[This is part two in a series on “The Abolition of Statism and Liberation From Political Bondage”: See part one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

The second part of this series of a step-by-step strategy to abolish the kingdoms of man and seek the Kingdom of God is more or less a follow-up from the ideas expressed in the first segment, which made the case for the need for a strong ideological motivation among individuals for the Kingdom of God. While we must be ideologically-driven for the Kingdom of God, that is to take up its cause as our life-purpose and be completely animated by this goal of advancing a godly social order outside of the political systems that are of the world, we must simultaneously leave behind the statist ideology that is learned in the world and its systems that we are seeking to come out from under. Men cannot have two masters, two kings, or be citizens of two kingdoms. To seek the Kingdom of God necessarily means to turn away from the kingdoms of the world. To forsake the politics of the world and seek the Kingdom of God means to stop living under the mental slavery of statist ideology, ie., the idea that we are in need of human rulers for social order, law, justice, welfare, or whatever other excuse that men make in their sin for the existence of human civil government, which is always raised up against God and His Law.

To come into a new Kingdom—the Kingdom of God where Jesus reigns as the only legitimate King over men—means to come out of the old one, to be baptized into the Kingdom of Heaven where you no longer serve the man-made kingdoms of the world. To leave the kingdoms of the world behind necessarily means to abandon one’s foreign allegiances to worldly governments which they once supported in their sin and to start living as a citizen of heaven. In order to seek God’s Kingdom, men must recognize that their love of the world and its systems, their patriotic support for human government, their praise of its presidents, legislators, soldiers and police, their service to these institutions as government employees or tax collectors, or their participation in them through voting, was all based in sin and requires repentance. Men must recognize statism as sin and repent. They must turn around and seek a new path, the way of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, which does not operate like the authoritarian kingdoms of the world. They must see that the mere belief that human civil government should exist is idolatry and that they are now seeking to advance a different kingdom, where there is no King but Christ. There is no compatibility between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, between Christ and Caesar, Jerusalem or Athens, the City of God and the City of Man. Men must choose this day where their allegiances lie and to which kingdom they are loyal: God’s or man’s. There can be no fence-walking or neutrality for those children of God who are under Christ, no people who are keeping one foot in the door for man’s kingdoms and participating in elections while claiming to have one foot in God’s Kingdom. There is no such thing as being a “citizen of two kingdoms.” Citizens of God’s Kingdom have renounced their worldly citizenship entirely. The path to the Kingdom of God is a narrow road, not a wide path where men can waver between two opinions and two kingdoms. If some want to stay behind in Egypt and vote for Pharaohs and appeal to his lawmakers to pass legislation in their favor, this is fine, but anyone who does is not seeking the Kingdom of God and not prepared to join us.

The ideology and politics that a man possesses is no light matter in regard to the validity of his conversion or not. To profess Christ means to have no (human) kings besides Him. As much as this political element that is intrinsic to genuine Christian conversion is ignored today, it cannot be so in the future as we begin to seek God’s Kingdom, as one’s politics really says everything about who they really are. The distinguishing mark of a Christian is that they have repented from the politics of the world. You don’t get to keep your statist politics; you must renounce it, repent, regret that you were ever so dumb as to believe in human rulers in your sin, and declare your allegiance to another Kingdom and King. Otherwise, what would even be different about you? Anyone clinging to their statism—the ideological belief in the necessity for human government—would be no different from the people of the world, from the “atheists” who also lust after human rulers in their quest for gods other than the Lord, as (conversely) the distinguishing mark of a worldly man is that he is a statist.

Yet this assertion that Christians cannot be statists has been largely lost on so-called Christians today, as compared to many early Christians who knew that you cannot serve the kingdoms of the world. It should be a basic one, however. What would ever make someone think they could convert to Christ and keep the (statist/socialist) politics of the world? What would even be different about them if they did? Changing one’s politics and ideology away from the world is really what it’s all about. Yet this necessity to be politically converted to a new Kingdom—the Kingdom of God with Jesus Christ as the sole King—is almost completely off the radar for most Christians, who think just some verbal profession of faith is all that one’s conversion would entail. “I believe Jesus is my lord and savior.” But does one truly believe Jesus is their Lord and Savior—these are political terms—if they are still statists who claim that human government is necessary for Christians? Can anyone actually profess Christ as their King and cling to the politics of the world? No, they cannot.

As anyone knows who has embarked upon this evangelism for the Kingdom of God, it is like pulling teeth to get men to even realize that statism is sin, much less to get them to see they must repent of it and renounce this worldly ideology. Most men hate the truth and refuse to repent. Christianity has been filled with so many watered down truths and compromises for so long that by the time someone comes around to stand on the truth, they are thought to be unloving and harsh men who are attacking other brothers. Once tell a crowd of professing Christians that you can’t be a statist and a Christian, and they’ll think you’re being too rigid, when really the essence of Christianity is that its politics—Jesus as the exclusive King of an exclusive Kingdom—do not mix with the Roman politics of the world. They would tell you that you should be a little nicer and admit some exceptions to this assertion, to make room for the men who don’t want to repent but want to keep calling themselves men of Christ.

