Walking With God Amidst Unbelievers

God and Governments

Douglas Wilson 

Introduction

Consistent Christians are not anarchists or scofflaws. We are gathered together today in this particular way precisely because we are not scofflaws. Every Christian who reads his Bible knows and understands that we are supposed to submit to the authorities that God has placed over us. What every Christian does not know, however, is that there are various understandings of how we are to do this. So yes, this is what we are to do. But how are we to do it? Are there different approaches to this assigned task? Are there disagreements we must work through first? And the answer is yes to both questions.

The Text

“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king” (1 Peter 2:13–17).

Summary of the Text

In this passage from 1 Peter, we are told that we do whatever it is we do for the Lord’s sake. We obey magistrates in the Lord’s name, and we are not to obey them in their own name (v. 13). Their authority is not original with them. Their authority is derivative.

Bullying Taken To A New Level

A One-Person Retirement Machine

A spotlight has been turned on a one man (err, person) retirement machine--Dianne Maxwell.  She serves as the country's Retirement Commissioner and effectively reports to herself.  She is a one man (err, person) Commissioner with a bunch of staff.

Newsroom has published an expose of Maxwell's management style.  Few could question her effectiveness.  She apparently believes that her primary responsibility is to push and shove as many of her staff into retirement as possible.  How does she do this?  Allegedly by bullying her staff into resigning.

A government agency run by one, all-powerful commissioner has experienced an eye-watering turnover of staff. A Newsroom investigation has uncovered allegations from more than a dozen former staff who say their boss, Diane Maxwell, has overseen a culture of bullying and management which impacted the health and wellbeing of multiple staff. [Newsroom]

It would appear that Maxwell has taken a plain and simple view of the place and function of the Retirement Commission.  She aims to see as many staff as possible retire out of its ranks, to be replaced by "fresh meat" which in turn will be entering the ranks of the retired shortly.

The Corruption of Power And Its Antidotes

Messy Republicanism Any Day

As we watch nations around the world descend into unimaginable horrors it gives reason to pause.  What a blessing and privilege it is to live in a country protected by the rule of law, on the one hand, and governance by limited state authorities, on the other.

A recent Weekly Guardian carried a front page story on the Congo.  The headlines read, "Congo Fears A New Civil War" and "Violence and political turmoil as people living in DRC are caught between rebel militias and lawless soldiers."  It profiles the case of a dying 22 year old rebel fighter:

Kapitu was wounded in a clash between his rebel group and a rival faction in December.  Even in the remote valleys and hills of the far east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the battle took place, few paid much attention.  Such scrappy, bloody confrontations have become an almost daily occurrence. . . . "I was just a foot soldier so I don't really know why we were fighting," he said.  "There are lots of reasons I think. . . . I don't think the wars here will ever stop.  They will probably only get worse."

This kind of lawlessness is widespread.  Couple that with tyrannical regimes which exercise cruel oppression over their own citizens--South Africa stripping farmers of their land, for example--and one is forced to concede that the world generally is a wicked place.  Law and order, exercised by a self-disciplined and constitutionally limited state, is a "luxury" not to be taken for granted.

Foundations and Fundamentals

Can Good Government Survive?

The Founding Fathers of the United States understood that whether the new Republic would survive was an open question.  There was neither certainty nor even likelihood that it would.  The Achilles Heel was whether the essential foundation of the Republic would itself survive.  If that foundation crumbled, the Republic would fail, as had the ancient republic of Rome.

Our Founding Fathers understood that . . . virtue is essential to freedom.  People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government.  "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people," said John Adams.  "It is wholly inadequate to the government of any others."  Without virtue, a society can be ruled only be fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well.  [Charles Colson & Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?  (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999),  p.373.]

 A man who cannot govern himself cannot participate constructively in a society which depends upon self-government for its continued existence.  Ultimately this is a religious issue.  The more ordinary people believe in God and fear Him, the better the institutions of government work.  Society looks first to God for all things: the state is merely one of the institutions, carefully defined and delimited, given by God for our good.

The more atheistic society becomes, the more it looks to the state for its life and sustenance.  Every issue, every quarrel, every inadequacy generates a siren call for the state and its agencies to step in to sort things out.

What is the answer?  There is no magic wand, no simple answer.  It all turns around whether the majority of the people begin once again to fear God, or as the Catechism puts it, begin to live so as "to glorify God and enjoy him forever".  Only then can a government committed to liberty of conscience and freedom survive.

More Government Overreach

Government Encroachment Upon Private Schools

A new front of spiritual warfare against Christians, the Church, and its institution may appear about to open up in New Zealand.  The Ministry of Education has proposed a change to the registration criteria for private schools, including parochial Christian schools.  

The following missive has been sent out by the Ministry:

The Government is considering adding a new registration criteria for private schools, requiring the provision of safe physical and emotional environment for students.  

