Often, the most difficult aspect of convincing
Christians to get involved in politics is to convince them that though they are
physically present, they are spiritually absent. This is not to say Christians
in America aren’t involved in the political arena, but that they are waging war
in that arena without God and disarmed of their spiritual power. Most
Christians willfully disarm themselves by seizing the power structure that
currently exists and trying to “Christianize” it with prayers around flagpoles
and Ten Commandment monuments outside court houses. These, in the mind of too
many Christians, are victories. Christians in the political realm largely think
and act just like their enemies. They often side with “conservatives” who are
meanwhile members at local liberal denominations. They think they have a
winning strategy. How can Christians reject spiritual liberalism when it’s a
Gospel issue, but embrace it when it calls itself Christian under a
“Conservative” political banner? I believe I can explain.
Christians are now in dire need of approaching
politics from a Christian apologetical worldview. We must address our
opponents, even in our own parties, as those peddling a new religion. This may
take some time to unpack, but it’s worth the effort, and perhaps can radically
change the way you approach local, state, and federal politics.
Spiritual Political Warfare
The Scriptures say that we do not wrestle with flesh
and blood but with spiritual principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12).
Which is to say that when we are fighting evil, no matter where it is, it has
manifested itself from the spiritual to the material. Nothing that manifests
materially, good or evil, got that way without first finding its origin in the
spiritual realm. This is critical to understand. Christians are foundationally
powerless in politics because they view political theory and political action
like pagans. In other words, they believe that God has not spoken to the
political realm, or that God, in the New Testament, has abandoned the governing
of men to neutral theories apart from biblical truth. If they do believe there
are biblical answers to governmental issues, it is vague and almost always
ambiguous enough to endorse whatever candidate says they are a Christian and
doesn’t like “Socialism.” That’s about the depth of the Christian approach at
large.
But what if we approached political theory like we
approach cults in religion? What if you approached politics the way you
approach false religions? What if Statism and Collectivism were cults in the
mind of Christians? What if Statism and Collectivism must be confronted for
falsely convincing mankind of another way to salvation apart from Christ? What
if humanistic politics is not merely theories on how to govern mankind, but is
man trying to save humanity as a false second Adam? If Christ is the head of
his church as the new Adam, then humanists are claiming to be head of a satanic
order by ruling all of humanity under their centralized headship.
One of the greatest blows to the Western Christian
Worldview has been struck when we believe that the endeavors of humanists to
centrally plan our lives was not spiritually motivated, but reasonably and
logically concluded apart from our fallen natures. The false idea is that man
may be fallen, but his devices and theories are neutral to his fallen nature.
He may have bits of evil, but he has the capacity to conceive of a good thing
in the neutral realm of politics. These devices and theories change from time to
time to match the desired need of the people and culture. If the steel industry
is going bankrupt because of foreign competition, it is not thought to have
anything to do with the spiritual realm to attempt to remedy that problem by
either subsidizing it or penalizing the competition. This isn’t evil, in their
rationalization, and since God has assumedly not spoken as to how we should
specifically govern ourselves in this area, it’s just the humanist’s word
against the Christian’s. Whoever can convince the most senators or citizens to
their cause is clearly right and providential as well. So, Man governs the
earth through his endeavors and God moves him about via providence in history.
Humanistic Salvation
The humanist and socialist are already upset. You can
imagine: “I don’t believe that! In fact, I don’t believe in the spiritual realm
at all! I don’t believe in your God, nor do I claim to save anyone’s soul
through our government.” How would you answer these rebuttals? Let’s begin the
apologetic, shall we? Of course, in the rigid sense, these people are not
saying they are going to make us acceptable before the God of the Bible and
that through their governing we will be reconciled to God. No. Their
“soteriology” is different because their spiritual blindness has morphed their
idea of salvation from one of God’s sovereign grace to one of submission to
man’s law. They only believe repentance is needed when man’s law is broken, not
God’s Law. There is no neutrality. It is either Theonomy or Autonomy. God is building
His Kingdom now. The Humanists are building their little kingdoms which they
believe will be the salvation of man. Those humanists have a law that governs
their kingdom.
Just as man has his own counterfeit law, just as he
has his own counterfeit kingdom, so too does he have his own counterfeit hell
in the form of the penal system. The prison system is man’s vain attempt, here
on earth, to create a material hell for man to suffer in. This his purgatory by
which his suffering will eventually rehabilitate him for reentry into the
kingdom of man. This system is created to brainwash the inmate into
sympathizing with his captors by admitting that man’s law was right and he was
wrong. This society also believes that once a man “does his time,” he is exonerated
from his crimes and reconciled to the false Adam, the State. In fact, his
crimes will almost exclusively be (Inmates Name) v. The State of Texas
(or whatever State you live in). That is to say, his crimes are not against God
but against man, in the form of the State, and he must repent and face justice
on its terms. This is their soteriology.