Notwithstanding the millions who suggest that one can be a Christian and remain a statist, the people we need to build the Kingdom of God with us will have to repent of their belief in the alleged need for human civil government, or else they are not ready to come out of the world and not a people who God will bless and liberate from the hands of men. After all, we are seeking the literal Kingdom of God, ie., a decentralized but organized network of people who function as a “government” that carries out its own means of welfare and provision for those who have come into this Kingdom, which means not only that we need people who know what this Kingdom looks like and how it is entirely opposed to the kingdoms of the world, but also people who actually seek it and not just men who know the language but won’t begin laying bricks for the Lord.

Here we run into the problem that even many people who identify as Christian Anarchists are still not quite up to the job that Christ has appointed us to do: to disciple the nations and busy ourselves about the Great Commission to evangelize and bring people into this Kingdom. We hear plenty of Christians willing to say that “Christ is King” or even “No King But Christ” but who do not actually mean it. They don’t live like they actually have a King and are apart of another Kingdom distinct from the world. They think that merely professing themselves to be Christians is sufficient proof that one is a Christian, rather than being a people who actually seek divine liberation from the bondage of man’s law-systems. But the definition of a Christian is not someone who merely thinks themselves to be converted. It isn’t based on some internal decision leading to some Sunday morning ritual. When the early Christians declared themselves to have no King but Christ, they were kicked out of the social security administrations of Herod and Caesar, because they were forming a literal kingdom based on freewill charity and daily, adhocratic performance of the weightier matters. They were saved from taxation and subject citizenship to bureaucratic administrations. They had an independent Republic in the heart of the Roman Empire, no longer subject to its courts through marriage licensing, legal employment, or birth certification. They were “in the world but not of the world.” They were not merely fans of Anarchism as if it were some nice, philosophical idea, but were actual anarchists who had their own Kingdom-government that did not operate as the authoritarian systems of the world. Modern Christians who claim “no king but Christ” do so hypocritically and have not even taken the first step towards repentance, which at the very least is a renewing of the mind to not be minded in the statist philosophy of the world. They are false converts, taking Christ’s name in vain because they merely claim Christ while supporting there ungodly political systems of man. They worship false gods, stained by the world, and are still in bondage, still guilty of the sins that brought them into bondage.

To be a Christian then is a lot more than even verbal professions, and has a lot more to do with actually seeking another Kingdom, which can’t be done if a man still believes he must cling to worldly systems as a voter or receive the benefits of these systems that are paid for by robbing his neighbor, which makes him a man who covets his neighbors property and not worthy of the divine blessings we are seeking. Thus even the people who know the gist of Christian Anarchism—the basic, Biblical idea that we are to have no other gods than the Lord—must go beyond merely knowing the philosophy itself. Christianity and Anarchism aren’t just moral opinions and preferred pronouns, like some combination of vain chanting and witchcraft spell-binding. They are a political reality, exclusively defined by walking a narrow road in an organized, jurisdictional setting. It’s not enough to say “waving a flag is bad,” or to mock presidential debates, or to complain about taxes, or to say “all cops are bastards,” or any other groupthink, cheerleader, surface-level, knuckle-dragging, petty moralism. It is necessary to be ideologically driven and to literally belong to a free society because you have made straight the way of salvation and are liberating man from the dominion of man.

For men to begin seeking another Kingdom, they have to leave the old one behind. They must, at the same time, become ideologically motivated to seek God’s Kingdom and repent of their association and participation with the kingdoms of the world from which they must come out of serving. They must repent of their subject citizenship that has led to their civil slavery under the rulers of the world, which has come upon them because they have idolized these men, coveted their neighbors’ property through seeking tax-funded benefits, and failed to seek another Kingdom. They must believe that Jesus came also to liberate the repentant from the bondage of men and to bring them into His Kingdom, such that they no longer believe they are allowed to be voting, campaigning for office, seeking the sinful and futile role of attempting to make ungodly institutions obey God’s Law, or believing in the existence of human civil government whatsoever. The belief in human government is a worldly belief. The ideology of statism and socialism is the philosophy of the people of the world who support man-made kingdoms in their sin. This must be abandoned if anyone is to remain truly ideologically-driven for the cause of seeking God’s Kingdom. Otherwise, men will compromise and attempt to justify remaining a “citizen of two kingdoms” and they will not be delivered from the bondage of the kingdoms of the world. They will make excuses to remain in sin and try to make Babylons and Egypts a little more “godly,” when these systems themselves have their origins in violating God’s Law and will only ever bear as corrupt of fruit as their roots. God does not plan on liberating a people who keep one foot behind back in Egypt, but is seeking people who are prepared to leave Egypt altogether and live like a new people under the Lord as their God.

