Political Dualism - Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, July 03, 2010
In the midst of a teetering secular society, with personal liberty rapidly eroding, to put forward the idea of a mere Christendom (as I am doing) is to invite fears of repressive regimes, religious intolerance, and so on. This is because we still love the name of liberty, but no longer understand what it is or where it comes from.
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Secularism, as a civilization-shaping force, is on its last leg, and is hopping around. The issue is not how many guns we have, or what the GDP is, or any of those indicators. What matters is failure of nerve. Societies like ours go out with a whimper, not a bang, and the forty years before it flickers, blinks, and goes out will be forty years that virtually no one in that society understands. If they understood it, it wouldn't be happening to them.
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Those who do understand what is happening will be easily dismissed as manifest kooks.
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In a Darwinian society, the highest civic value has to be survival, and since we are talking about species, it has to be survival of the group. There is therefore no theoretical ground for our secularist rulers to value individual liberty. The true ground of individual liberty is the recognition that individuals will live forever, in a way that the current regime will not.
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In order for genuine liberty to be extended to non-Christians, it is essential that non-Christians not be allowed to define genuine liberty. The blind should not lead the blind, as someone once taught us, and it is astonishing that even some Christians have been maneuvered into thinking that blind leadership can have any hope of keeping us on the road and out of the ditch.
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The public square cannot be neutral. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar isn't. If Jesus is Lord, the liberties of those who don't believe in Him are far more secure than the liberties of everybody in the hands of a Caesar who answers to no one above him.
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The liberties of the individual are too precious to be left in the hands of a civic agnosticism. To not know why you are extending liberties to the citizenry is to not know why you would be doing anything bad if you took them all away.
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In Christian societies, overreach is a possibility. The Scriptures teach that men are sinners, and men will sin in Christian societies as well as in secular ones. But in secular societies, overreach is not a possibility, but rather a necessity, by definition. If there is no God above the state, then the state becomes god -- the point past which there is no appeal. If there is a God above the state, then hubris in high places will always be dealt with appropriately.
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Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. If the Spirit has been exiled, how can we still have what only He can give? How can we reject the Giver, and keep the gift? Those who puff themselves up and say that they can do this thing need to remember -- wisdom is always vindicated by her children.
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