grudem and Barry Asmus
A Shepherd With a Stick!
Government and Incompetence
It was recently revealed that the government (or should I say we the taxpayer) forked out $50 million on a Maori Trades and Training Fund which since June 2020 has had the effect of providing 4 jobs. That works out at 12.5 million dollars per job. Admittedly, only $11.4m has been committed to approved projects and just $1.8m has been paid out. Nonetheless, this excels even the usual incompetence we see from the state.
National’s answer is to do a better job of spending the money. Well, I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Achieving some good that is not your responsibility while wasting less of someone else’s money is better than wasting that money and achieving next to nothing. But why should we settle for this?
When will we as a people stop worshipping this false idol of state? It cannot do what it promises to do. It cannot save us. It is given to us by God not so that it can create jobs, or educate our children. It is given to us by God to protect us from the evildoer and punish him. How many times do we have to see a government step outside its God-given role and make a complete cock-up of things before we throw down our idol and advocate for limited government? I can guarantee that an entrepreneur with $50 million could have provided a lot more than 4 jobs.
We should not give god-like powers to the State
In Defending Marriage, Anthony Esolen lays out 12 arguments defending marriage. The final argument is that we should not give god-like powers to the State. A great quote from this chapter follows.
‘What the State essentially does, when it requires us to be parties to the lie that a man can marry a man, is to deny the anterior reality of marriage itself. It says, “Marriage is what we say it shall be,” and that implies, “Families are what we say they are,” and that implies, “There are no zones of natural authority outside the supervision and regulation and management of the State.” We’ve given up on the foolish notion of the Divine Right of Kings, dreamed up by totalizing monarchs of the late Renaissance. Now we have the Divine Right of Bureaucratic States. The old kings used to make common cause with smaller zones of authority, guilds and towns, for example, in order to check the ambitions of the noblemen. The new kings have obliterated those smaller zones of authority in principle, and seek to do so in reality also. That is in large part what public schools are now for; the education of children against the authority and direction of their own parents.’
The State Is My Shepherd
The state is my shepherd; I shall not want.
She maketh me lie down on the couch: she leadeth me besides the still waters of self-indulgence and irresponsibility
She removeth my soul.
She stealeth my children and leadeth them in the paths of social justice for her name’s sake.
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy public healthcare system and cradle to grave welfare system they comfort me.
Thou prepareth a table of confiscated goodies before me in the presence of mine enemies who would have kept what belonged to them; my greed and avarice runneth over.
Surely pampering and apathy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of slavery until I die.
Tell the Coming Generations
It’s an odd thing that those who should be most concerned with education place so little emphasis on it. For the Christian parent, next to ensuring the salvation of their own soul, their next greatest priority is the spiritual welfare of their children. And yet the Western Christian, by and large, has not connected the dots.
Asaph in Psalm 78 does. He writes, “things….that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders that he has done.” In fact ‘telling’ the next generation is not just something for super-spiritual Christian parents. No, it is the command of God for us all. Asaph continues, “He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children.” It’s not a small thing to fail to pass on our faith to our children. It is disobedience against the Almighty.
What is the expected result of following God’s commands in this aspect of life? It is a passing on of the faith. Asaph writes “that the next generation might know them [the laws of God], the children yet unborn and arise and tell them to their children.” We see a passing on of the knowledge of God’s law from one generation to the next to the next. But the ultimate result of all this is “so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.” The command is designed to produce a people faithful to God.
It seems to me that Asaph’s general expectation is that as we teach the next generation the law of God, then that generation should set its hope in God and avoid the sin of willful rebellion against him.
What do we see today in God’s church in the West? We see successive generations of the church being smaller. Many leave the faith as they hit adulthood, and never come back. The church seems weak. Congregations are often ageing, and even those churches which are youthful are often filled with people who could be accused of being more in love with the social norms of the day than the law of God. A generalization to be sure but accurate.
Could it be that families are failing in their duty to teach their children? Could it be that Sunday school once a week, prayers before meals, the odd short devotional after dinner combined with the fun party atmosphere of youth group on Fridays cannot withstand the daily assault they are suffering from the secularists who run our education system? Might we be suffering the just rebuke of God for our idolatrous worship of the state and the handing over to Caesar what rightly belongs to God?