[This is part 3 in a series “On Statism and Adultery.” See part one, two, four, five, six, seven]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

It is not just that men whore themselves out to States per se when they cheat on God with the man-made systems of the world, such that they are merely betraying God with some innocent gods that our lord, for some arbitrary reason, does not want us to associate with. Men are not simply cheating on God with another, equally valid system of government when they abandon God’s Kingdom for the kingdoms of men. Rather, they are chasing after all the evils that are intrinsic to these systems, which necessarily and always entail perversions of truth, law, and justice — the very things that God says He cares about the most. The adultery of statism is not just to lust after men per se, but to lust after man-made systems of “law” that represent everything that God is against: harassing men, stalking them, trapping them, spying on them, preying on them, beating them, robbing them, kidnapping them, caging them, enslaving them, and killing them. The idolatry and adultery of statism is necessarily inseparable from a longing for injustice and evils. Men don’t simply just admire the “law enforcement” officer as a man, but approve of his boots on the necks of their neighbors. They are never just fawning after the man, but everything that he represents: violently enforcing the man-made edicts of a man-made law system that says that all those who don’t comply with the arbitrary decrees of Caesars should be cracked over the head with a baton and thrown in a cage. Hence the common apathy to the violence of police, “If they would have just complied they wouldn’t have had to get mauled by a dog or shot.” The lust for police and soldiers and politicians is a lust for violence, bloodshed, war, slavery, injustice, and legal plunder. Statist adultery is never just cheating on God as such, but to cheat on Him with everything that is evil and unrighteous about the world. 

We should be sure to address the issue that God’s jealousy of statist adultery is not just that men are going after other men to praise and serve, but precisely that they are chasing after rulers, military might, law enforcers, and other agents of political systems that practice all the things God finds abhorrent and unjust about the world. Adulterers are not just adulterers, but statist adulterers, hence the two sisters of Ezekiel 23 who sought after Assyrian soldiers in the same way that men “support the troops” today. This adultery and whoredom from the scriptures we speak of is decidedly political in nature, representing man’s prostitution and idolatry of the kings and kingdoms of this world. Biblical adulterers are statists, and statists are people who support ungodly political plunder systems that are raised up and supported in rebellion to God. Whereas God offers to provide for His people in a free society without any centralized power structures and tells us that we must practice serving our neighbors through voluntary, charitable means that represent true service, statist whores tell us that we can only find these things in man’s political systems — that we need man-made “laws” and violent, tax-funded police to “protect and serve” our neighbors. The adulterous statists of the world tell us that we must covet our neighbors’ property for their welfare and that anyone who doesn’t pay into this system should be fined, caged, or shot. Perhaps this is why the commandment to have no other gods (ie., state rulers) before the Lord was the first of the Ten Commandments, for as soon as men prostitute themselves out to other gods (eg., presidents and military officers) to keep them “safe” and “free,” they will inevitably go on to violate the next moral commandments against theft and murder on which these political systems are based and will bring their people into captivity for whoring themselves out for the ostensible benefits of security and prosperity to be provided by authoritarian benefactors. 

The adultery of statism, whereby men claim that we need other men to rule over us if we are to find “freedom” and “security,” cannot then be detached from the evils that come along with these systems. To lust after presidents, congressmen, soldiers, and police is to lust after power, murder, theft, kidnappings, cagings, arbitrary edicts, perversions of law, systemic corruption, injustices, and all the other heinous things that these men practice as part of their “jobs” as rulers. It is not possible to remove statism—the ideology that promotes political political power and approves of this practice—from seeking injustices and evils. Injustice is bound up with statism, and must be seen even as a form of God’s judgment upon people who have been unjust and sinful in seeking these systems. 