Still not convinced? Go on a tour with your humanist
friends to your local State capitol. What will you find? Nothing short of
intense amounts of Greek and Roman symbolism either in the form of the old gods
of the pagan world or symbols that represent the unseen principles of American
Mythology. You will see blindfolded women holding scales; you will see massive
monuments of men not even trying to hide their deification as historical
figures. Christianity has its patriarchs in the form of Abraham, the prophets
and so forth. Humanism has its patriarchs in the form of Abraham Lincoln or Sam
Houston. Eagles grasping arrows, crests with dozens of symbols and a meaning for
each symbol, State Coats of Arms, olive branches and so on. If man does not
worship and obey the true God, then he will provide his own mythos and
iconography by which he can bow and worship his false god. These men who are
deified have finished their humanistic race (2 Tim 4:7),
they have made it to their promise land, and it is your obligation to pick up
where they left off. Again, it is either God’s covenant or man’s covenant. There
is no neutrality.
The Clash of Worldviews
It is no wonder Christians are so powerless to affect
this modern world or to bring about change. It is like they are attempting to
change Mormonism not by refuting it, but by reforming it from within. It needs
to be smashed, not reformed. Centralized planning at the local, state, and
federal level is a Gospel issue. It’s a false salvation and will lead people to
hell. Christians love God’s Law, and not just for their “personal” life
choices. God never limited His Law to your personal devotional time or small
personal decisions. No doubt, God’s Law even extends to these areas, but it’s
not restricted to them. God’s Law is for all of life and that includes
government. The humanists in Public Schools and Sunday Schools taught us by
routine example, almost taken for granted, that the Law is for salvific
purposes and personal devotion, nothing else. Yes, they may say it’s
Jesus-for-all-of-life, but it is largely just a Jesus for personal prayer,
bible reading, and “blatant” sins that are to be avoided. This is robbing us of
the riches we have in Christ, making us beggars both spiritually and
materially, and it ultimately leads to apostasy, generationally. It’s the
outworking of a dead faith.
It’s time that the state capital and its false
religion are exposed to the glorious Kingdom power of Jesus. It’s time
Christians start making tracts that treat statism, socialism, humanism,
communism, and other false religions as legitimate apologetic endeavors. The
Mormons are not educating our children en masse. The Muslims are not killing
the unborn at 3,000 children a day. The Jehovah Witnesses aren’t creating
wicked practices such as Civil Asset Forfeiture that steal billions of dollars
a year from innocent Americans. The Hindus aren’t passing billion-dollar bonds,
locally, that further enslave our future children through property tax. The
list goes on and on, and Christians either wholeheartedly partake of this new
religion, or they completely disengage and pray for the Rapture. Either of
these reactions is precisely what the humanists want.
All of this is the fruit of the new world religion,
humanism. Taxation is the new tithe for its assemblies. Public schools are its
churches. Its creed is the Pledge of Allegiance. America and the rest of the
world have built an entirely new Tower of Babel that will unify the entire
world under their new false Adam. Many, many Christians are a part of this new
religion.
With all of this in mind, the Christian should not
abandon faith by adapting pragmatic approaches to “reforming” the statist
religion. Instead, he should call this new cult religion and its practitioners
to repent and to turn to Christ by faith. They should repent of the false
premise that the state owns the earth (Psalm 24) through property tax. They
should repent of the false indoctrination that takes place in our public
schools, not by putting the Bible back in school, but by abolishing the
practice of state education and bringing the family back together into Covenant
living. They should repent of the billions of bureaucratic laws that only make
more criminals out of law abiding citizens. Slavery is alive today and is
practiced at the largest scale it has ever been practiced, and the 13th
Amendment itself allows creating slaves via bureaucratic laws. Slavery was
never abolished; it was renamed by humanists by whom which we were
generationally brainwashed. We call this Doublespeak.
13th Amendment: Section 1. Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.
There is only one Creator of the cosmos. There is only
one faith to live in that cosmos. There is only one Lord to rule that Cosmos.
The manmade, “democratic” government is a false power religion. The end goal
for Christendom, as it pertains to the cult of Democracy and Socialism, is to
enact a Magna Carta-esque document stripping all authority and power from
elected officials and majority populaces by the truth and power of the Gospel
of Christ, and restoring it to local levels. Collectivism is just another
unchecked monarchy legitimized because of man’s deep-seated desire to create
his own laws, no matter how devilish and wicked those laws are.