Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

Many who seek liberty believe it is possible to escape all forms of authority or rulership, including God’s. A common mantra among some secular anarchists is “no gods, no masters.” They argue that individuals should not submit to any higher power, contending that even the God of the Bible is merely another tyrant who imposes arbitrary rules, that His word was simply another scheme devised by men to maintain control over others, or that God is no different than the very sources of the political slavery we find ourselves in today.

Without seeing that God is entirely opposed to the systems of the world and offers the only way out of them, these people end up rejecting God in their quest for liberty and autonomy as just another lie. In their attempt to break free from the false gods of the State, they end up disregarding God or even seeing Him as just another part of the ways in which the rulers fool people into being their slaves. In their rightful and even righteous attempt to do away with human rulers, they neglect the rulership of God and end up discarding the good with the bad — effectively “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”

Others view “religion” as a purely private or spiritual matter, disconnected from questions of social order. They argue that “you can freely practice any religion you choose in a free society,” as if such matters of religion—a profound impact on the way men think—are separate from political philosophy or ideology in general. There are at least two problems with this thinking: first, the gospel of the Kingdom of God is inherently a political message, centered on liberating humanity from the dominion of man; and second, true liberty cannot be achieved apart from God.

The fallacy of secular anarchism

Rejecting God has led to the very statist society that now exists, as men have forsaken God’s rule in favor of human rulers. As the Bible states, “They have rejected Me as their king. Just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods” (1 Sam 8:7-8). By turning away from God’s sovereignty, people have created the very conditions of state control that they now seek to escape. This is true whether one explicitly seeks a State in their rejection of God, or believes they can do without God at any rate. For any people who believe they can live without God will inevitably find false gods being raised up around them.

To have included God in their rejection of all authority has been a mistaken conflation. That some men have sought false gods to rule over them is no justification for removing God from the picture. Statism, which represents a form of god-seeking, is not akin to following the Lord God. In fact, statism is rooted in a rejection of God. Men have not merely sought political gods and their laws, but have “failed to keep God’s covenant and refused to live by His law” (Psalm 78:10). Statism is not just another religion among many false ones, but a false religion that stands in opposition to God. It is born out of a rejection of God’s laws. God showed us the way to live free under Him, yet men refused to heed that call. “Though I wrote for them the great things of My law, they regarded them as something strange” (Hosea 8:12).

Rejecting God entirely because men have bought into false gods is a grave error, as true freedom cannot exist without Him. Those who deny God’s authority will inevitably submit to the rule of false gods. The real dichotomy is not gods or no gods, as many see the issue, but who is your god? Who is your king? Will you submit to the Lord, who grants liberty? Or will you be ruled by the human gods of the world? All who will not be ruled by God in their hearts and minds will be ruled by false gods out of contracted compulsion. You can either be a free soul under God, or you can be property of the State. These are the only choices. Godless anarchism is a myth, just as much so as “godly statism” is a contradiction. Statelessness is impossible without God. All rejections of God lead down the path of statism, and everyone who wishes to get away from statism must seek God as their ruler. 

This is why it is necessary to point out that the “Christian anarchist” position is better understood as Christarchism or Godarchism. We are not advocating “no gods” or “no rulers” so much as we are no archists but the Lord.

Rejecting God does not lead to liberty. Rather, the “atheist” worldview is inherently tied to statism, as people who deny God’s sovereignty will inevitably replace Him with human rulers as their new deities. This tendency to substitute political overlords for the one true God is a defining characteristic of those who turn away from God. “Today you have rejected your God, who saves you from all your troubles and afflictions, and you have said to Him, ‘No, set a king over us'” (1 Samuel 10:19). 

This means there really are no atheists, only men who fall into the hands of other gods when they abandon the Lord. Theocracy is an inescapable concept. All men are religious. The real question is which theocracy do they want to live under? The anarchistic rule by God? Or the statist rule of men? 