The adultery of statism is to whore oneself out to the evil political systems of the world from which we are told to repent from supporting and serving. It is necessarily statism, ie., the erection and existence of systems of political power, that men go whoring after. It is when men buy into the statist ideology, which makes them believe that salvation lies in human government rather than the Lord, that we can say “a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore” (Hosea 4:12). It is the love of plunder and idolatry, things which are inseparable from statism, that the prophets can charge that “you have polluted the land with your vile whoredom” (Jeremiah 3:2). Far from approving of the statist whores of the world who call themselves “Christians,” it is the very men who lust after presidents, police, and soliders that God can say a people “have enraged Me with their worthless idols” (Deuteronomy 32:21). The same is true today, as men praise the State as their lord and savior. When God looks down and sees a people who raise up flags on their homes, stake political signs in their yards, make memorials and statues of their presidents and carve their faces on the side of mountains, he sees a people who have polluted the land with whoredoms. When God looks down and sees a people indulging in the ideology and practice of statism, ie., in setting up human governments and believing in the accompanying philosophy that empowers them, he sees a people who have whored themselves out to human rulers and all their accompanying evils. When God looks down at our Egyptian police state society today where man’s love of police, soldiers, and statist systems of “law” and “justice” has led them to being captives of evil men who pervert all of these things, he sees “how the faithful city has become a harlot! She was once full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers” (Isaiah 1:21). 

The injustices of statist adultery

These statists may pretend to be friends of God in their expansion of man’s political systems, such as in the case in the “United States,” where “In God We Trust” is blasphemously plastered on all these institutions of plunder (police, courts, fiat currency). They may profess “Lord” with their lips while partaking in plunder systems as voters or elected officials. But these are men “who build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity” (Micah 2:10). They may take God’s name in vain, but they are his enemies, plundering His earth with their political violence. (So-called “Christian Nationalists” especially come to mind as people who profess the Lord with their lips but whose hearts are far from Him in their efforts to use state power to create a so-called “Christian nation”). They may claim to “trust in God” as they operate their extortion courts and go on plunder patrols in their police vehicles to bring back revenue for the crown, but they are people “who turn justice into wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground” (Amos 5:7). They may go to church or call themselves “Christians” if they were asked, but they are people “who despise justice and pervert all that is right” (Micah 3:9).

When God looks down to see statist/political societies like ours, he sees the opposite of what the statist masses who see “law and order” observe and who believe that their seeking of man’s kingdoms and rulership is not adultery or whoredom. He sees that “justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14). Whereas the average fool in public believes that human government brings peace and freedom and that it would be “chaos” and “anarchy” without human lawmakers and law enforcers, God sees that “the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted” (Habakkuk 1:4). Whereas the average person believes that there would be no “law and order” whatsoever without human civil government, God sees a bunch of statist whores who pervert everything true about justice and law.

“The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and have exploited the foreign citizen without justice” (Ezekiel 22:29).

Whereas these statist whores tell us that there would be no justice or freedom without men ruling over us, God shows us that there is none with them.

“They have grown fat and sleek, and have excelled in the deeds of the wicked. They have not taken up the cause of the fatherless, that they might prosper; nor have they defended the rights of the needy” (Jeremiah 5:28). 

The severity of the sin of statism  

The sin of statism, where men turn to human kings to rule over them, is really what sin and abandoning God and His commands is all about. For statism necessarily entails a violation of the Ten Commandments, as it is based on having other gods, covetousness, murder, and theft. It is not possible that men can write off their horrendous, worldly political ideas as having nothing to do with their alleged faith in, and obedience to, God. Contrary to the arbitrary separation of political theory from one’s “religious” ideas, used by idolaters to justify their worldly ideology as irrelevant to their faith, God sees statism as more or less the primary way in which men reject God as their King (1 Sam 8:6-7). It is not that God is only concerned with sexual adultery but permits men to be statist whores on the other hand. Far from it. When God sees a statist people voting for presidents and congressmen, waving flags from their porches, slapping “thin blue line” stickers on their bumpers, He sees a “land [that] is flagrantly prostituting itself by departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2). When God sees people whoring themselves out to the Egyptian systems of the world and voting on new Pharaohs to make their life in captivity better, He sees a people who have “forsaken Me and sworn by gods that are not gods” (Jeremiah 5:7). The chief whoredom, prostitution, and adultery of men is statism. And God hates it. It is this intolerable political ideology, which says that human kings are needed to even have civilization, that shows that men have no faith in God or his providential order to keep them safe and free. It is statists that are fighting against the Kingdom of God. When the scriptures say that adulterers will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-11), we must include statists who apologize for, and participate in, the kingdoms of this world that they are told to repent from serving. These systems are evil and contrary to God’s will, and anyone who doesn’t think so is a whore by Biblical standards.