Christian
Action Project (CAP) – Study 5 – Kingdom of God – Delegating Authority
In this study, Gary North makes the case
that we have been delegated to carry out God’s dominion assignment on earth.
This involves every institution.
·
God is sovereign and Christ is the only
link between heaven and earth.
·
Our delegated system on earth has
complementary authorities. None is absolute.
·
Decentralized self-government is God’s
model for mankind.
·
God delegates authority to man.
·
Men have created ‘theologies of despair’
which nullify God’s model.
·
In effect, men have actively shown they
don’t trust God’s judgment of putting them in charge of ruling His creation.
·
God’s sheep must become shepherds.
In order to transition from Study 4, I
will repeat the closing paragraph from it as a lead-in to Study 5, so there is
no misunderstanding as to what Gary North is asserting here. Very simply, this
study is an accusation of our dereliction of duty as delegates of God. We have
to repent and return to His way.
Excuses, excuses,
excuses: man never runs short of excuses. The problem is: God never accepts
them. Adam and Eve didn't escape, just because each of them blamed somebody
else for the problem. God holds His people responsible for laboring
continually to subdue the earth to His glory by means of the grace of law. That
responsibility is with every generation, and God expects His people to
extend the dominion of His kingdom, generation by generation, culture by
culture. He has told us that Christians can do it, and that eventually
His people will do it. It may take a thousand years, but they will do
it. Man was created for this very purpose, and Satan will not successfully
thwart God's plan. Angels will not take the credit for Satan's long-term
retreat into his last stronghold; the redeemed adopted sons of God will take
the credit, under the sovereignty of God.
The following is from
Gary North’s “Unconditional Surrender”:
Delegating
Authority As we
have seen in earlier chapters, God's institutional outline provides for both
centered and local decision-making. God is both one and many. His rule gives
equal ultimacy to the unity and diversity of life. But it should be obvious
that God is the head. He is the final authority. He is the absolute
sovereign. He is the only true source of commands. Christ, as the Incarnate God, who was fully human and fully
divine, two natures in one Person, in union but without mixture, is the only
link between heaven and earth. No other being, no other
institution can legitimately assert a claim to divinity. No other institution
is perfect. No other person or institution is infallible. None! Not the family,
not the institutional church, not the civil government, not the economy.
Therefore,
we have a system of
complementary, competing authorities. The Bible tells us:
"Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors
there is safety" (Proverbs 11:14). In a multitude of lawful
sovereignties there is also safety, in time and on earth. Each authority
has its assignments, defined by God's law, but no single authority has absolute
authority in any given sphere of life. Only God has absolute sovereignty.
Therefore, the Bible
establishes a system of checks and balances, and God's law provides the pivot
point.
There
must be a major authority in any given institution, but that authority can be
challenged by other lawful authorities. A father must rule his household, but a
wife can sometimes override him, as Rebekah overrode Isaac's choice of evil
Esau as the son to receive the blessing. (She did have God's promise to guide
her [Genesis 25:23; 27:1-17].) A father may not murder his children, either.
The civil government can legitimately defend them from death. Parents may
choose to abort an unborn child, but the Bible says this is murder, and the
criminals must be executed, which would include the physician who was a participant
(Exodus 21:22-25).
The authority structure in any
institution is hierarchical, but it is never absolute. It faces lawful challenges from
other ordained institutions. It also faces the possibility of appeal from one
lower on the chain of authority to a higher institutional authority. The
proper structure of responsibility is upward, from the responsible individual
to a supervisor. The man beneath is to exercise self-government, but the
man above may establish terms of performance, if they are in conformity to
God's law, and he may supervise performance. Each institution acts as a
miniature court. There is an executive function with the head of the
institution to establish general rules, goals, and standards of performance, as
well as to establish punishments and rewards. But any functioning system which
is top-heavy becomes bureaucratic, lethargic, and unproductive. No man is
omniscient. No man is God.
Therefore,
a wise man decentralizes
authority, making each subordinate fully responsible for his own performance,
and a wise ruler sets up a reward system which encourages self-motivation
and self-government. Since no man can police everything under
his authority, the wise ruler acknowledges this fact and delegates authority
downward. He delegates precisely because he wants to extend his own
dominion. Delegating authority is not a retreat from responsibility, but
the essence of responsibility. Few decisions in life are more difficult, more
laden with responsibility, than the selection of a subordinate to take
over a particular task. (Selecting a wife is one example.) Yet it must be done
if institutions are to grow. Any institution which relies on a central
governing committee to achieve its goals is going to be a bumbling, blind, and
woefully inefficient organization.
