Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

American culture has long been a gun-clinging one that sees firearm ownership as essential to liberty, even though it has evidently done little to nothing to prevent tyrants from being raised up around us. Many of these men are still blinded by the domestic tyranny we face and still believe the propaganda about being a “free country,” and at most might imagine that their guns are needed to join “their” government in fending off some hypothetical foreign invaders. Others who do have a sense of the domestic terrorists who rule over us often hold some fantasy where we will break out of bondage with a shooting war.

But perhaps a majority of gun owners are highly statist, or at the very least elevate gun-ownership over God when it comes to thoughts of liberation. They are more focused on guns than they are repentance for the sinful ideology of statism that has led us into political slavery. In general, there has been a focus on being disarmed as the means for the State to oppress other people, even though men have already given up their liberty without a fight and have engaged in all the idolatries (“God, Guns, and Trump”) that have given way to the tyrants.

I am not here to make a Biblical defense of firearm ownership and self-defense, or make a case for pacifism, so much as I want to point out that guns (assuming they can do anything at all) can do nothing to free a people who are spiritually enslaved to false gods. The big problem facing men, as far as the evil system of statism that we confront, is not that we are not armed enough. It is a heart and sin problem — the fact that men have idolized these systems of “government” that rule over them.

It is the very idolatry, which many gun-owners are full of, that has allowed these men to be raised up above us. My thesis here is basically that our people would have done better to give up their idolatry than to amass guns, for idolatry, more than not massing weapons, is what allows statism to flourish.

Without getting these things right, firearms are more or less good for nothing, because the men possessing them cannot know how to use them or how to organize their society should they happen to throw-off one gang of rulers; at worst, they may even be dangerous, because the men owning them might be provoked by the tyrants to launch an attack that they’ve been waiting to quell with an even greater (and then “justified”) clamp-down on liberty, or worse, even join in to fight on the enemy’s side and “back the blue” as the State uses the chaos it creates to make a case for violently establishing “law and order.”

Our spiritual warfare

The deeper part of all this, besides the fact that a man’s mind (or lack thereof) is more important than the tools in his hands, is that there is a spiritual war underlying the material surface. It is not just about the evil men who rule over us; they are empowered by spiritual evil. We are embroiled in a war of good and evil that extends beyond the men who may try to rule us with physical weaponry, though it is acting through them. As a famous scripture says, 

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against the worldly governors, the princes of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness, which are in the high places” (Ephesians 6:12, GNV). 

We are dealing with an evil system that goes far beyond just a group of thugs (though they are that too) who have amassed more weapons than us in some little game of “who-is-the-strongest?” We’re dealing with men who are animated by spiritual evil, which greatly alters our tactics away from purely earthly forms that men often cling to and requires that we get much closer to the Lord than we have so far known in order to defend ourselves against our enemies. Thus, scripture tells us that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10:3). 

Since we’re dealing with very wicked men and are not simply outgunned by a gang of criminals (though this might also be the case), we must esteem the aid of God much more highly than that which guns may (or may not) provide. The power required to deal with a spiritual evil that exists to enslave men by ensnaring their souls in the bondage of man’s law certainly ranks above having firearms. Mass firearm ownership will not suffice to bring us freedom if men are not fortified in faith — if they have neglected God, His protection, and the wisdom of His word. 

Those who tell us that we could never do anything about the State because they are (allegedly) too powerful (or that we don’t have enough weapons) are still too caught in the mindset of fearing men rather than fearing the Lord and still too focused on earthly matters alone. They don’t realize that it is not guns that give the State its power, but the very apathetic beliefs such as the aforementioned idea that the State is too strong for us. Scripture exhorts us to not worry about the superior size of man’s armies that may come against us, but to keep our faith in the Lord and His ability to deliver us (Deut 20:1, 3:22, 7:18, 31:6-8; Josh 11:4-6). That the “United States Armed Forces” may have more firepower than us does not account for God’s ability to destroy such armies that could be raised up against us. The kingdoms of men are no match for the power of God to destroy them. 

