[This is part 3 in a series on “the fear of the Lord.” See part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten].

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

The (1) fear of the Lord and the (2) fear of men are more or less choices that men must make, as they result in very different social orders. Whether one (1) fears God or (2) fears men is wholly related to the choice between (1) liberty under God or (2) statism under men. When men (1) fear God, they don’t dare institute a State; when men (2) fear other men, they clamor to other men (i.e., “governments”) to “protect” them. 

When we (1) fear God, i.e., when we fear what God will allow to happen to us if we forsake Him and adopt (2) the political methods of securing our “freedom” (which, as we know, leads to death, famine, labor camps, etc), we will avoid these systems. God provides for those who trust in Him. “Those who fear the Lord are secure” (Proverbs 14:26).

On the other hand, (2) man-fearers—those Chinese communists are coming to get us if we don’t set-up an almighty military—build destructive and plunderous political systems that give us the very things they tell us the “bad guys” would have done to us without the “good guys” in power. These statists trust in (2) men to “save” them, and don’t believe God when He tells us, “I am the Lord…and besides me there is no savior” (Isaiah 43:11). 

This latter choice (2) is certainly not demonstrative of true faith in God, and leads obviously to a statist society where men who call themselves “the government” pretend to be the indispensable “protectors” of society when they are, in fact, the plunderers who operate on scaring men out of (1) liberty and faith in God. 

When men (2) fear men and trust in states to “protect” them, they show an overall lack of faith in God. When men are (1) not worried about any enemies (real or manufactured) that will come against them without men (i.e.. “governments”) to protect them, they demonstrate faith in the Lord’s protection. 

Faith in God 

Men of God are not worried about the enemies (real or manufactured) which so many use to argue for the alleged necessity of a State. Men of God say, “In You, my God, I trust. Do not let me be put to shame; do not let my enemies exult over me” (Psalm 25:2). They say, “In God I trust. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 56:4). A God-fearing people can seek liberty on the word of God, “Fear not: for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10). 

Christian men should never be worrying about the types of things that unbelievers worry about—”what about the criminals? the bad guys around the world? the roads? the schools? the poor?”—when they say that we need government police, militaries, public school teachers, etc., to run society; they are to be focused on the kingdom of God and prepared, with God on their side, to do these things themselves. (This is a major reason why true Christianity, true faith and fear in the Lord as the provider, lends to an anarchistic society). 

Christians, as the scriptures say, “seek first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33). They “do not worry about tomorrow” (Matt. 6:34), as statists do with their endless conjecture of all the bad things that would supposedly come about without man-gods to rule over us. We trust that if we seek God and live on His word, that social order will be taken care of for us.

As the Christian anarchist Kevin Craig said, 

“Political scientists, sociologists, lawyers, and legislators are all concerned about the maintenance of ‘social order.’ They look for the ‘Rule of Law’ in a society, and worry that theirs might ‘disintegrate into anarchy and chaos.’ [But] citizens of Christ’s Kingdom do not worry about what they should do to maintain ‘law and order.’ They simply obey God’s Law in their own lives. The Spirit uses acts of obedience…to build the Kingdom of God.”

Seeking God’s kingdom

We should always keep doing what we are doing to advance the kingdom of God, and never worry, as statists do, that “the Chinese” (or some other bogus enemy) are going to conquer us if we don’t build up a massive militarist state ourselves, which in the end only destroys everyone and leaves them poor and unfree. We should never worry that the Lord would leave us hanging if we did right by Him and abandoned the Egyptian systems where men falsely seek “security.” We know that these societies are, in fact, insecure and unsustainable, and that true safety is found in the Lord. Men of God believe God when He tells us that “whoever listens to Me will dwell in safety, secure from the fear of evil” (Proverbs 1:33). 

God’s people say to the Lord, “You are my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust” (Psalm 91:2). And they consequently realize they should never trust in men to secure their social order — that, indeed, they can never trust in men (i.e., “governments”) for anything more than to plunder and destroy a society. God’s people don’t need human rulers and their false salvation. They say, 

“The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (Psalm 18:2).

Fearing God for liberty

The essence of God-fearing—that we fear no one other than the Lord—leads to liberty, because a truly God-fearing people do not trust in States to protect them. They would see that States are institutions of plunder and turn from them. A truly God-fearing people would never be found worshiping legislators, police officers, showing their patriotic support for these systems, or apologizing for them in any way. As the scriptures say, “To fear the LORD is to hate evil; I hate arrogant pride, evil conduct, and perverse speech” (Proverbs 8:13). 

The only thing we are to fear is what God will to do us if we don’t obey Him and put our faith in the statist societies of men, which is necessarily to bring those very fears—”we will be oppressed by tyrants without a government of our own!”—upon a people for the sinful thought that they needed something more than God to “protect” (i.e., enslave) them. When men, out of the fear of men, institute statist societies of human rulers who pretend to be “we the people,” God gives them over to their worst nightmares and allows “we the people” (in reality, a power elite that is not “us”) to rule over them. As promised, “If you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword” (Isaiah 1:20). 

The great scriptural lesson on fearing God should lead men naturally to (1) liberty under God, to a sort of anarcho-theocratic society where God is the Sovereign and all wannabe human “protectors,” who place us in tax bondage for the supposed “public good,” are regarded as false gods seeking to illegitimately claim the authority for themselves that rightly belongs to God.  

Fearing men for statism

But men always (2) fear men and disobey God. They didn’t want to “discern the fear of the LORD and discover the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:5). They say “the Chinese are coming” and that we need a Chinese system of our own if we are to combat it. They don’t trust God to keep “the Chinese” away. And so they go back into Egypt, into captivity, as our people are today. And even if they do realize it, they justify their own enslavement on these grounds. “It’s at least better to be oppressed by these people than those ones.” It’s because our people never want to learn these lessons—trusting in and fearing God is the only true path to liberty—that men keep walking right into statist bondage. As one prophet said, “My people will go into captivity for their lack of understanding” (Isaiah 5:13). 

But really, all they do is enslave themselves when they could have been free otherwise. God showed us the way, but “they accepted none of My counsel; they despised all My reproof” (Proverbs 1:30). God always taught us how this dangerous fear of men, which causes people to erect States for their protection, leads to slavery rather than freedom. As the scripture says, “The fear of man bringeth a snare” (Proverbs 29:25).