On Being a Citizen, Part 3 of 5

Role of Government

Before I begin with today’s post, I want to start by addressing just a couple quick points from the comments on yesterday’s post.

Marc and Robbie, you’re absolutely right. I missed out on bringing up education, and I apologize. Of all the people to have thought of the education system, I should have been right there (being in education now myself, albeit private education in another country). I will say right now that I do believe our teachers are severely underpaid and under-cared for. I would have no arguments or complaints with Congress if they were to raise taxes to pay our teachers and schools better. In chatting with my Canadian friends here I’ve learned that in at least some parts of Canada, teachers start at $40-50K per year, with full health insurance and good retirement. I think we could definitely afford to raise taxes to pay our teachers better, to give them better insurance since they deal with some pretty crazy stuff, and to get them a good retirement package. As to not addressing welfare, perhaps at the current time my understanding of welfare is more minute than I thought it ought to be (entirely plausible), but I thought I had covered welfare strategies in the Economics situation. Maybe I just didn’t make it clearer. In any case, God willing maybe I can revisit this topic again next year (or four I guess as the case may be), rehash the thoughts and come up with either different perspectives or further confirm my current ones after learning more about the whole shebang. But until then, we must move on to the Role of Government.

I should note why I feel it’s important to discuss the philosophy of the role of government prior to entering into a discussion on what a Christian society looks like and what I feel my response as a Christian needs to be in the society I live in. To be fair, I have to admit that I have a limited scope of knowledge on this topic and that my knowledge is based primarily on Western theory. I don’t know if the Eastern philosophy is different. (On a brief tangent if I may, if Europe, Australia, Russia and America are typically considered the West, and Arab and Asian countries are considered East, where does that leave South America, Latin America and Africa?) So I don’t know if Eastern philosophy has a different approach to the role and formation of government, especially since they are typically more community oriented than we are in the West. Even with this lacking, I still believe it’s important to discuss the philosophy of the role and formation of government because from there we can compare a worldly government to the Kingdom of God and the “philosophy” behind that.

As Americans we know the basic premise behind our government. And I think most of us at this point would agree that while faith may have had some of the reasons to do with the journey over from Europe and maybe even some reasons to the break from the British government, it wasn’t the primary reason. No, economics was the primary reason. Tired of being ruled by a king that established himself, we chose a different path. So the basic premise behind our government is that ours is a government by the people for the people. It is created by the people to serve the people. So the government is not, technically speaking, the one in charge. I like how Tom Clancy put it in his story, Clear and Present Danger. The main character, Jack Clark, is at the hospital bed of his closest friend Admiral James Greer. When learning that there is a scandal that goes all the way to the top, Jack tells Greer that he’s not sure if he is willing to take the investigation that far. Greer simply responds, “You took an oath to the boss, Jack. And I’m not talking about me, and I’m not talking about the President, but his boss. You took an oath to the people of the United States.” Ideally, the citizens are the boss of the President. Ideally. I can understand that sometimes the elected officials have to go against what the people want and do what they feel is best for our best interest. But I’m afraid I don’t see government officials acting in our own best interest for the greater good, but for themselves to retain their positions of power. I’m afraid I don’t see government officials viewing themselves as public servants once they get into that office.

But our government is also built upon another premise. This is the philosophy that as a civilization grows it recognizes a need for order and certain other needs. One of these needs involves protection from foreign aggressors. The civilization recognizes that threats to their safety exist from surrounding nations and they want protection. They also want to ensure that they will have protection from people within their civilization. By having a unified system in place the civilization could also make improvements upon their society such as standardized roads, plumbing, education, etc. So the people create a governing body to take care of these tasks for them. They place people in positions to make sure that they have an army to protect themselves from foreign aggressors; a police force to protect themselves from domestic aggressors; a judicial system to make sure that the rules agreed to by the society are followed; people to make sure that services such as roads are provided for, etc. As time goes on the civilization realizes its need for protection from food shortages and economic crisis as well and more power is given to the government yet again to handle the situation for them. And so the process goes where more and more authority is given to the governing body to handle the affairs of the people to make sure they are provided for and protected. In voting we have a powerful privilege, then, that we should be thankful for because it gives us the opportunity to be active participants in the government; to decide what we think needs to be done, who should do it and how it needs to be done.
While this does sound like the premise behind the American government, it doesn’t really answer the process of the governments prior to America. How did countries with kings and emperors view the establishment of government?

Many of the governments prior to America were theocratic monarchies. (Rome and the Greek states were republics for a time, but eventually fell back into theocratic monarchies under the Caesers.) So the governments were based on the idea that a god had chosen this or that king to be in place, or that they were descended from a god himself. Kings took their power because they claimed a heritage to a noble line, a line where a god had ordained that man to be king and so as his heir they too followed in that ordainment. A majority of these men would take their throne by force to begin with, then claiming that the god had blessed him with the victory. Because surely victory is related with blessing. We might want to think that the ‘Christian’ ruled countries were different from those such as the Persians, Assyrians, or whoever. But didn’t we act just like them? Didn’t the rulers act in the same way when they claimed the divine right and heritage?

