Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

It is encouraging seeing others discuss the “religious” element to statism, i.e., the “secular” ideology behind the State, especially considering that very few people go this far. Most professing Christians do not see that attempting to mix God and statism is to buy into a false religion, and most secular libertarian theorists are prone to thinking of the State as founded simply in economic illiteracy and poor philosophical reasoning rather than a deeply embedded sin in men. 

One article happily refers to statism as a false religion, pointing out that, in our society, we’re under the “gods of statism [who demand we] empty [our] pockets and step through another hoop at every turn.” And it seeks to go further in explaining how statism is not simply just an ideology or economic theory, as secular libertarians are likely to think, but is a humanistic religion. 

“Rarely is statism or its ugly sisters thought of in religious terms. The discussion rarely ever moves from political ideology to the religious commitments of statism.”

Unless we point out the sin-nature of statism, as this article suggests, we’re never going to be able to fight it. As the author says, “this fact is why it has been such a hard beast to throw off – we are not getting to the heart of the issue.” This is why many secular libertarians are still stuck believing that if only everyone read Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig von Mises, or Murray Rothbard, they would convert to libertarian, free-market thinking — that the logical, reasonable, moral, and historical arguments for a free society are sufficient to turn men from statism, if only they would listen to the economists!

The problem with thinking that statism is just an ignorance issue is (1) that it not only ignores the religious nature of statism, where men are spiritually invested in their false gods and not prepared to let go of them upon the presentation of sound arguments, but also (2) neglects to acknowledge that we’re ruled by wicked plunderers who aren’t about to give up their property transfer schemes because some economist says they don’t benefit the people on the whole, which they already know. Given the spiritual nature of such ideas as well as the evil motivations behind them, we need more than simple economic reasoning to combat them. We have to address the religious component to the ideas of the world.

An inadequate definition of statism

While some recognize the religious nature of statism, they fail to fully reject the State as inherently ungodly. Rather than completely denounce the State as contrary to God’s commands, they inconsistently maintain the possibility of a righteous “civil government” that could theoretically become more God-honoring.

As this article defines it, 

“Statism is a governmental concentration of power in myriad areas of the economic life of individuals. In other words it’s a big government that has its tentacles in all sorts of places it has no business placing its tentacles, and it has way too many tentacles to begin with. It is when there are regulations, taxes, and licensure law for just about everything, including your homemade soaps.”

This suggests that some tentacles of the beast system are legitimate, just that they shouldn’t be spread everywhere. As long as the cancer hasn’t metastasized, it is acceptable to keep the tumor. Again, this is better than most people. But it’s still not the ways of God’s kingdom, which isn’t statist whatever.

Moreover, there is no such thing as a “limited government.” This is a utopian myth. As the anarchist philosopher Murray Rothbard once said, “The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian” (Rothbard, For a New Liberty). The man searching for a State that doesn’t foray into the realm of “statism” as defined above is the man who is seeking something that doesn’t and cannot exist. History has proven it many times. The “United States” began as the one of the supposedly most restrained governments in the world, only to evolve into the world’s empire in less than a couple hundred years.

We should certainly point out that the State today has made its way into all areas of formerly private life, since many people cannot even see this as a problem or even recognize what it has become. However, to frame our political problem as one of only “too much” government is a misconception that treats state power as if it is not inherently problematic and presents the solution as scaling government back to its “proper size” — however that is to be determined. This arbitrary definition overlooks the more fundamental problems with all States—they are based in theft, murder, and rebellion against God—and makes out the problem to be one of a government that merely overstepped its old constitutional limits that it needs to return to.

It doesn’t make sense to say that our political system today is the “interventionist state” and to define statism in this way. This wrongly assumes there is such a thing as a “non-interventionist state,” as a State that won’t expand its power. It also assumes there is some State that is not based on tax-theft and coercion when all political institutions use aggressive violence against the innocent. The problem is not just that it has evolved and worsened over time, but that it was founded in these very transgressions against God and His law of liberty. “Statism” isn’t just when the State embarks upon economic intervention or overt socialist planning a few decades down the road after men (sinfully) raised one up; it is when men form States whatever and trust in them to protect them. Statism isn’t just when the State becomes socialist and starts intervening more than it was “supposed” to or more than the “founding fathers” had supposedly intended; States are inherently socialist from the start, substituting “public” control for private, replacing public religion—tax funded goods and services—for private religion based on voluntary mutual aid and brotherly love.