God delegates authority to man. He tells man to subdue
the earth. If a sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent God delegates authority to a
creature, then it is imperative that men follow God's lead. Most government
should be self-government. In fact, most government is already
self-government, and a system that isn't built on this assumption cannot
hope to succeed in the long run.
By creating theologies of despair, men
have encouraged the creation of a huge central government, meaning the
State or the institutional church, or a combination of the two. If we insist that God failed in
His choice of a competent subordinate when He delegated authority to man, then
we become hesitant to delegate authority ourselves. If God Almighty selected
man to subdue the earth, and man was not only immediately deflected from his
assignment, but was permanently deflected, despite the grace of God,
then what possible hope can mere men have in locating subordinates who will
become dominion-minded and reliable self-governors? If God's plan for man to
subdue the earth was permanently deflected by Satan, then only a fool would
delegate much authority to a subordinate. A wise man under such a theological
assumption would hold onto every shred of power he had, as if his future
depended upon it. He would never develop institutional arrangements that foster
independence among subordinates. He would delegate only as a man delegates to a
machine or a totally submissive servant. He would choose only breathing robots,
rotting machines, known as bureaucrats, to fulfill his purposes.
This is basically the kind of blueprint for
the millennium that millions of Christians have today. God supposedly chose the wrong
being to exercise dominion. Satan rules in power on earth, and poor, pathetic
man even (we might say especially) regenerate man cannot hope to
triumph, in time and on earth. So Christ will just have to intervene directly
in the historical process, remove man from all ruling authority, and return
physically to start giving orders to His servants. If God has to intervene
directly in the process of history, and change the rules of history to
establish His kingdom on earth (for example, by intermingling Christians in
transformed bodies with Christians converted after Christ's return, not to
mention the devil's servants tares who never were removed from history), then
we should expect a bureaucratic kingdom on earth, the likes of which
mankind has never seen. Egypt's bureaucratic consolidation becomes a joke in
comparison with Christ's supposed coming kingdom. No more delegated authority.
No more responsible individuality. No more personal maturity through self-government.
Just a massive, unquestioning system of bureaucratic government - the hierarchy
to end all hierarchies - the pyramid to end all pyramids!
All this
follows directly from a particular theology of despair. This theology of
historical defeat, this cosmic pessimism regarding the abilities of regenerate
men under God's sovereignty, leads inescapably to the acceptance of
bureaucracy. Those who hold this theology of historical defeat and who also
belong to some non-denominational church, which has no institutional chain of
command or which any one will admit to anyway, have become pessimistic with
regard to reversing the socialist world's march into bureaucracy. Satan is a
consummate bureaucrat, who wants direct power, but who has no law structure
that is reliable and no subordinates who can be trusted. Yet his kingdom in
this century has pushed around Christian cultures, precisely because the
Christians have become reconciled to the idea of the triumph of bureaucracy.
They see no defense against it, except a bigger and better bureaucracy to be established
by Jesus when He comes to rule in person for a thousand years. "It you
can't beat the system, join it. If you can't join it, imitate it."
Because Christians just don't trust God's
judgment in selecting them to rule the earth, without God's physical presence,
they don't trust themselves.
They don't trust in their own judgment. They have no faith in their own
dependent and responsible efforts to subdue the earth, under God and by means
of His law. They want directions. They want to be told what to do. They are
afraid of responsible self-government.
We are sheep. The Bible calls us sheep. But we are to be
obedient sheep, and we are to strive to become shepherds, as the apostles
become shepherds. Because of self-government under God's law and under
God's lawfully constituted authorities, we sheep can become shepherds. We
can then become rulers. As sheep, we must never forget the voice of the Good
Shepherd (John 10). He is the source of our strength. The means of advancing
from sheep to shepherds is through self-government under God and in terms of
His law. We are not to become spiritual bureaucrats the ultimate human sheep
but law-abiding shepherds (John 21:15-17). We must learn to trust the
judgment of those who assign us new responsibilities, just as deacons are
supposed to trust the judgment of elders who assign them responsibilities (Acts
6). The way to advance from sheep to shepherds is by continual delegation of
responsibility downward, not by the continual expansion of centralized,
bureaucratic power at the top.