This sounds innocent until one considers that "emotional environment" has in some jurisdictions connotations of protecting and encouraging transgenderism in schools.  If so, private Christian schools, including private parochial Church schools would likely be caught in this net.  Private Christian schools worthy of the name would, of course, teach that there are only two genders: male and female.  Private Christian schools will not recognize the 50 or so genders specified and documented by Facebook. In other words, they would not countenance for a moment the new fad sweeping through Western countries, known as "gender theory". 

As a canon lawyer at the Vatican has pointed out:

Letter From the UK (Where Appearance Matter Most)

Stale, Male MP's Are Sometimes the Best Choice

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail

Does anyone really think a government is better because of the way it looks?   Anyone who actually believes this surely deserves exactly what he or she gets.

The Blair and Cameron governments, among the worst in living memory (and in my view longer than that), were crammed with youthful idiots who looked reasonably good on TV, and great fusses were made of the numbers of women MPs (regardless of whether they were any good).

Yet here we go again.   We have just had a reshuffle openly based on the fatuous idea that the way the Government looks is what matters.  The slogans never change.

Theresa May recently reshuffled her cabinet - Justine Greening (left) resigned as education secretary rather than taking a new role at the Department for Work and Pensions. Boris Jonhson (right) remained as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs

Old-fashioned organisations are called ‘male, pale and stale’, even if they are headed by women and contain far more women and ethnic minority members than at any time in history.  Sometimes we are told that the Cabinet, or the fire brigade, or the police should ‘look like the people they serve’, or even that they should ‘look like Britain’.

The Great Debate: Burke Versus Paine, Part I

Victory Does Not Mean The Winner is Right

In our view every civics class in High School should be made familiar with the works of Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke.  Both were actively writing and debating during the time of the American and French Revolutions, in the late eighteenth century.  They took diametrically opposite sides in the debate.

The issues swirled around a just government and the constitution of freedom.  Paine and Burke are intellectual fathers of very modern arguments over the nature, role, and place of the State.  Neither's views were explicitly Christian--more Deist in many ways.  But Paine was the radical democrat; Burke was the conservative.  Their argument has continued down to our present day.

One of the things which immediately confronts the student of this debate is how history and events of the day "disproved" Paine's position.  Yet, ironically, it is Paine's views, positions, and arguments which have held sway over time and are more widely followed today.  Paine argued that the "Rights of Man" trumped all political arrangements, constitutions, laws, and governments.  The European establishments of his day were ruled by elites and vested interests.  Governments were oppressive and stripped freedoms and powers from ordinary citizens.

Paine was, thus, a fierce supporter of the American Revolution.  Ordinary people, exercising fundamental human rights, threw off the yoke of the English crown.  This narrative would be familiar to most Americans.  Paine wanted to see a similar revolution within England itself.  Burke, on the other hand, warned repeatedly that such struggles could (and likely would) lead to the substitution of one form of oppression by a tyranny far worse.

Miles to Go

Secular Winds . . . and Whirlwinds

New Zealand is a proudly secular country.  In this it is not alone: most Western countries either share the vanguard with us, or are fast followers in the drive to work out the secularist mantra: "Man is the master of all things, and nothing human is foreign to me". 

The seedlings of secularism began in the Enlightenment, but have since grown into mighty trees. There are no chainsaws in sight.  The forest is now in full bloom, and the fruits of secularism are ripening.  But some are starting to complain that the taste of the fruit is a bit off.

Once we were able to see the blue sky.  Once we could see the sparkling lights of the Milky Way.  Now there is just the close, fetid air of Fangorn.  The secularist state has become our father, our mother, our nursery, our sustainer and provider, our Great White Hope.  The state has become our grand insurance policy, and, as Neddie Seagoon once observed, insurance is the White Man's Burden.

What does the secularist regime actually look like, metaphors aside?

Stark Choices Up Ahead

Christ or Caesar

One of the meta-narratives swirling around in the current US presidential election--indeed, in almost all US federal elections--is cynicism towards the state.  Donald Trump's selection as the Republican Party's nominee was essentially a protest vote reflecting disgust and antipathy towards "Washington" and the fetid swamp of Congress, as Sarah Palin once put it.  

This electoral revolt can easily morph into a worldview where the svelte set come to think that right wing protest is performed by rustic rubes who are fundamentally ignorant, and don't know how to spell.  The corollary is that those who stand with and believe in government uber-competence are the intellectual, educated, smart set.

It is possible, however, that this cynicism towards the state will not fade away.  It is possible that it will grow.  Angelo Codevilla explains why this may well turn out to be the case:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About The Essence of Government)

The Most Important Branch of Government

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

The foundation of every form of free government—whether in the family, or in civil affairs, or in the government of the church—is self-government. If the people do not have self-control, then you may depend upon it that they will be controlled by outside forces.

