[This is part 10 in a series on God and justice. See part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

Most people believe that human civil government is both “necessary” and “inevitable.” Even some who agree that it’s unnecessary still think it’s unavoidable, as if States exist by some law of nature that makes them destined to scourge the earth forever. Many assume we are stuck in an endless, perpetual cycle of tyranny from which there is no escape. We should just acquiesce in our bondage and give up trying to seek a righteous and godly society that isn’t built upon the violent foundation of the present kingdoms of this world, because violent political (dis)orders are (supposedly) all we can ever get.

It is curious that men accept this allegedly inescapable fate of living under human rulers. For it is really only the belief that human civil government is “necessary” or “inevitable” that enables its existence. It is by thinking that political rule is a permanent and immovable feature of social life that helps to assure it continues unquestioned.

But did God say that men are permanently stuck with States? This would appear to be a difficult position to defend. God did not establish any civil governments in the early days of creation or after the Great Flood, where one might expect them to be created if they were truly part of God’s intended means of man’s social organization. Nor did He ever instruct men to set them up. Instead, men set up these statist systems in their rebellion to God, which God reluctantly allows to rule over people as a consequence for abandoning His rulership. While those who erect them are wicked men who are bent on plundering other people, they are sold to the naive masses as being necessary to their peace and security, who then rationalize the existence of these governments under the assumption that they would be ruled by other men without them, not realizing that by forsaking the Lord’s protection and trusting in human rulers to “protect” them, they invite the very evils upon themselves that they sought to avoid. As Bible commentator Matthew Henry had seen, “Those that would not serve the God that made them were justly made to serve their enemies that sought to ruin them.”

Humans were not created by God to be the property of men who call themselves the “government.” Rather, He intended for men to live freely, exercising dominion over His creation, not subjugating their fellow man. Statism (ie., a society under political rule) is neither necessary nor inevitable. The subjugation of men that comes under civil government is a divine judgment upon mankind’s sin of believing in such systems and reaping exactly the evils they have sown. It is not just an institution that appeared from nowhere to victimize people who didn’t deserve it. States are a curse sent by God upon those who have turned their hearts to these wicked systems. Therefore, if we repent of this sin that has led to bondage under human rulers, God could lift the curse and allow us to live freely under the Lord as our King, as He originally intended things to be before men began making men their kings.

There is nothing inevitable about human government, assuming that men are willing to seek the Kingdom of God as an alternative form of social organization. Statism, thought of here as the existence of a political apparatus that plunders and enslaves people as its method of administering goods and services, is a divine punishment for sinful philosophy or ideology of statism, conceived of here as the idea that we should be ruled by men rather than God. It is man’s rebellion against God that brings these systems about, not some natural law that says they’re the only way to have society and civilization. The existence and evils of human government is the price that men pay for failing to seek the Kingdom of God. Their tyrannies and injustices are what men receive for abdicating their Godly responsibilities to family and neighbors over to human rulers who gladly do these things in order to rule over them. State slavery is not a necessary feature of human existence, but rather a system set up by men in their sinful thinking that States are needed or order their societies.

Repentance from statism

We don’t have to live as victims of a plunder state. These things have come upon us because we trusted in men rather than God to provide for us, and God sent the curse of state rule accordingly and deservedly. Human rulers are not inescapable, but come as a divine punishment for not seeking the Kingdom of God — for not loving your neighbor as yourself and serving them on your own, and instead coveting your neighbor’s property through socialist systems as a means of “providing” for his welfare and protection.

Scripture never seems to suggest that we’re stuck with human civil government no matter what we do, but rather that it is always a result of our sin and God having sent this evil upon the sinners who sought it. We read instead that God is merciful (Psa 103:8-10), seeks repentance among men rather than their destruction (Ezek 18:32), and is willing to turn back the curses He has sent upon them for their own evils (Joel 2:13). We see everywhere in scripture that God wants His people to return to Him and do things His way, that He doesn’t want His people to live under the curse of statism forever but desires they return to the blessed work of His kingdom.

If men repent from these systems, sincerely confess their complicity in these evils, and turn away from their wicked reverence for politicians, law enforcement, and the military, God stands ready to welcome us back and providentially guide us towards a free, peaceful, and prosperous society.