Contrary to the “no gods” anarchists who camp God in with their general disdain for rulers and think we must abandon all these things if we want to be liberated, there is actually no liberty in denying the Lord. The real reason we have found ourselves enslaved today is not that we have sought God or failed to purge ourselves of all religious superstition, but precisely because men have refused to be ruled by God. Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants. We are ruled by men today because men refused to be ruled by God.

Denying God leads to captivity

God has saved His people from evil statists time and time again when they cried out to the Lord for help and realized their great errors in chasing after false gods. But contrary to those who suggest that following the Lord God is on par with the religion of statism, that saying men must be ruled by God is the same error as the enslaving ideology of statism, what has led to man’s captivity by men has always been turning away from God. God offers to liberate those who seek Him, 

“But they were disobedient and rebelled against You; they flung Your law behind their backs. They killed Your prophets, who had admonished them to return to You. They committed terrible blasphemies. So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them” (Nehemiah 9:26-27). 

Our captivity to political rulers is explained in that we have turned away from God and were handed over to the statists for our sins, not that we were subdued by some pacifying religion of the scripture, as those anarchist who deny God tend to see things. 

“The Israelites did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals. Thus they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed after various gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and provoked the LORD to anger, for they forsook Him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. Then the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of those who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Wherever Israel marched out, the hand of the LORD was against them to bring calamity, just as He had sworn to them. So they were greatly distressed” (Judges 2:11-15).

It isn’t that men have bought into any old gods, all which are equally the same, but that they bought into false gods. God has sent us saviors—Jesus Christ chief among them—to guide men in the way, and they whored themselves out to other gods, eg., human rulers. The world has been a cycle of God leading men in the way, man’s rebellion from God, subsequent judgment in the form of state tyranny, and an eventual crying out to God again. 

“Then the LORD raised up judges, who saved them from the hands of those who plundered them. Israel, however, did not listen to their judges. Instead, they prostituted themselves with other gods and bowed down to them. They quickly turned from the way of their fathers, who had walked in obedience to the LORD’s commandments; they did not do as their fathers had done. Whenever the LORD raised up a judge for the Israelites, He was with that judge and saved them from the hands of their enemies while the judge was still alive; for the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning under those who oppressed them and afflicted them” (Judges 2:16-18). 

Godly men create good times, good times create ungodly men, ungodly men create hard times, and hard times lead men back to the Lord. God tells His people to avoid the ways of the world and its systems if they want to prosper and live free, but they refuse to heed the lesson, repent, and have God as their only King. 

“They mingled with the nations and adopted their customs. They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons. They shed innocent blood— the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. They defiled themselves by their actions and prostituted themselves by their deeds. So the anger of the LORD burned against His people, and He abhorred His own inheritance. He delivered them into the hand of the nations, and those who hated them ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them and subdued them under their hand. Many times He rescued them, but they were bent on rebellion and sank down in their iniquity” (Psalm 106:35-43). 

God abandons statists 

When men turn away from God, which they do namely by setting up systems of human government and supporting them (1 Sam 8:6-8), God likewise turns His back on them and hands them over to man-gods who rule over them with force instead of with providential care.

“This is what the LORD says: ‘You have forsaken Me; therefore, I have forsaken you into the hand of [king] Shishak’” (2 Chron 12:5).

The reason we are occupied by enemies today (ie., by human government) is not that we failed to reject all gods, as those anarchist who deny God believe to be the path to liberty, but that we sought after man-gods to protect us and provide for us instead of the Lord.

“I have forsaken My house; I have abandoned My inheritance. I have given the beloved of My soul into the hands of her enemies” (Jeremiah 12:7).

This narrative of God handing those who turn away from Him over to their enemies runs throughout all scripture, showing how we’re in slavery today for denying God, not for failing to reject the Lord as the “no gods” mantra says. 

“They forgot the LORD their God, and He sold them into the hand of Sisera the commander of the army of Hazor, and into the hands of the Philistines and the king of Moab, who fought against them” (1 Samuel 12:9).

The sure way to get plundered by men is to believe you can live autonomously from God, who is the one who hands us over to statists when we sinfully believe that human government is needed to provide for us. 