When we define statism as simply an expansion of the state system rather than in terms of the sinful and violent ideology behind all statism, we’re likely to make people think that the only problem here is “big government” or some wrong turn that was made only recently or something — as if things didn’t go bad until that darn Obama took office. But “big government” always had arbitrariness built into its claims, suggesting that “small government” was all good and well and that it only became bad once it started regulating the hair-cutting industry. The sinful, statist turn that men make does not occur half-way through a political systems existence, but rather from the very start, when men seek protection and order in political systems whatever. (See 1 Samuel 8, where seeking man-kings is demonstrated to be a wrong-turn away from God from the start, before they ever even got their kings). 

It is better to define statism as the religio-ideology behind all systems of state power, period, rather than just as ‘when the government oversteps its bounds’ or ‘when it gets bigger than I wanted it to.’ There is no such thing as a non-aggressive State, insofar as it is still defined as a “State,” i.e., a coercive monopoly that has seized the central command posts of society in an attempt to usurp the social order. States always use violence against the innocent and substitute the decrees of men for God’s moral commandments. 

There’s no denying that the State was, at one point, nowhere near the size it is today. But it should be difficult for anyone to pretend there was some glory day when the State was supposedly “Christian” or non-evil, non-plunderous, or non-statist. What age are we referring to here? When slavery was declared to be a “legal” institution? Besides any such historical observation, we should know a priori that there is no such thing as a Christian State. We should know, in theory and principle, that the only true theocratic order is anarchist.

These political conspirators may have not obtained all the powers they lusted for at the outset of setting up the American government, which can never be obtained immediately anyway. But they were surely lusting from the start, and they eventually did achieve this status of total statism, and it was not by coincidence but because this is what these systems always lead to. When we act as if the only problem with the State is that we strayed from the ol’ glory days, we act as if things didn’t have to turn out this way, when they evidently were inevitable given the construction of state systems. The expansion of state power we are living under today is no accident, but part of the original plan. Romanticizing some old great day of the “constitutional republic” that “was never supposed to turn out this way” is just the rationalization of men whose false gods have let them down. It is a mind trick men play on themselves to guard their own eyes from seeing the inherent tendency for state power to be expanded, given its nature of being based in theft and violence.

An arbitrary definition

While we should be receptive to those who expose the issues within our religio-statist society, which most fail to recognize, we must still, for the sake of God, liberty, and truth, challenge the notion that statism is problematic only when it spirals out of control. This view implies that statism is otherwise destined for greatness, when in reality it is always set out for plunder. This arbitrary conception of “statism” is flawed, as it is defined solely by the loss of control, not the inherently plunderous nature of the State itself.

Here again we see the arbitrariness in such thinking. As he says, 

“Statism is when the state is no longer ‘under God.’ In terms of divine providence everything is always under God, but I am speaking of when the state no longer sees itself as under God’s authority or as God’s ministers – in other words, when the state is in rebellion to God. Romans 13 describes civil authorities as God’s servants who punish the evildoer and reward the righteous. Statism is when the government stops acting as God’s minister to punish evildoers and reward the righteous, and they start meddling in the free economic interactions of innocent citizens as a regulatory-state, tax-state, and licensure-state. This is precisely not punishing the evildoer and rewarding the righteous as a servant of God. It is a transition to actually pretending to be god, playing god, acting as god, picking the winners and losers, punishing and burdening the innocent with these things.”

There is no such thing as a “State under God” or a “Christian State.” All States are antithetical to God because they are all founded in theft, murder, and idolatry. And there is no such thing as liberty under a State. Liberty is under God.

We cannot fool ourselves into thinking that, at some grand and glorious day in the past, that the State was a good ol’ servant of God but just got off-course somewhere along the road. Statism was born in a rebellion against God. As the prophet made clear,

“They set up kings, but not by Me. They make princes, but without My approval. With their silver and gold they make themselves idols, to their own destruction” (Hosea 8:4).

It wasn’t a “transition” somewhere along the way where the State turned from being a “godly state” to a “statist state,” or where it went from some sort of rightful “civil government” into “statism.” The transition from God to statism was when States were erected in the first place to replace a godly social order, not when the State supposedly abandoned God half-way through its existence. 

Indeed, to get very scriptural, this “statism” that the author speaks of—defined as some deviation from a “good State” into a bad and “big government”—is the very punishment from God for believing it ever could have worked. As the prophet Hosea also said, “Israel has rejected good; an enemy will pursue him” (Hosea 8:3). When men disobey God by setting up States, He gives them their very worst nightmares. God-fearing men don’t dare set up States for this reason.

This line of thinking continues, based on his definition of statism as being the system of political violence expanded, rather than political violence period. He says, 

“Statism is when the state becomes an authority in itself, instead of recognizing itself as God’s servants and thus subject to what God demands of them. Statism is when the state is exalted to the highest authority.”

