Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

There’s no better slavery that a gang of thieves could hope for than the kind where the rulers’ subjects walk around praising the regime, wearing its bloodsoaked flags, and thinking they’re free. 

It’s much more ideal for a State that men enthusiastically support it rather than for them to know of their subjection and reluctantly comply. State rulers prefer men to be adamant patriots as opposed to, say, knowing of the evils and keeping their heads down. They are easier to rule this way. 

And so the rulers do everything to present to men the opposite of the truth: that the plunder system is really for their benefit. They trick people into thinking that all the violations of God’s law (idolatry, theft, and murder) are acceptable when carried out by men who call themselves “the government.”

This is largely attained through a “State” that “legalizes” and institutes the political means of robbery and makes criminal behavior appear “legitimate” to the fooled population who goes for the lie. 

The mere existence of a State, and its long history and tradition, seems to present this scenario where any shred of morality in a man goes out the window to justify theft, slavery, and murder. There’s just something about a “State” that causes men to lose all their judgment. A State is just the type of thing that gets a man’s sinful heart pumping to take part in a plunder system and to apologize for its existence in every way, and the rulers are able to work with this in mind. 

The political system is thus able to distort reality and bring unwitting men, including Christians, and those who are all too ready to do evil, into its ambit. 

The essential function of “government” is to provide a cover for robbery and plunder, to make it seem that violations of God’s moral law are acceptable because the violators wear badges and claim to be “law enforcers” who “trust in God.”

The State system and the statist intellectuals who stump for it allows men to believe in the lies and approve of the plunder. It helps to stamp these crimes as “official” in their minds and to believe that these are governments “of the people” who are doing a great service for society.

They make people believe that these collectivist, socialist systems are truly “social” and have the “public” in mind when they plunder. They make men believe that they can benefit by joining up with the gang of robbers (Proverbs 1:10-16). 

It is always preferable for a State that they do not appear to be what they are in reality: robber gangs. Though sometimes they can’t hold back from their evils, the rulers generally want to avoid making it obvious, even though (again) they can’t help but to act as a State, which requires regularized violence and coercion against people that always, even on a normal day, may threaten to uncover the evils in minds of a man with eyes to see. 

Blatant dictatorships don’t seem to have any sort of longevity as far as sustaining their plunder for centuries. A plunder society where the people worship the regime as it nevertheless destroys society tends to last a little longer. (Though, as the prophets taught, all these plunder societies always come to an end. They have to end because they are based on plunder and violations of God’s law of liberty, which cannot go unpunished).  

When you have to beat your subjects to enforce your plunder scheme, it is much more apparent to men that they are being plundered. But if you can train your slaves to love their slavery and you can make them think it is the shining example of freedom and godliness unto the world, then you’ve got them right where you want them: to take them for a plunder without them running away or fighting back. 

Slaves who “voluntarily” send in property to the plunderers, so that they don’t get put in cages by the kidnappers, are much more conducive to a finely tuned extortion racket growing up in all areas of society and plundering and destroying wherever it can reach and whoever it can touch. 

The best type of statism is thus the meme of American society where men have been completely fooled about the evil of the system (an evil they have attributed to other regimes but which they exempt their own). They have taught people to love their masters. They don’t even have to beat them with clubs to gain their compliance; they do it openly out of their sinful “patriotic” hearts, where they find a “civic duty” to serve such evil systems. 

Men have been bred to be more than simply passive supporters of the state system. Many of them have been made into active supporters who proudly fly the symbols of their own enslavement—the “thin blue line” or “US army”—on their vehicles. 

To make men see “freedom” when they are presented with Egypt is thus the necessary task for those criminals who want to erect plunder societies against a mass of people. 

Unfortunately for those who want to avoid boxcars, labor camps, prisons, and firing squads, we’re surrounded by men who love the Egyptian slave society and who even put their hands and feet to work for it and call it liberty and godliness. We’re surrounded by men who think that governments bring freedom, putting us in that dreadful situation where tyranny can rise in the shadows and then unexpectedly come down upon people’s heads. 

States do not have to work very hard to win over men. They have done it throughout history, evidenced throughout the scriptures. The State barely even has to solicit the support of men, because it is already in their sinful hearts to flirt with evil schemes. All they seemingly have to do is figure out how to work with that knowledge. When it becomes “legal” to rob people by joining up with the plunderers, this becomes all too inviting for men who otherwise would have never attempted to “pull over” someone and shake them down on the roadside. 

Often, all these people have to do is brandish the sword, and men, with violence in their hearts, start fawning over it and asking to hold one too. All they have to do is show off the plunder and men want to put their hands on it too. “Put a badge on me.” “Bless me with your authority.”

No plunder system is sustainable in the long run, and all of them destroy liberty and prosperity, but the plunder scheme that has good, patriotic slaves may last longer than the one where its people understand the imperative of breaking free. When people believe in “their” State, such as Americans idolized it (especially after WWII), then the robber gang has time to grow in the dark without catching too much criticism for its expansion. It has time to think and plan without men rising up against it. 

It is through patriotism, lies, deception, war victories, and in general exploiting the sin within men, that plunder systems are raised.

God offers a way out of the plunder system, which is more or less the reverse of everything men have done to get into it: to trust in the divine word, reject the vain philosophies of men, and regard the Lord as the King. 

As much as statism has destroyed society, not all is lost. God is always here for us waiting for men to heal themselves of their false god worship—their statism—and get back to their Maker.

“Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings” (Jeremiah 3:22).

If, at any time, men want to give up their beloved false gods and return to God, they no longer have to be the slaves of these false god rulers.

“If you will remove your detestable idols from My sight and no longer waver, and if you can swear, ‘As surely as the LORD lives,’ in truth, in justice, and in righteousness, then the nations will be blessed by Him, and in Him they will glory” (Jeremiah 4:1-2).