The Egyptian Conundrum

More Sacrificial Victims on the Way

We watched President Obama the other day give "advice" to the Egyptian government via the megaphone of a globally broadcast statement at the White House. We could not help but cringe. Here was the US President hectoring and lecturing the president of another sovereign state.  There was no evidence of the subjunctive mood anywhere.  Not a hint of suggestion.  Only a long stream of injunctions.  The Egyptian president was to do this, or that; the protesters were to heed the following admonitions; the army was commanded to behave in this way--and it all had to be done now. 

A disinterested observer could not help but be embarrassed by such a display.  It was deeply offensive.  One shudders to imagine what Egyptian people thought. 

Nevertheless,  it is inevitable.  Once again we see the destructive outcome when sovereign nations mess with the sovereignty of other nations.  The Christian position on these things, as with all matters, takes its departure point from God.  The sovereign Lord of the heavens and the earth has ordained authorities upon the earth (for example: man over the creation; parents over children; masters over servants; employers over employees; husbands over wives; church over believers; state over citizens).  There is no one supra-authority commanding and directing all others.  Each of these authorities, when carrying out their God-given responsibilities and duties are sovereign over all other authorities.  So, for example, when parents are raising children, the church cannot assume the role of uber-parent.  If the church were to do this, it would be in rebellion against God Himself. 

Because of the sinfulness of man and the gradual reformational mode of the coming of God's Kingdom, this means that life in this world is always very messy.  There are plenty of parishioners, for example, who substantially fail to carry out the Scriptures directives and commands for parenting.  As the church and fellow-believers come along side to help they must not override or remove such parents, taking their children away from them, forcing them to adopt this or that practice. 

To do so might be "cleaner" and "neater".  It might get "immediate results".  But in winning this particular battle, we would have lost the war.  We would have set in train doctrines and practices that, if continued,  would result in the church arrogating to itself powers never ordained by God, on the one hand, and would have emasculated the institution of the family, on the other.  The more we were to proceed down that devastating track, the more God's chastening discipline would fall upon us.  We would all be made to lie in the collective bed we had made. Hard and painful it would be.  It would not end until we repented and returned in humility once again to the Lord of the heavens and the earth. 

The state is no exception.  But it is at this point in the front--the issue of the legitimate role and institution of the state--that the greatest conflict of our age between Belief and Unbelief is occurring.  Here is the spiritual battleground of our age. Statism is the false idolatrous religion of our culture.  This is so because the West has elevated the state into a virtual deity.  The empirical evidence for this is on every hand: it is clear that the intrusions, interferences, commands and controls of government in our lives and activities have increased drastically in the past two hundred years.  The cry, "We have no King but Caesar" has redounded down the centuries to where it has now morphed into, "We have no god but Caesar". 

In our age there is no part of the human anatomy to which the State has not laid a claim of command and control.  Hyperbolic?  Not really.  If a government arrogates to itself the "right" to tell you what and how you are to eat, there is no human activity over which it is not implicitly sovereign.  Whatever the problem, we have already ceded authority to the government to command and control its "solution".  Every part of your body makes up a carbon emitting machine--from the rear to the front end.  The government has already committed to controlling all carbon emissions of man, beast, and machine in principle.  It only lacks (at present) money and means.  The arrogation to power is already in.  And--this is the clincher--virtually all of our Unbelieving community consents in principle and is therefore persuadable in practice.  "We have to do what we have to do to 'save' Mankind."  The state is now deemed to be Saviour--similar to the way Augustus and subsequent emperors of the Roman Empire proclaimed themselves "Saviour", and, therefore, demigods. 

In Christian terms this means that our  modern secular governments--and all their attendant apparatuses of state--have become one gigantic idol destined to go the way of all idols--to destruction.  Divine chastisement can take many forms, but one most often used by our Lord is "more rope". Evil is self-destructive: the more it grows, the more it turns in upon itself to its own destruction.  If you sow to the wind, God makes sure you will reap the whirlwind.  If you sow to your own fleshly appetites, God will make sure you reap corruption from the flesh (Galatians 6:8).  You reap what you sow in God's world. When God is about to chastise a culture He often allows it to sow more.  This is what is facing the apostate West over the next two hundred years.

Every so often you see glimpses, warnings, of what is coming down the pike.  President Obama's hectoring of Egypt is an apt example.  The West has pretty much decided that national governments are small change and that if national government can legitimately be cast as Saviour and Uber-parent, global government must emerge as Uber-Saviour.  Naturally, the United States--the most powerful, successful, wonderful, rich (we can string out the attributes and attendant paean ad nauseum)--needs to take the lead, speaking up for all humanity and all nations, in the name of, well, Humanity. 

It's just that the United States is hopelessly compromised and hypocritically skewered.  For decades it has played the role of hegemon over Egypt, and treated it as its loyal vassal--entering into classic vassal treaties to reflect both its hegemony and Egypt's client status.  It has done so without any regard to how this represents an ungodly arrogation of power beyond that ordained and permitted by God. 

This has necessitated the practice of "realpolitik"--supporting and sustaining and nurturing a harsh authoritarian government in Egypt for over thirty years. At the same time, and in the same breath, the US has positioned itself since World War I as the world's avatar of the Universal Rights of Man.  Once the popular uprising began in Egypt the US found itself caught like the proverbial deer in the headlights.  Should it defend its compliant vassal regime in Egypt, or should it side with the insurrectionists?    When in doubt, lecture (with appropriate paternalistic gravitas, of course, as befits the biggest idol upon earth). 

And so it passes.  The outcome will almost inevitably be a response of universal disgust and hatred in the vassal state of Egypt--a response likely shared by most in the Middle East.  The US is damned if it does, and damned if it does not.  But--and this is the point--this cleft stick is the direct outcome of  the US government and nation arrogating  to itself a role and place and destiny neither sanctioned nor tolerated by the Almighty.

Just a glimpse--a warning flash--of where the idolization and worship of government will inevitably lead.  If governments (and their citizens) will not humble themselves before the King of all kings and Lord of all lords they will be humbled in their being crushed under the vaunting aspirations of the very government they have idolized. . 

If we sow to the state as Saviour, we will all reap its avaricious appetite for subjugation and sacrifice.