It is easy to lament despotism when it pinches, when the taxes are due, when the regulations are onerous. When Pharaoh demands the bricks but supplies no straw, all the slaves lament their slavery. Whenever the bills come due, the whole world is libertarian.

So we need to place two teachings from Scripture side by side. The first is that liberty is the work of the Spirit of God. “Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17). And the second passage is this: “But the fruit of the Spirit is . . . self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). One of the central instruments the Holy Spirit uses to bring about true liberty is by freeing the slaves of immorality from their immorality. He strikes off their chains. But the hymn writer knows what necessarily results from that. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

A generation of slaves to sin cannot be free.

Great Men Are Usually Bad Men

The Godly Do Not Trust Themselves

The patterns of power are fascinating--and all too often entirely predictable.  As Lord Acton put it,  "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."  The intrinsic and distinctive human tendency to exercise power unto the suffering and destruction of other human beings is writ large everywhere.

Enlightened political theory or philosophy turns around this pivot: since power corrupts, those to whom it is granted must be checked and balanced, limited and restrained at every point.  Republican political theory requires a hydra of balancing and competing authorities, each with limitations, checks and balances.  Naturally such arrangements are rejected by many as inefficient.  Republican government is messy.  It limps along--by deliberate design.  The alternative--an efficient government--is to be feared, for if a government is efficient it can only be so by wielding vast, oppressive powers.

Christian political theory is marked by professing only One absolute power--God.  He has delegated all authority in heaven and upon earth to His anointed King--the man, Jesus Christ.  All other powers are derived, limited, and effective only within restricted spheres of competence.  All other powers are answerable to King Jesus.

Earthly tyrants always follow a different trajectory.  There is always a "One Ring" to "rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

Lawful Christian Resistance, Part III

Escalating Lawful Christian Resistance

Calvin's doctrine of Lawful Christian Resistance has had a marked influence upon the development of human rights and liberty in Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world.  In it he makes a sharp distinction between the duties and responsibilities of a private, non-official citizen with respect to the State, on the one hand, and the duties which lie upon officers of the State, on the other.  Both private citizens and State officials, however, right up to the highest authorities in the land, have a common duty and obligation to subject themselves to God, both to His law and His providences.

It is at this point that orthodox Christian views of the State sharply diverge from the presently prevailing secularist views.  The Christian knows that the "King"--the ruling State authorities--are appointed by God, and are first of all His officers and representatives.  Calvin points out that the Scriptures are replete with doctrine and teaching along these lines. The secularist view (at least in its democratic manifestation) is that our rulers are answerable solely to the people.  Any consideration about God is, to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, not good.

With the extension of democratic forms of government and doctrines of the rule of law (not men), Calvin's teaching needs extension and development.  Democratic and representative forms of government mean that the private citizen is also an implicit officer of state, since the State authorities hold their office, either directly or indirectly, through the suffrage of the people.

More Islamic By the Day

Jihadi Cameron Means Bad Business

Britain is now embarking down a retrograde road.  David Cameron and his coterie are fixated on combating "extremism" by which they mean Islamic propaganda, teaching, advocacy, and conspiracies to commit murder and break the law.  But political correctness demands that they must not identify one group, but they must be seen to be even-handed across all religions or ideological groups.  A ten-tonne hammer to crush a peanut.

Moreover, political correctness demands that all religions and ideological groups must be seen to be tolerant of all--that is, mutually respectful and accepting.  The only organisation in all of this which escapes the" mutually respectful and accepting" requirement is the government, which authorises itself to be aggressively intolerant and definitely not respectful.

In a move reminiscent of totalitarian societies, Cameron's government will require all religious officials to be entered into a register.  Andrew Gilligan, writing in The Telegraph, summarises the move this way:

Licensing Lusts

The Unbelieving Commonwealth

Christians believe in universal government.  The Christian commonwealth or Christendom is a society in which government is ubiquitous.  But--and this is the telling point--Christians also believe in very limited civil government.  The magistrate, the State, and the judicial powers play a vital role in a Christian commonwealth but it is very limited and focused upon the punishment of evil doers and the administration of just judgment in civil disputes.

But government functions ubiquitously throughout society in a Christian commonwealth.

Towards a Christian Political Philosophy

The Moral Purposes of Law and Government

Feb 11, 2015

Justin Taylor

Several years ago First Things published an essay entitled “Law and Moral Purpose” by Robert P. George, Princeton University’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.  I’ve taken a section of this essay and added questions, numbering, and italics, turning it into an “interview” of sorts.

What are the obligations and purposes of law and government?

(1) To protect

• public health
• safety
• morals

(2) to advance

the general welfare—including, preeminently, protecting people’s fundamental rights and basic liberties.

