he Present Condition
he Present Condition
Insightful citizens cannot have failed to notice that the state is growing ever larger. We continually add new bureaucrats to the government payroll, make an expanding portion of the populace dependent on the state for its livelihood, subject ever more intricate areas of daily life to regulation and control, and spew forth incomprehensible laws and rules from innumerable government agencies in the endless search for human perfection. This does not come cheaply. To accomplish so ominous a task, the civil government consumes a massive portion of our economic resources. Couple this burgeoning appetite for wealth and power with the self-serving arrogance producing it, and the state looks less like a civil government and more like a religious cult.
"Cult" is a strong term to use, and it's accurate. The fact that the non-Christian civil government is in direct competition with God for the title of Divine Savior.
Our civil government is officially anti-Christian. While we tolerate Christianity as part of a smorgasbord of personal religious persuasions, we actively oppose any public application of it. We acknowledge only the Mind of Man as supreme in the sacred legislative rite.
Background
The State did not attempt to usurp God all at once. Bit by bit, over many decades, the citizenry rejected biblical truth and replaced it with a devotion to man as the perfecter of himself through political might.
Past generations would have rushed to the barricades if the modern welfare state had popped up suddenly and in full force. So it came subtly as a Trojan "benefactor," bearing the message that it was only here to "help." This inadequate helpmeet gradually co-opted responsibilities belonging exclusively to God's other ordained institutions. Charity, care for the aged and infirm, education and child care were coaxed away from the church and the family, and were taken over by the state. Christians failed to sound the alarm and protect the boundaries God set around His institutions, and so the lines became fuzzy. Parents and communities of saints naturally passed their tedious responsibilities over to a state only too eager to assume them.
As a result, we have forgotten the limits of civil government and the duties of the family and church. We now immediately turn to new government programs as the first and only solution to any and every problem. We view the church and family as the state's helpers, when they are not completely ignored.
Failure of Non-Biblical Solutions
In response to this folly, Christians are looking to Political Conservatism as the primary hope for defeat of the Leviathan. But because Conservatism is foundationally just as man-centered as Liberalism, this weapon is no more than the right barrel of the same old humanist shotgun.
The basic premise of Conservatism is that society "works better" with less civil government. But the standard of what works better is merely personal preference. We simply like freedom better than slavery. Yet, Conservatives invoke the name of God, but only for utilitiarian value: Judeo-Christian morality "works better" for realizing political freedom. Consistent with this, popular Conservatives like Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, et al., preach a kind of political gospel, calling all to a civic repentance which leads no farther than a civil salvation effective only in this world.
Thus, Conservatism still believes man can perfect himself. Instead of man being worshipped as philosopher-king, as in the Church of the Religious Left, Conservatism places faith in man as family member, small business owner, or private landholder. But faith in man is still the central tenet.
Christians must avoid this trap. We are hungry for righteous civil government, and we are thus easy prey for strong men who stand up and say true things. But if we allow the mere recitation of truth to lead us off to the worship of strange gods, we will be in a worse position than we are now.
Biblical Solutions
We must repent and remember from what a great height we have fallen. We must confess individual sins -- the giving of our responsibility to the state -- and the corporate faithlessness that gave to the state the role of savior.
We must pray for and seek reformation and revival; the recovering and teaching of true biblical doctrine. That means preaching the true gospel to sinners and discovering its application to every area of life. It means that churches and families must fulfil their obligations before God and joyfully bear their responsibilities. It means that the civil magistrate must keep to his role as minister of God's wrath. He must not take up burdens that are not his to bear.
All this must be done, first and last, for the glory of God. We must acknowledge in both word and deed that God, not man, is sovereign.
