For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King; He will save us...(Is. 33:22)
any things can distract us from the real issues. When an earthquake hits, or
a hurricane strikes, or uninsured Uncle John is saddled with a $58,000 hospital
bill, we find in ourselves a very natural reaction to want someone in authority
to "do something."
On the humanistic left, we hear an immediate and very vocal plea for that someone to be the federal government, the civil magistrate. "This place must be declared a disaster area, we must have emergency relief, and we must have universal coverage." And so the people listen, and they begin to turn to Washington as supplicants. But on the humanistic right, we hear a considerable amount of grumbling about the cost of it all -- boondoggles, cost overruns, bureaucratic inefficiency, etc. But, with the passage of time, such grumblers eventually abandon their sullen concern with number-crunching, and content themselves with trying to make the thing work.
In the last century, R.L. Dabney described the situation perfectly when he said there was a species of conservatism that was essentially worthless. He said, "American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader." [1]
Once the statist proposal is made, and the usurping innovation is in place, the principle of the radicals has been gained, and most importantly, granted by the opposition. Thereafter, the right wing must settle for the privilege of carping about how the left does not really know how to manage its own creation, this great Leviathan of theirs. But the right-wing has practical experience in the business world, and they can make it much more efficient -- if we vote for them.
Ambrose Bierce once defined conservatism this way: " Conservative , n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." [2] Mr. Bierce underestimated the elasticity of the conservative, however. Once the new evils are firmly in place, the conservative is fully capable of adjusting himself to their defense against the newest onslaught from the left.
As Christians, we are not to be left-wing; the left openly defies God and hates His people. Nor are we to be right-wing; the right pretends friendship, and wants us to cooperate with them. If we like, we may bring along our tame god. But of course, he must be a lapdog god who can be safely invoked in our government schools, a god content to wield a fuzzy sovereignty over the lowest common religious denominator, a god as false as Baal, or Yertle the Turtle. The living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, makes people nervous.
But the evangelicals, after all, still vote, and this makes them the object of the demagogue's affections. Again, Dabney: "It is the nature of the demagogue to trade off anything for votes; they are the breath in the nostrils of his ambition." [3]
We are Christians . This means, to put it bluntly, that Christ is our Savior, our Deliverer, our Healer, and no other . This does not mean we are forbidden to accept His solace from human hands; to give and to receive from one another are required by Him. But it does mean we cannot accept anything from Him when our fists are clenched in rebellion against Him.
God, in His goodness, has ordained the government of the family to oversee health, and education, and welfare. He has, in His justice, ordained the magistrate to punish the wrongdoer. He has, in His grace, ordained the church to preach and to teach the gospel to all nations. When we receive these delegated ministries through these appointed means, we are in submission.
But we rebel if we attempt to jury-rig an alternative way of doing things. The family does not bear the sword. The Congress is not a synod of theologians. The church does not spank our little ones. These three governments are not interchangeable. Each one of these governments is out of its element when it tries to do anything other than what God requires of that government in His Word. Unsurprisingly, inefficiency and waste is the result. But such inefficiencies are not the problem; they are a symptom of the problem. The sin is one of attempting to be wiser than God, of attempting to tinker with His institutions and their constitutions.
The current proposals for health care reform certainly display this rebelliousness. But once a state-run health care system is in place, Christians must resist the temptation to join the grumblers on the right. There will be, on a human level, much to grumble about. There will be waiting periods, decreased service, and plenty of oppression for widows and orphans. But grumbling is not repentance . These things, and many others like them, are being visited upon us from the Lord. Christians, as the conscience of our nation, must stop repenting of the consequences of our sin, and start repenting of the sin itself.
We have, in our stupidity, wanted a king like the other nations. We have, in our rebellion, forgotten God's words and have not waited for His counsel. We have murmured for those things which we have wanted, and God has heard our murmuring.
"And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul" (Ps. 106:15).