How the State rules 

We start to see how little guns even have to do with the matter once we realize how it is that we have gone into slavery, which has been by our own iniquity. It was our sin—our transgression against the laws of God against idolatry of human rulers and support for their systems of theft and murder—that brought about our bondage to men, where God has turned us over to tyrants to teach us a lesson. As one prophet makes it clear.

“The heathen shall know that [they] went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore I hid my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so they all fell by the sword” (Ezekiel 39:23). 

It wasn’t a lack of guns that we wound-up under the thumb of men, but our own people allowing themselves to be fooled by them, if not virtually begging to be ruled by men (as in 1 Samuel 8, where the tyrannies predicted were a result of people sinfully setting up man-kings instead of relying on God’s protection, not their failure to get armed-up).

This enemy of liberty—the State, to be sure, is the earthly manifestation of spiritual evil—rules not by force alone, but largely through fraud and deception. It debases people through what Frederic Bastiat called “mental slavery.” Propaganda, patriotism, deception, fear, economic fallacies, fake enemies, lies, tricks, sophistry, euphemisms, phony claims to authority, fake science, and pseudo-intellectual justifications for intervention, are its main ways of controlling people and property — not pointing guns at our heads. This Egyptian system of ours “works” because men have bought into the lies of Egypt, eg., that “we need armies and presidents to keep us safe and strong,” not because Egypt was more physically powerful than us and outgunned us. These systems of slavery have always worked by tricking men into thinking they could supply them with a life of luxury forever and that it would be too risky to walk with God and live free (Ex 16:3, 17:3; Num 11:4-5, 14:2-3, 16:13, 20:3). 

We are shown throughout scripture that the evil forces of the world will employ such tricks to win over people, and that the way to avoid being ruled by them is simply to see through their lies and to walk in faith. It doesn’t take violence to remove the oppressors and extortioners from their positions of earthly power; they can be overcome and driven away simple by having the right view of, and relationship to, God as revealed in the Bible. 

Victory through spiritual liberation 

It’s theoretically possible, then, perhaps only so, to win liberty without the use of force, provided that men are willing to subject themselves to the Creator Almighty as the only true authority, that we “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage” (Galatians 5:1). For if men are to up and launch a violent offensive without repenting of their old ways which raised up the evils, then no good could possibly come from it; the same old statism will rear its evil head again, albeit in new form. But if men do repent, then there is no need to even take up any guns against the beast, for it was their unrepentance and state of sin that allowed it to exist in the first place, which created the human archists (1 Samuel 8). 

As Étienne de La Boétie explained as far back as the early sixteenth century, in an early observation that the State’s rule rests upon the support of a deluded public opinion, “There is no need of fighting to overcome the tyrant, for he is automatically defeated if people refuse consent to their own enslavement” (La Boétie, The Politics of Obedience). Men enslave themselves — or as he called it, they bring about their own “voluntary servitude.”

It is important to recognize that tyrannical regimes are allowed by God to rise up only when men have gone astray from God and are in need of chastisement and correction. Men wanted to worship false gods, and so God let them have their beloved State and find out for themselves what that means: desolation, destruction, famine, and death. All that’s necessary to reverse this is to go with God, but men stubbornly refuse to listen to God and fight against the truth at every point.

Slavery through rebellion to God

On this point, then, the very existence of statism and its tyrannical figures is proof that men have rebelled against God and are in need of great repentance much more than any physical resistance to such regimes, which would not address the underlying purpose of why and how men have found themselves in bondage in the first place: as divine judgment for their sins of turning away from God and toward human institutions. 

Rather than look at the rulers we have today and become angry, as most men do, it would be better to look at them as proof of how far we have gotten away from God. We should be confessing our sins upon witnessing the evils around us, not asking “where’s my musket.” The musket does not address the root-cause of our political enslavement, and any use of firearms without addressing these causes—men sinfully sought human rulers to protect them—would only lead men right back to square one, or worse. 

It is the sinfulness in men’s hearts, not disarmament, that leads us to statism and slavery. No amount of firearms will bring about liberty if men continue to believe in the lies of Pharaoh: that some men, who are by some imaginary means exempt from the moral law that everyone else is expected to be held to, have a “right” to rule others and tell them what to do because they call themselves a “government.” And it’s all too easy to believe this if, without God, one is found looking for a substitute — if men haven’t properly deferred to God.

