Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

Proponents of the State often claim that “God gave us governments for law, order, and protection from foreign enemies.” Though they may oppose an expansion of state power from this supposedly “limited” role that they imagine it should be confined to, they don’t reject statism in general. In fact, they only define statism as an expansion of government beyond this limited conception (which is only ever limited in theory).

This idea serves to defend their veneration of the State as a god which they refuse to repent from. Instead of renouncing this idolatrous belief and seeing that God never commanded men to set up a State, they attempt to justify their idolatry by making the State out to be an institution blessed by God for the organization of civilization itself — a preconceived notion they held before attempting to find Biblical support for it.

The notion that human governments (which are man-made and self-deified) were given by God for “law and order” is not true. Rather, States are given by God as a punishment for adopting the sinful ideology of statism — a curse upon those who have chosen the ways of the world rather than the ways of the Lord.

Since many see that political systems always turn into tyrannies while also needing to defend their belief in the State as a “godly” and moral institution, they argue that human government is only problematic when the rulers stray from this supposed divine mandate of upholding law and order — as if an institution that has its genesis in theft and violence ever truly embodied it. We commonly hear the argument that we should only oppose the State when it demands we disobey God, as if this institution wasn’t born in disobedience to and rebellion against God at the outset. Unwilling to fully renounce this false god, they contend that “statism” refers solely to a State exceeding its “limited” purpose of upholding the law and providing national defense — implicitly granting the need for such an institution to begin with.

An arbitrary definition of statism?

This definition of “statism” as “big government” limits our understanding of statism as referring only to excessive state control that exceeds the supposedly “intended” or “constitutional” bounds. It excludes state control itself as worthy of criticism and responsible for the monster that it inevitably morphed into anyway. Under this narrow definition, it is only appropriate to label a communist as a statist, but not a constitutionalist. While communists seek total state control over all goods and services, constitutionalists desire state control “only” over justice, protection, and lawmaking. This limiting definition allows minimal statists to avoid being branded as rebels against God, even though the U.S. Constitution must be viewed as an ungodly document just as much as the foundational documents and ideas of any explicitly socialist state.

While some recognize the problems with an expanding empire and even come out against “statism,” they often narrowly define it as simply “big government” exceeding some “constitutional” limits to its power. The State is typically only condemned as a false god when it oversteps these boundaries that they believe should restrain it to a certain level of operation. Most people view state power as acceptable as long as the rulers stay “firmly in their place.”

Unfortunately many popular definitions today help support this view that statism is only defined as government-grown-out-of-control. Rather than define statism as the system of state rule itself, which is based in robbery and rebellion to God from the very beginning, they say that it’s “statism” only when there is a “concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government, often extending to government ownership of industry.” Another says that statism is “the principle that the government should own or control most of a country’s industry and economy.” Another Christian site, Christ Over All, says that statism is when the State goes “well beyond its intended function.” They define statism as only a government that has gone too far: “Statism is a political system in which the sphere of civil government exerts substantial, centralized control over much of society, including the economy and various other spheres.”

These are obviously arbitrary definitions. At what point does a State cross over to being statist? How is this to be measured? When government spending makes up 5% of GDP? Or is it 10%? Or some other means of defining it? When is it that state power becomes sinful? Once it embarks upon too much economic intervention? What is too much intervention? Especially considering there is no such thing as a State that doesn’t intervene upon men and their property.

All statism is ungodly

The scriptures clearly state that the establishment of human kings, even so-called “limited” ones, would lead to the downfall of the people and that setting up human rulers period is to deny God as your King — before these kings ever even have a chance to the expand their scope of power (1 Sam 8). They don’t say that they would be bad and statist only if you let them grow beyond some “constitutional” bounds or that statism is only sinful when it reaches these heights.

Far from being about “law and order,” this king-seeking is always inherently ungodly, rebellious, and plunderous. There is no such thing as a “Christian State,” despite claims to the contrary. All States arise through an abandonment of God and His anarcho-theocratic social order, ie., a stateless society with God as the sole ruler. God gave man dominion over the earth (Gen 1:26-28), but did not grant men dominion over other men.

It doesn’t matter how much political plunderers carve “In God We Trust” on the front of their extortionist courthouses, predatory police vehicles, or their inflationary paper currency — these are ungodly operations that exist to rob and rule “the people” they claim to protect, using slogans like “we the people” to fool the population into thinking the State is “us.” 

The false god of the “Constitutional Republic,” which is supposedly an exceptional and exemplary State in history, has done a lot to fool Americans into this idea that “their” government was founded on the good intentions of establishing law and order that “we need to get back to.” Though they may acknowledge that it’s “statist” now that it has grown, they see this as an “unconstitutional” departure from what it was “supposed to be” rather than a necessary and inevitable result of setting such systems up in the first place. They see the State as having deviated from its proper and limited course rather than such plunder and expansion being the very nature of these institutions. They see the United States system as having “gone wrong” or “become corrupt,” rather than us reaping the harvest of the evil seeds planted at its origins. They think the system became “broken” over time, as if it didn’t provide the means—the supposed authorization of power conferred by a man-made document—at its origins of becoming what it eventually did.

The popular idea that a State is bad only when it deviates from Christian ethics doesn’t make sense. The State is inherently unchristian and evil. It must violate basic commandments against theft and murder—not to mention having no other gods—to even come into existence, which is why we should expect nothing less than robbery, murder, and slavery from such an institution as it goes on over time. As one Christian libertarian, writing for The Bad Roman, says, 

“Christians who advocate for human rulers today tend to assume that God is only opposed to unjust rulers. But notably, the possibility of injustice is not the reason God gives for rejecting the Israelites’ request [for a king]. Rather, God warns them about actions that are common to all kings, such as taxation. Most strikingly, God says they will become the king’s slaves. God is not saying that they might become his slaves if he is unjust. God is saying that slavery is inherent whenever there is a king. To be ruled and taxed is to be a slave.”

Rather than recognizing the flaws that are intrinsic to all political systems, men are then able to think that the problem lies only with the “wrong” people in power — that it’s worthy to try and make Babylon “great again.” They believe that by voting for the “right” Pharaohs, the political system can be repaired from within. This ignores the deeper structural issues and instead places the blame on individual actors. In reality, the problem is not the specific individuals, but the very nature of the political system itself, which is designed to serve the interests of the elite. It was not an accident that the American Empire came to be what it is today. It was not a coincidence that evil seeds bear evil fruit.

The Babylonian state system is fundamentally flawed and cannot be fixed. There is no ideal state system to return to, no “good old days” of the Constitution in its proper form. Political systems are designed from the outset to exploit and plunder the people. That is the purpose of setting them up. It is the ambitions of the men who are behind them. The “statism” we see today was not an accidental or unintended outcome, as many claim in disbelief over the state of the country. It was a deliberate part of the system’s design. When the 19th-century anarchist Lysander Spooner posited that the Constitution “has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it,” it is the former that is the case. The Constitution did not merely fail to limit the new government it created, but actively empowered its expansion and growth. We’re reaping today the evils that our forefathers had sinfully sown by even allowing a State to be planted.

Men can fight against an arbitrarily conceived “statism” all they want, but they won’t do anything about it until the very root of state power (which they still support) is attacked. They must oppose statism altogether and pledge allegiance to God alone. The problems we face today are not mistakes, but the inevitable consequences of allowing a State to be established in the first place. This is the harvest of the sinful seeds sown by our forefathers. Those who hate excessive political power must oppose all political power. They must repent and turn back to the Lord. They must start living out the Kingdom of God as prescribed by God, which forbids us from adopting the political methods of the world.