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

One of our great sins has been to turn our duties and responsibilities to love and serve our neighbors over to the Egyptians who carry it out through taxation and violence, rather than fulfill our social obligations to our neighbors ourselves. Our grave and disastrous sin has been to hand what we might call “governance” over to the civil fathers of this world who carry out these things by force, by exercising authority over our people rather than everyone serving one another through voluntary charity and love of their neighbors. Statism is the sin of having other gods before the Lord and violating the commandments against theft, covetousness, and murder.

We have to remove the abomination of statism and human rule from the land if we ever hope to have God on our side in a movement to be liberated from the yoke of man’s kingdoms. Abandoning the false idols of man-made legal systems, which distort and pervert the principles of law and justice and liberty, and focusing on directly protecting and serving our neighbors through voluntary networks instead, is a necessary step toward averting divine judgment, which has come upon us only because men have trusted in men to rule over them rather than God.

“For if you really correct your ways and deeds, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the foreigner and the fatherless and the widow, and if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever” (Jeremiah 7:5-7).

We have to turn away from political systems completely if we wish to make our society God-centered again, as darkness and light do not mix. For now, our people are still caught worshiping and praising their captors in a Stockholm Syndrome that they can’t shake. We’re living under the curse of statism, and the injustices, beatings, and incarcerations that come with it, because men refused to listen to God and avoid the man-made kingdoms of the world. Against the Lord’s counsel, they chased after the political systems of this world and adopted their violent means of “serving” one another (Mark 10:42-45). 

Life or death

Things cannot go on forever the way they stand now, as God always destroys these sinful systems of man — or simply allows them to destroy themselves. Even on a basic level they are not economically viable and sustainable. Human government is based on plunder of other people’s property and produces nothing itself, though it hands out many benefits to those who are willing to take a bite out of their neighbor and receive them and put a yoke around their necks in the process. States live parasitically on private production and eventually sap production for all its worth and grind their economic systems to a halt. Such societies are not sustainable in the long run, even if they may produce an artificial prosperity for some time that helps to rope people into supporting them.

The sooner that men repent of statism and seek another kingdom—the Kingdom of God—that is not like these worldly systems we have known, the sooner they might begin to avoid the utter desolation and decline brought on by the kingdoms of man. If men want a social order that lasts and actually serves one another, a social system that is actually serves “the people” as opposed to the socialist ones that operate in that name, they will have to seek the Kingdom of God. The worldly political systems that men have entrusted to provide for their defense, safety, and welfare, under the assumption that God and religion has nothing to do with these things, are the ways of sin and death.

State tyranny as divine correction

To find true life and to not be subjugated by human systems of law, we must follow God’s ways and never return to the bondage of Egypt again. God brings His people out of the bondage of Egypt where they live as slaves (Ex 20:2), so that they will remember the Lord their God and never go that way again. The tyrannies that are an inherent part of all statist societies serve God’s purpose of rebuking His people and leading them back to the Lord as their only hope. The evils of statism serve as a lesson in the sin of statism that is meant to show people their inability to violate the providential law without consequences, as they believed they could when they embarked upon state building schemes and an expansion of these socialist systems. The collapse of political societies shows men their grave error of believing they could live without God as their King, which necessarily means to live without a State to rule over them. The evils that always come about in a statist society are meant to get men to repent and turn back to the Lord. Short of repentance, changing our ways, and turning away from the evils of statism that men partake in, God walks away from a people who have walked away from Him. “Then I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me” (Hosea 5:15). 

Political power as a rebellion against God

Statism is always a rebellion against God and His divine instruction to live freely and not be like the Egyptians and Romans of the world who use force to rule over their people. All political societies are demonstrative of a people who have turned away from the Lord their God and raised up man-gods in His place. Living in captivity to men is proof that a people failed to obey God’s law in the first place and are now living under Pharaohs and Caesars for this mistake. Living under a State is all the evidence one needs that a people have walked away from God. When men neglect God and decide that human rulers should be in charge of administering law, justice, and welfare for them instead of themselves, they have “ignored the Rock who brought them forth” and “forgot the God who gave them birth” (Deuteronomy 32:18). When men believe they need government police, judges, and prosecutors to carry out the business of “justice” for them under the fear of man that leads them to believe they wouldn’t be protected otherwise, they are like the Israelites who “failed to remember the Lord their God who delivered them from the hands of all their enemies on every side” (Judges 8:34). Those who think they need human lawmakers and government police officers are people who “forgot God their Savior, who did great things in Egypt” (Psalm 106:21). 