Again, there was no transition. The State has its origins in rebellion against God. Cain was the first politician (pre-Flood), who went out to form a city-state that was expressly noted to have been an act that had “went out from the presence of the Lord” (Genesis 4:16). And when the Israelites asked for a human king to be like all the rest of the world, God said “they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). And He said this not when the system had developed over time into “statism” (using his definition of a down-the-road deviation from God), but for the mere thought of desiring a king other than the Lord. 

The State was always an attempt to become an “authority in itself” — its own god. (And it doesn’t make much sense to say it should “recognize itself as God’s servants,” since this has always been the lie of the plunderers in power). The State was always an attempt to be “the highest authority,” such as when the builders of Babel said, “Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name” (Genesis 11:4). They were always shooting for the heavens and seeking to substitute men and their rule for God’s sovereignty and lordship. 

It didn’t just become this way over time; this was always the motivations of this institution. The State is an ancient plunder system born out of rebellion against God. If we are judging by the scriptures, statism is the sin against God par excellence. The prophets do not go around exhorting people merely to end their debauchery, though these things are also part of these societies; they are preaching the word of God to kings and king-worshipers, telling them that judgment is coming upon them for their trust in statist systems, which are always violent and transgress the law of God.

Things were no different on the American scene, though exceptionalist ways of thinking—think the idea of manifest destiny—have trained men to believe that the American State was somehow different than all others. Even the beloved “constitutional Republic” was hatched in a conspiracy against the people by the elites of the day who wanted to expand political power for themselves.

The good

I mean only to make light, loving correction of such arbitrariness as to think that States can be good (so long as they don’t develop into “statism” as defined). This pastor is otherwise exceptional compared to most others who preach unconditional obedience to this ungodly organization. But it is nevertheless a problem to think that it could be made godly or that it was ever not ungodly. 

Still, we must commend him for seeing that statism is a false god and hence the reality that all these “atheists” who believe they have given up a god or religion by buying into the statist ideology are not really “atheists” at all, but have a false god. As he says, 

“Being that statism has these religious commitments, we must conclude then that statism is not a neutral political ideology, for there is no such thing. It is instead a false religion, for there is only one True Religion. Being then that statism is a false religion, and not the one True Religion, this means then that statism is a declared enemy of Jesus Christ and His Church. Statism is particularly undermining to the Christian economic and social ethic. And the laws of statism train its citizens to obey another god, other than the one True God.”

No criticisms here. The State is indeed a false god that is in competition with the One True God. But then he slips back into arbitrariness. 

“It wasn’t always this way, but the source of most of our laws is not the triune God of the Bible. The state has rebelliously removed itself out from under God’s ultimate authority as the source of her laws.”

It was always this way. From the start. From Cain, Nimrod, up to the Assyrians, the Babylonians, Rome, and the present-day States of the modern age. State rulers removed themselves from under God’s law when they founded themselves, not over time once they overstepped some allegedly “limited” bounds they “weren’t supposed to” cross. We don’t read that Nimrod’s (the first post-flood politician) kingdom was all good and well until he became disobedient over time and launched a welfare program for the poor, but rather that such statecraft was disobedience from the moment it was conspired. We don’t read that the kings of Israel may turn out bad if they don’t follow God, but were guaranteed they would be before the Israelites even set them up (1 Samuel 8). Furthermore, we don’t read that “statism” is only sinful when we ask the king to run a thousand different agencies and pass a thousand different laws for us. It is actually much worse and even more basic than this. God says the very act of asking for a king was sinful (1 Sam 12:19).

Again, we can commend this article for pointing out that statism is edging ever-closer toward total statism, but this is just a matter of degree and not kind. As he points out, the executive branch alone has become a “lawmaker” in itself. 

“The executive branch does not make law, and yet functionally it does, as that is what everyone acts like when a new executive order comes out. The increase of executive orders in the last several presidencies has been astronomical.”

You won’t hear this even from most pastors, who hardly see anything having gone wrong with the State and still see it as the source of law and order in society, ordained by God to provide justice for “the people.”

But why should we have expected anything else? Of course it turned out this way! It had to, given the original violations of God’s commandments. The advocate of “limited government” is in the awkward and fallacious position of believing that it could have been any different, that it wasn’t “supposed to” go this way. They apparently don’t see that things are going just as the plunderous men who set up “governments” intended them to go. This doesn’t change because it took them centuries to fulfill their aims.

How did we get statism?