Freeing our minds from the lies of the world 

It has been the ideas and ideologies of the world—namely the philosophy of statism and its many variants which say that human civil government is necessary to peace, prosperity, and freedom—that have for so long tricked men into walking into their own enslavement. They have failed to heed the ways of God’s Kingdom and hear the voice of the Lord, preferring to be tempted by the lies of the world instead. As the scripture says, “My people perish for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Whereas God had laid out the ways of His kingdom by making Him our King and following His ways, men have chosen to set up false gods such as human kings and chase after the false, perverted law systems of men, even believing they could be bent to “resembling” God’s Law, as if a resemblance or facade of Godliness is good enough and as if these political systems aren’t in violation of God’s Law to begin with. Rather than proclaim that “Christ is King,” our people have chanted, “God Bless America.” Rather than trust in the Lord alone as our protector, our people have adopted slogans like “back the blue” and “support the troops.”

One of the first steps toward seeking the Kingdom of God and walking away from the kingdoms of this world involves renewing our minds from the ideologies we have learned from the world and making our worldview a Christ-centered one (2 Cor 10:5). We have to change the very way we think and separate ourselves from the common “wisdom” and ideas that circulate among men, which almost always operates under the assumption that whatever is popular is also right and beyond reproach, eg., that the present reality of political domination is proof for both its necessity and inevitability. The world has polluted and corrupted man’s minds into adopting its ways of unrighteousness and buying into its fraudulent political philosophies that work to give intellectual credence to the political institutions of this world. Scripture calls us to leave these ways and ideas behind.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2). 

But it isn’t good enough to simply see through the systems of this world and sit idle and hope that things will change. We have to become ideologically-driven for the cause of abolitionism, for the cause of abolishing slavery, and for seeking the Kingdom of God where men live as free souls under the Lord. This means that it is not just a vague theory that sits in the back of our minds, not just some slogans or talking points that we repeat forever, but that our whole spirit becomes animated by furthering this cause of God’s Kingdom and bringing others to the ways of the Lord, which should be ever on our minds (Psa 1:2). 

Men need to have the fire in them to turn the world upside down, as Jesus and the apostles were doing in their time, which risks being persecuted for actually bringing the Gospel into conflict with the kingdoms of the world. They need to be inspired to do as Jesus Christ, His disciples, and the prophets before them had done, and go around teaching and preaching this message of repentance from the ways of this world, warning of the judgment that comes from continuing in them, and pointing men to a new path of righteousness and freedom. We need people to lead the charge who are serious about the mission and willing to do work in the mission field, which most often will mean engaging with the false converts who call themselves Christians but still defend the worldly ideology of statism and refuse to repent for their sin. We need men who have the readiness of the prophets to preach God’s word in the streets to those who have thus far refused to heed God’s warning of the evils that come upon men who continue down the path of darkness. We need men who are ready to hear the call of the Lord to stir up our backward social order and respond as unhesitatingly as Isaiah: 

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying:  ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for Us?’ And I said: ‘Here am I. Send me!’ (Isaiah 6:8).

So can you do it? Can you repent from seeking the false kingdoms of the world and seek God’s Kingdom at the exclusion of all others? Can you stop voting and adulterously looking to men as your saviors? Can you renounce the statist ideology you held from the old days of living in darkness to the wisdom of the Lord and adopt the political theology of God’s Kingdom, which is anarchist as far as human rulers go?

If not, you may as well stop reading here and pray some more for the Lord to show you the way. You’re not yet prepared for the Kingdom-work we need to do as Christians, seeking abolition of the kingdoms of the world and liberation from the bondage of men. You will only hold back the movement and keep us from being saved from man’s kingdoms by harboring the philosophy of the world that God wants you to repent from. God’s Kingdom is not statist, and it has no use for people who want to stay behind in Egypt—ideologically and physically—and defend the philosophy of the world, which is socialism and its many statist variants.

If you are ready, then begin to implement these ideas immediately, on your own and with other Kingdom-builders, and let’s begin to seek God’s way of living freely, without human domination systems to plunder us, which is only proof that we have been living in sin. Reform your own mind and begin to find others who you can call to do the same.

But this step must occur prior to building the Kingdom congregations that we need to advance. We cannot gather with the unrepentant who still cling to the ideas of the world, namely its statist political philosophy; these people are still in need of evangelism to bring them to repentance. Evangelizing the unrepentant is always necessary, but breaking bread with them in a regular congregation and network of congregations cannot happen. Before we approach the next stages of seeking people to gather with, which is done through evangelism, we ourselves must be free from the statist ideology of the world, and we must only build with those who can get on board and hear the voice of the Lord.