Wouldn’t this require the granting of vast and sweeping powers to public authority?

No; the general welfare—the common good—requires that government be limited.

Revenue Problems

It's a Strange, Strange World

Imagine for a minute a bizarre parallel universe in which institutions of government were so perverse they refused to do things on the grounds they did not have sufficient funds.  Free libraries for citizens?  Yeah, that would be wonderful, but--Nah, we can't afford it.  Next.  Clearly such behaviour would indicate derangement by all concerned.

Consequently, in our more sane world, local government has never let a lack of money stand in the way of new spending projects.  That's what all government exist for, right?  To spend more of other peoples' money.  It was completely predictable, therefore, that as the pressure group, Local Government New Zealand (representing local and municipal governments in New Zealand) recently faced up to the unexpected crisis of no-money-left, it would come up with an equally unexpected solution.  More money, please.  They have thought long and hard about how local governments can extract more money out of the citizens to pay for all the big-spending, wonderful ideas and plans local governments are so adept at creating. 

Local government has a revenue problem, not a spending problem--or so we are told.  Ratepayers (that is, property owners) have reached the limits of their ability to pay more. There are murmurings of rates revolts.  So now, local councils want new ways to tax and extract money citizens' money.

Douglas Wilson's Letter from Moscow

The Problem of Tiffany Sugartoes

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 25, 2014

Scripture refers to that kind of ruler who frames “mischief with a law” (Ps. 94:20). Those who do this kind of thing are men who sit on thrones of iniquity, and God refuses His fellowship with any such thrones.

There are many ways to frame mischief with a law. Everyone grants that one example would be when a despot pillages all the poor peasants in order to fund his Belshazzarian kegger tomorrow night. That would be one example. That would be the big E on the eye chart.

But are there other examples of thieving mischief? While some established thieves are debauched, others are a bit more clever. If Suleiman the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to beef up the personnel department of his seraglio, then that is both tacky and theft. But if Obama the Magnificent takes 20K from me in order to provide loan guarantees to Goldman Sachs, and they use it to provide a holiday bonus for a rising junior executive, who uses it on a weekend blowout in the Hamptons with a girl named Tiffany Sugartoes, then this is just as tacky, and just as much theft, but we can say that they cover their tracks better these days

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

On Pirate Ship Governance

Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

September 1, 2014

I have been arguing that Christians need to learn how to stand for liberty, but in order for this to happen they must first learn what it is. And when this happens, they will find themselves saying some outrageous things, like I am about to do.

Human rights — which everyone is automatically in favor of — are nonsensical and absurd unless we have a robust understanding of property rights. Property rights are human rights. In our age, we understand that human rights are a grand and glorious thing, but we are bewildered when it comes to the crucial matter of property. We are entirely in favor a birthday cakes, but are dubious and confused about the concept of cake batter.

First, some history. In 1772, the first statement by the colonial Committees of Correspondence was released. Samuel Adams is credited with being the primary force behind that statement, and it begins by itemizing the rights of the colonists as men. The first right was the right to life, the second was liberty, and the third was property. The echo we hear in the Declaration four years later is obvious. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is therefore grounded in our ability to own property.

Bad Taste

Failure Can Be the Better Outcome

Some things leave a long-lingering sour taste in the mouth.  Taste is variable, and not not everyone's senses react similarly.  As the  old saying has it, one man's meat is another man's poison.  So, we do not expect that our fastidious dislike of  New Zealand pouring out cash to support  America's Cup challenges and defences will be shared by everyone.

To be clear, we do not find it noisome when some large, successful corporates throw in millions upon millions of dollars to support campaigns or defences of this Rich Man's Sport.  A corporate will make commercial decisions about the cost-benefits of advertising and brand exposure.  Ultimately they will decide whether the benefits justify the costs.  Eventually corporates will face the scrutiny not only of their respective boards of directors, but also, ultimately, their shareholders.

Two items hit the news yesterday.  Firstly, the New Zealand America's Cup syndicate leader returned home to announce that time was running short and that unless substantial multi-million dollops of the green stuff were contributed in short order, Team New Zealand would be skewered.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Tishbite at the National Prayer Breakfast

Posted on Friday, October 18, 2013  

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

 

I would like to follow up on my two previous posts found here and here with a few additional comments.
Political engagement is messy, and so welcome to planet earth. When actual political controversies are going on, they are . . . well, controversies. It takes backbone to get in there and fight. When you do that, people don’t like it.

When the controversies are over, one side won and memorials are built in honor of the victors. Sometimes the victors deserve the memorials and sometimes they don’t, but they always get them.

Now downstream, the Lord taught us that those most prone to appeal to the tombs of the prophets are the very same people who would have murdered those very prophets if given the opportunity.