The Israelite government was slightly different. But then again they also had a different history. In most theocratic governments that we are aware of, the kings took their power from the people through conquest and showing that they had the might to protect the people. The Israelites were a little backwards, however. Israel initially sat with God as her one King. The prophets, priests and judges would govern the land based on their connection to God and the revelations God would give them on what the people needed to do. God provided for their every need, military, judicial, economic, food, everything. Someone may argue, “But the Israelites went to war all the time! Whether to protect themselves or to establish the boundaries of the Promised Land they went to war!” But the Israelites had to be consistently reminded that it was not their own might that won the battle but God’s. Remember Gideon, who was told that he had too many soldiers until he was down to just 300 men take out the Midianites. David was punished for taking a census of the fighting men of Israel. Why? Because he was showing his trust in his own might, and he regretted doing it as soon as the answer was given to him. But the Israelites didn’t have Saul or David come in and conquer them and pronounce themselves kings. No, the Israelites themselves declared, “We desire a king!” (1 Sam. 8) God even tried to tell them what a king would do to them if they actually got a king (1 Sam. 8:10-18), but they still insisted they wanted a king. So God put kings in charge of them, but the kings were supposed to rule like David, who (on the whole) realized that while he was king, God was King over all. David recognized that his authority was from God and trusted in Him to provide. Like David, Hezekiah trusted that God would provide for Judah when Assyria threatened her walls, and Hezekiah didn’t even have to fight as a result of his trust in God. (Isaiah 36-37) Hezekiah recognized that his own power would not be what saved Israel, but God’s.
Reading Lee Camp’s Mere Discipleship I would have to agree that the ‘Christian’ governments, past and present, all suffer from what Camp calls the “Constantinian Cataract.” That is that once Constantine united the church with the political machine, the Church often tries to make changes in the world through the political machine instead of Christ. We claim that Church and State are separate. It is is important that the State not interfere with the theology of the church but hasn’t that already happened to a certain extent? Doesn’t the ‘church’ throw its support to one candidate or another, or try to influence change through the State? When people try to take away the rights of Christians in public areas, do we react in peace or throw a fit and call on the government to fix the problem? Shouldn’t we instead look to God to see if and how we were wrong in pushing our faith on others and look to be confessional for that? Don’t the political machines typically fish for and rely on the ‘church’ for support?

Ultimately what governments come down to is a trust issue. We don’t know what will happen so we want protection and provision and we look to ourselves and our governments. When we don’t like what we see we try to evoke change through governments and political parties. Instead of trusting God we hope in the governments we establish and the men who have just as little of a clue as to what will happen in the future as we do. Instead of seeing the need for changing and calling upon Christ to fill us with the Spirit to bring about the change in the world that it so desperately needs we call on political parties to fix the problems with the homosexuals, the rapists, the thieves, the poor, etc. When we fear foreign aggression we don’t trust in God’s sovereign power but instead look to ourselves for defense and offense. We rely upon our guns and military superiority to defend us and attack those that might hurt us. We worry about what Iran or a nuclear North Korea will do, or how terrorists will strike, all the while forgetting to trust in God. We quote Paul and say, “Neither death nor life, angels or demons, the present or the future, nor any power…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:38-39). Why don’t we act like it then? If there is nothing that the Enemy can do to harm us, why do we worry about a terrorist attack? Will it take away God’s love for me? No! Why do we worry about the economic crisis at hand? Will God stop loving me because my income is dropping? No! (By the way, I’m still trying to remember this one myself – see previous post “Are You Going to Trust the God Who Saves You?)
Which brings me to the point of governments: In using a worldly government, who do we put our trust in? When I cast my vote did I just put my trust in God or in the political machine? Am I trusting God to provide and take care of me or am I hoping that this candidate has a better chance than the other guy to solve the economic crisis so that I can have that good income again?

This isn’t to say that God doesn’t use the governments we establish for His purposes. God used the nations surrounding Israel to punish her when she faltered. Although I may cast my vote it is God who establishes and uses the leader. I like to look at the current system as C.S. Lewis and Tolkien imagined the beginning of the earth. Both men wrote that the world began by God singing it into being. But at some point someone didn’t like the way the song was going. In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, it was the Queen and the boy’s crazy uncle who did not like the song. The Queen hated it so much she threw the piece of lamppost at Aslan with a killing blow. Instead, it bounced off his head, and Aslan was able to incorporate the lamppost into the future of Narnia. Tolkien does a similar method with the Simarillion, where God sings the heavenly host into being. He then gives each a part of the orchestra to conduct of their own, and as they begin to make their own music they see how God has already been weaving their individual pieces together to form a masterpiece. But one of the hosts doesn’t like this, and tries to ruin it. He begins attempts to make dis-chord and noise that will break the dance, tune and beauty of the orchestra. Yet all the while God still manages to incorporate the dis-chord into the beauty of the symphony as well. As much as we end up messing up this world, God still manages to work it into his divine plan and for His glory.

I thought it was funny how quickly everyone was at commenting in the first post about how they didn’t believe America to be a Christian nation when I never actually said it was in that post. All I said was, “What might a Christian nation look like?” I believe your right. I don’t think America is a ‘Christian’ nation. Why do we believe it is? We’ve already reminded ourselves that it was primarily for economic reasons that the founding fathers began the work on it, so it wasn’t based in faith. We can’t say that it’s based on population percentage that believes, because only half of the country is Christian. What would a country look like that truly was Christian? I don’t know about you, but exploring this is the most exciting part of this whole series. Because it is not just about what a Christian society on earth would look like – it’s a sneak peek at the possibility of what heaven will be like! I look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow, as we enter into the Christian society…