Since this article defines statism as simply the-state-gone-too-far rather than the inherently sinful idolatry behind the statist ideology period, and wants to hang onto some notion of ‘limited statism,’ he at first points to “responsibility” as being the main reason we got here (that is, where the State turned “statist” over time and left its old non-statist role). As he says, 

“Statism happens because men do not want to take responsibility. And in a responsibility vacuum, the state sweeps in to be the new man of the house. You don’t want to take responsibility to provide for your family? No problem, we’ve got a nice welfare state that will be the new provider. You don’t want to disciple, educate, and train up your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord? No problem, we’ve got government schools that can be the new parents. Statism is born out of man’s retreat from responsibility, and we surely will not overcome statism without retaking our responsibilities.”

This isn’t entirely wrong, and again it’s hitting the nail closer than most people can even swing on it. Surely not enough men have even realized this much. We indeed need to take responsibility and governance back into our own hands, and the State grew up in part by men forsaking their responsibilities to their families, neighbors, and communities. 

But it doesn’t tell the whole picture to say this alone, which I think is better explained by showing that statism arose when people walked away from God — from the time Cain “went out from the presence of the LORD” (Gen 4:16) and went and “built a city” (Gen 4:17). To explain things in terms of responsibility alone seems to reduce the argument to a secular one; even the secular libertarian could say this much. 

Alas, he sees that statism is really born out of walking away from God — though he is using his definition of statism here as “government turned bad.” 

“The rise of statism is due to a rejection of Christ. It is due to a lack of submission to Christ. Men have rejected Christ who is Lord of all who has authority and crown rights in every area of all of our lives and so now we are becoming more and more enslaved to the state.”

Aside from the notion of some limited, “godly government,” the article more or less redeems itself on this point by pointing out that statism is rooted in sin (though, once again, by “statism” he doesn’t mean the State per se, but only the-State-gone-too-far). 

“This…is a problem not of merely political ideology, or differences of opinion, or this or that; fundamentally this is a sin problem.”

Conclusion

While we can welcome the rare attack on the alleged divinity of the State, accepted by most of the “Christian” population, the article remains in the difficult position of saying that the State—the evil Babylonian system before us today—was ‘supposed to be’ something else, but just (for some reason) failed. “The State turned statist on us” is the silly position of those who think “civil government” just needs to get back to God. 

Now, it is true that the ideas of the people—and our age has been an increasingly atheistic one—have a bearing on the social systems before us. As he points out, 

“[Statism] can happen either through acts of force by the state, or through the ungodliness of a people calling out to their false god, the state, to save them.”

So one might be tempted to argue that the people just need to return to the Lord and then the State would be fixed. But I submit that if men returned to the Lord, they would never set up States to begin with and would realize the inherent sin in such systems. 

He seems to realize that:

“Statism is what happens when people accept this messiah-state into their hearts (please save us, ‘there should be a law about that!’). When we give in at certain points, we have given this false religion a foothold and it will creep into every area of life.”

But, he leads this statement off with “when the state takes on a Messiah complex,” as if it didn’t always do that from the beginning. 

He is certainly right to say that “statism, a false messiah-god, seeks to take over every area of life, away from Christ, and falsely claim an authority that it does not have.” But he would backpedal on this point by saying that it’s only when it does this, as if it could be any other way. 

All statism is excessive, and all of it is founded in sin. All States embark on a journey of “statism” as soon as they are launched. 

What we see is that there are a few godly anti-statists who, however, are missing the final leap to liberty under God. They are happily anti-statists insofar as they are not radical communist interventionists (which is not that commendable), but what they mean by this is being in opposition only to that system which oversteps its bounds. They are not anti-statists per se, but only oppose the State making a dive into economic controls, personal life, etc., as if it wasn’t always their ambition to do so. They oppose the all-around socialization of society, but don’t want to admit that all statism is socialist. 

I think we have to do better, given that there has never been this mythical “godly state” in history (not that the non-existence of something entirely disproves its possibility). 

While the author seeks to get at “the heart of the issue,” I’m afraid he hasn’t done it if people are left thinking that our goal is to make Babylon great again. Babylon was never great, and she was born in disobedience to God. We are to be seeking the Kingdom of God, not reforming the beast system or hoping that it reforms to our ways. It is not our job to “get the State back to God,” but to walk away from these systems entirely.  

I cannot safely assert this is what the author thinks. But I think we should still be clear that reforming the State, which seems to be implied in articles like this, is not our goal; spiritual regeneration and a return to Christ as the Lord, King, and Savior, is our way out of statism. These people half-way understand this, but cling to this elusive notion of a “godly civil government,” which they can never seem to tame.