“I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and deliver them into the hands of their enemies. And they will become plunder and spoil to all their enemies” (2 Kings 21:14). 

The state slavery we live under today is a price we pay for turning away from God. This is the real error of those who toss out God along with their understandable disdain for the systems of this world. Men think they can turn their backs on the Lord their God without falling into the hands of other gods, eg., men who calling themselves the “government.” The real problem is not that men failed to avoid religion entirely (an impossibility), but that they went chasing after other gods than the Lord. This is the reason we are handed over to our enemies. 

“When the people ask, ‘For what offense has the LORD our God done all these things to us?’ You are to tell them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so will you serve foreigners in a land that is not your own’” (Jeremiah 5:19).

Those who turn their backs on God forgo His providential care and quickly find themselves living under the thumb of tyrants. 

“I will set My face against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee when no one pursues you” (Leviticus 26:17).

We become the captives of human rulers when we forsake God as our King and turn from His ways. This sin leads to bondage.

“They devoted themselves to doing evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger. So the LORD was very angry with Israel, and He removed them from His presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained, and even Judah did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God, but lived according to the customs Israel had introduced. So the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them and delivered them into the hands of plunderers, until He had banished them from His presence. When the LORD had torn Israel away from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king, and Jeroboam led Israel away from following the LORD and caused them to commit a great sin. The Israelites persisted in all the sins that Jeroboam had committed and did not turn away from them. Finally, the LORD removed Israel from His presence, as He had declared through all His servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their homeland into Assyria, where they are to this day” (2 Kings 17:17-23).

Though God has revealed the path to true freedom through submission to His sovereign rule, men have instead pursued the false gods of this world and found themselves dominated by men for doing so. Far from seeking to be ruled by God being antithetical to liberty, as many secular anarchists think, it is abandoning God for false that men wind up living in captivity. Rejecting the Almighty in a misguided quest for some sort of autonomous liberty merely shows that men love being punished, because they will soon wind up in the hands of false gods who plunder them for all they’re worth. 

“I have raised children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know; My people do not understand. Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who act corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him. Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep rebelling? Your head has a massive wound, and your whole heart is afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness— only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil. Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners devour your fields before you— a desolation demolished by strangers. And the Daughter of Zion is abandoned like a shelter in a vineyard, like a shack in a cucumber field, like a city besieged” (Isaiah 1:2-8). 

Is all lost? 

Though God has often punished rebellious people by delivering them into the hands of their enemies, which explains our captivity today, He has also frequently shown mercy to those who repent and cry out to Him. Almost all of the verses in the Biblical stories about being handed over to our enemies are accompanied by God mercifully rescuing those who He had just chastised. Lest God be seen as nothing more than a God of judgment, the Lord has consistently offered freedom and liberty to those willing to follow Him, yet men have stubbornly refused to listen to His word, even going so far as to mock and murder those who deliver this message.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling! Look, your house is left to you desolate” (Matt 23:27-28). 

God’s judgment is evident in the fact that humans are ruled by governments and subjugated under the dominion of other men today. However, these judgments are not permanent. They result from humanity’s rebellion and desire to remain in it. 

If people were to abandon their fear of other men, which leads them to establish and support human governments, and instead fear the Lord, they could reverse the captivity that has come from turning away from God. As the Psalmist writes, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him” (Psalm 103:13). We are ruled by men only because we refused to be ruled by God. The judgment that God brings upon a statist people who rebel against His rule is not without end. God’s anger is fleeting (Psa 30:5). 

But liberty cannot be achieved without turning to God. If people wish to break free from the Egyptian bondage we currently face, they must return to the Lord. Entertaining the fantasy of a secular, anarchist society where people do not need a ruler, whether earthly or divine, only ensures they will remain under the control of human rulers. Ultimately, people will either make God their ruler, in which case they will have no need for human rulers, or they will reject God, in which case they will be ruled by other men.

There is no society without archists entirely. But there is a society without human archists. There is a kingdom awaiting us where the Lord is the only archist. Repent, and seek the Kingdom of God.