God tells us to follow Him instead of the false man-kings of the world. He tells us we must be doers of the word if we want to avoid becoming subjects of human lawmakers and government “law enforcement” officers. “You must walk in all the ways that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess” (Deuteronomy 5:33; cp. 4:40, 6:18, 30:20). If we fail to love our neighbors as ourselves and protect them on our own, this “governance” is inevitably handed over to human rulers who wield the sword against us to fund their operations — who “protect and serve” the people with the police baton and the threat of the dungeon or bayonet. 

Turning back to God

It is seeking righteousness and justice that is necessary for us to find life, as the ways of unrighteousness and injustice, which are part of the political societies of this world, lead only to death. God calls us to these high moral and political standards, which to be sure is to reject the political systems of this world, because He wants us to have life.

“Seek good, not evil, so that you may live. And the LORD, the God of Hosts, will be with you, as you have claimed. Hate evil and love good; establish justice in the gate” (Amos 5:14-15).

We have not hated evil so long as we continue to participate in the political systems of the world as voters, cheerleaders, or (even worse) as men who strap on boots for Pharaohs or go to work in his tax offices. We have not sought good so long as we have failed to organize our neighbors into congregations and networks that are intended to look after their own needs without any alleged necessity of a welfare state, police, or national military to provide “defense” for the “country.”

If anyone sees the captivity we’re living under today for having sold ourselves and our neighbors into bondage by failing to serve them and apologizing for the evil system of human government that has taken its place, let them repent and call upon others to do the same. It is time for us to leave Egypt and cleave to the Lord. 

We ought to be weeping and repenting at the statist slave society we have brought upon ourselves, and praying to God to deliver us captives from the hands of men. 

“Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD. Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: ‘We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven.’ You have covered Yourself in anger and pursued us; You have killed without pity. You have covered Yourself with a cloud that no prayer can pass through. You have made us scum and refuse among the nations. All our enemies open their mouths against us. Panic and pitfall have come upon us— devastation and destruction. Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes overflow unceasingly, without relief, until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees. My eyes bring grief to my soul because of all the daughters of my city. Without cause my enemies hunted me like a bird. They dropped me alive into a pit and cast stones upon me. The waters flowed over my head, and I thought I was going to die. I called on Your name, O LORD, out of the depths of the Pit. You heard my plea: ‘Do not ignore my cry for relief.’ You drew near when I called on You; You said, ‘Do not be afraid.’ You defend my cause, O Lord; You redeem my life. You have seen, O LORD, the wrong done to me; vindicate my cause! You have seen all their malice, all their plots against me. O LORD, You have heard their insults, all their plots against me— the slander and murmuring of my assailants against me all day long. When they sit and when they rise, see how they mock me in song. You will pay them back what they deserve, O LORD, according to the work of their hands. Put a veil of anguish over their hearts; may Your curse be upon them! You will pursue them in anger and exterminate them from under Your heavens, O LORD” (Lamentations 3:40-66).

Prayer

Lord God in Heaven, turn back society to your old ways and let us be turned the same. Show our people their foolish ways and expose their sin. Bring us to repentance and help us to seek Your kingdom. Lord, we’ve been living in captivity to men for so long that our people don’t know any other way. Reveal to everyone Your ways and free us from these Pharaohs who have extorted us for so long, as a just punishment for our own evils of trusting in them. Cleanse us and wash us and bring us into Your Kingdom. Divinely deliver us from the hands of men and part the waters for us to walk through. I apologize on behalf of the human race that the men You created turned Your inheritance over to strangers and brought us all into bondage rather than the liberty You desire for us. Renew our minds and souls and impress Your law upon every man and woman’s hearts that they may turn away from the lies of the kingdoms of this world that were set up in rebellion to Your natural order, and lead us in the right way. Help us to be strong against our enemies and knock them down if they come for us as we work to carry out the things You command us to seek. Keep these demonic officers of Pharaoh from putting their boots down on our necks as we seek to serve You. Lord I believe You providentially provide for those who seek You and divinely deliver those who follow after Your ways. We’re going to trust in You now to provide for all our needs. You’re our only hope. We no longer believe in men. We will no longer ride on horses or trust in chariots. It’s all in Your hands, God. Help us to seek Your liberty and show others the way. Amen.