Changing our ways of thinking

As I have suggested, I think it’s too much to even imply that men could appropriately use their guns if they had the correct knowledge of their circumstances: that we’re living in bondage to men due to our idolatry for them. To go even further, men are not, in theory, in need of a single firearm or a single shot to free themselves if they repented of their statism and turned back to the Lord for His protection, as well as started doing the things they ought to be doing to advance God’s kingdom, because (again) it was not a lack of firearms (obviously) that got us to where we are today. God does not need His people to be armed to protect them providentially; He would provide this protection to anyone who truly sought it, which necessarily means that they renounce the false protection of the false kings of the world and rely exclusively on Him to save them. 

Getting men’s hearts and minds right is thus critical in the defense against evil. It is in the psyche and the spirit of a man that our problem rests, not in the hardware of the grips of his hands. The crucial part of enslaving a population is fooling men and disarming their hearts to the truth, not simply prying weapons from their hands, though these men who fools believe are here to “protect” us do that too. 

No amount of guns will save men from political slavery if they don’t wish to break free, if men are not spiritually ready to walk out of Egypt, and a genuine desire to break free requires no guns or violence for its realization. No amount of guns are going to do anything if men cannot even see that they are not free, if they are still repeating slogans like “this is a free country” and “God bless our troops and police officers.” The enemy realizes the best means of making men defenseless is to turn them into fools. They needn’t worry about an armed population if it consists, as it does, of mental and spiritual slaves — of men who may be holding guns in their hands, but through training them on the worldly ideology of statism are already as good as disarmed.

Confessing our sin  

Thus, the best weapon for a man is to be aware of his oppression and his own role in it, but few have been willing to see it. Probably most gun-owners are still willing to pathetically and delusionally proclaim that “this is a free country,” “the troops fought for our freedom,” or that “our police are heroes.”

We can’t even say that most of them realize the trouble we’re in and ought to take a weeping, repentant approach to the problems around them rather than an angry one. Most people, it seems, don’t even realize the trouble that has come upon us. They may have some vague sense that we have gone off-course and are facing troubles ahead, and they have only come to that conclusion as the consequences for decades of errors that they contributed to continue to be shown, but they don’t really know why things had to turn out this way given the idolatry and statism that has propelled this empire forward, and certainly don’t see it as part of God’s judgment against things that they took part in (supporting wars, “the troops,” waving flags, etc). In their minds, it was an anomaly that we went down this road, an accident that “wasn’t supposed to happen” in our “Republic and not a democracy,” and something that only recently deviated from the tracks because “the democrats” who “started messing our county up in 2008,” and not anything that was built-in to the political scheme from the start. The best they can come up with is “we just need to get back to the Constitution and vote Republican.” 

What we really need to free ourselves is not more guns, but a spiritual regeneration and an embrace of the Lord over all. Men need to give up their false idols, false prophets, and false gods, and take up the battle-cry that the Lord God is our only King. We need to be in touch with God’s law of liberty, as taught throughout scripture, which explicitly exposes man’s rule as an invention of an idolatrous heart and a path of corruption and destruction should men stay on that unrepentant road. 

If duping the people and exploiting their sin (rather than poking them with bayonets) is the state’s main tactic, it stands to reason that our primary counter-weapons are spiritual and intellectual. We need God and the power He offers to overcome any evil that might rise against us, including (no doubt the biggest threat) the men who perpetrate their evils through so-called “governments.”

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. . .take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness. and your feet shod with the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:10-11, 13-17).

God over guns

More than arms, we are in need of the armor of God, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the spirit. There is no shortage of guns in America, but there is a shortage of righteous hearts that live for the advancement of the Kingdom of God and reject all human rulers as false gods. There is no shortage of Americans with arsenals of weapons, standing around and waving the flag of their enemy as if they are free, but there is a shortage of men who see through the illusions that have been fed to them by those who sought to pacify their hearts and minds as a way of making their physical weaponry entirely ineffective and worthless, assuming such could ever be used for liberation anyway. 

