Divine Politics
“And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” 1 Samuel 8:18 ESV
In that day – The day will come when those who have chosen leadership other than YHVH will cry out to Him. They will finally realize that any ruler except the Supreme God is fatal to human life. They will experience what it means to have politics in charge. And they will know what Mao Tse-Tung clearly understood: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Since the early 1980’s the world has drifted away from common law. Common law, sometimes called “natural law,” is a set of moral and ethical principles that the populace in general considers essential for the exercise of liberty and justice. The basic principles of common law concern promise keeping and safety. In other words, agreements should be kept (whether these are about trade or relationships) and no one should infringe on the property of another. These are fairly well summarized in the Golden Rule. And without the Golden Rule as a general principle of behavior in a society, things deteriorate—rapidly.
The world replaced common law (and the Golden Rule) with political law. Political law is legislation enacted for the purposes of making someone else do what you want. Political law depends on power, and this power is ultimately represented, as Mao observed, by the gun. Political law contains a threat—the threat that if you do not do what the politicians determine you should do, you will be harmed. Political law allowed Hitler and Stalin to operate legally while exterminating millions of people. Political law allows the slaughter of human beings prior to birth—without recompense because it is “legal.” Political law can take your property, your investments, your reputation and ultimately your life simply because it is legal to do so. Haman is a biblical example of the power of political law. Political law makes life unstable. Promises are only as good as the politicians say they are. Infringement can change on a whim. Political law is the most dangerous type of government anyone can have—and the whole world will soon have it.
That makes politicians the most dangerous people alive. Unless they personally espouse and publically maintain the precedence of common law (and its religious foundations), they are subject to the greatest legal addiction in the world—power! As a friend of mine who spent his career in the House said, “The most important job of the politician is to stay in power.”
God had a lot to say to the people who wanted so desperately to have a political leader. None of it was good.
We, apparently, didn’t bother to listen. So God won’t listen either.
Topical Index: law, politics, kings, in that day, legal, common law, 1 Samuel 8:18
Strong words from simple truth set things in proper perspective;like it or not that’s just the way it is.
We are now seeing the politization of the religious. Congregations are told how to vote. When politics can be reacted to as a moral equivalent the next thing we will want will be a spiritual leader; nay a whole slew of them, all neatly voted in. And we will get Saul. The wise man says there is nothing new under the sun. I don’t think that he was writing about cyclical realities; I think he was writing about the lessons we get to keep repeating because we didn’t pay attention to them last time.
Skip, you are a brave man. Bonhoeffer taught us to say things while we can, because that will be our biggest regret when we can’t. I think we are at the very edge of can’t, myself.
I think we need to talk about how to fasten our seat belts for this one.
Although I have more trouble keeping quiet than speaking out I noted there is a proverb that implies when the streets are full of wickedness the wise man hides in his room…We are seeing certainly a polarization and perhaps the forming of tribes. Many of these seem to be also along faith and ideological lines rather than solely ethnicity. So there yet may emerge regions, or communities strong in righteousness. My advice is to seek them or make them, it will go better for you in community.
I will be talking about these subjects at the next Virginia Beach conference.