Repentance from statism 

Too many men—here are things many conservatives are not ready to admit—remain caught in the devil’s trap of politics and engage in such sinful acts as working for the enemy, voting for their enemies, emotionally supporting politicians, worshiping their unjust legal system, and idolizing the enforcers of their system of violence, their soldiers, flags, national anthems, statues, etc. It isn’t that these people have failed to acquire guns for themselves, but that they have failed to know the Lord, however much these people might be church-goers or profess the Lord’s name, while still remaining caught in all the idolatries and ideologies of the world. 

Freeing ourselves from mental slavery is the first step in freeing ourselves from the real bondage of statism, and this is what God does for men who hunger for it. Possessing guns without having thrown off the mental yoke is useless, and this much seems obvious in observing the highly-armed serfs in America who have done nothing to interrupt the progressing captivity that we increasingly find ourselves living in. The State is not worried that men have guns, so long as they don’t have a brain — so long as they are stupid enough to say “if you care about our rights you’ll vote Republican.”

For an unarmed but repentant people would be more safe and free than highly-armed mental slaves. The State prefers armed statists, who more or less allow their enslavement to continue unchecked, to unarmed Christian anarchists who are attempting to advance a kingdom that is much different from theirs.

Americans could have their supply of guns doubled overnight, and would not be any more fit for doing away with the Egyptian systems we’re living under if they were still in denial about its status as an Egypt rather than “our free country” and still unrepentant about the very things (their statism) that led us to this point. Americans could all be given machine guns and an endless supply of ammunition, and they still wouldn’t be fit for dealing with the political slavery we’re living under if they can’t even recognize it as such.

If, however, men repented for their worship of these systems of men and stopped believing in their authority, they could lay their guns down tomorrow morning and they wouldn’t be needed; the systems that oppress them, which are fueled by their sin, could go on no longer. 

Conclusion

We will not be shooting our way out of our problems, since we didn’t get here exclusively from shooting taking place, although these demonic agents of the State do murder anyone who steps out of line and resists them or makes an officer “fear for his life.” It is still necessary for the State to rob, cage, or kill those few people who disobey its decrees. But this doesn’t explain how it came about in its entirety, how whole populations came to apologize for statism, which relied much more on things like voting and flag-worshiping than it did threats of violence (albeit which are always present should they have to resort to these methods). 

What really made the State possible was that men, in their sin, have loved statism, have lusted for power, and have whored themselves out to the kingdoms of men. It is impossible to imagine the American empire ever gaining such status as it has unaccompanied by the lies that have come with it (eg., “this is the land of the free”). These things had to be there, and they were. The American State didn’t shoot its way to power and out-gun us, in which case we just need to double-down on our stockpiling and then maybe we can take them on. Rather, it exploited the idolatry within men, and allowed this idolatry to necessarily turn men away from the Lord, in order to get proud, patriotic slaves on its side who apologize for its power and prestige. 

Men have to turn their hearts back to God and stop believing in these people and their claims to moral, legal, economic, and spiritual legitimacy if they ever want to break out of the Egyptian bondage they have gotten themselves into. Guns hardly have anything to do with liberty when we realize the sinful ideology of statism that empowers these political systems, where our neighbors would sooner side with the tyrants killing one of their neighbors than they would the poor soul who they executed on a bogus search warrant.

We do not need to shoot our way out of Egypt, and neither did God’s children when they escaped the statist bondage of the Egyptians in Biblical times. We need only to get right with God again. As the psalmist recounts to God, “It was not by their sword that they took the land; their arm did not bring them the victory. It was by Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your face, for you favored them” (Psalm 44:3). We need to put our faith in God, not in firearms. Can American gun-clingers say with the psalmist, “I do not trust in my bow, nor does my sword save me” (Psalm 44:6)?

At any rate, the power that can come from men subordinating themselves to God rather than other men, and a realization that we’re up against an ancient and evil institution of plunder, supersedes the collective power of mass firearm ownership. If men had all the guns in the world and remained statists, they could not fight statism. But if men repented from their statism and destroyed all the idols they hold in their hearts, they could melt their guns down tomorrow and be free without them. Because our captors, being physically outnumbered anyway, depend more on men being fools than they do men being unarmed.