[This is part 5 in a series on “False Dichotomies in Political Theology.” See part one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, nine]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

Of the many false dichotomies in modern-day Christian political thought, here we have one that presents voters as being God’s Kingdom activists who are carrying out “the Lord’s work” in their societies, while making out all those men who rightly object to participating in the evil politics of the world as slothful men who don’t care to be “salt and light” in the “public square.” This false dichotomy paints (1) all those who are not politically active as apathetic men, while pitching (2) all those who are politically active in the politics of the world as men who are enthusiastic about seeking God’s Kingdom and actually making their faith more than just a private religion that never takes on the world around them.

Since men conflate political participation in the kingdoms of the world with furthering the work of the Kingdom of God, it is commonly assumed that (1) everyone who rightly shuns worldly politics must just be a heavenly-minded escapist who is one of the people “who are of no earthly good.” On the other hand, these men who confuse their motion for genuine activism like to present their worldly flirtation with sin in the voting booths and offices of human government as the supposed proof that they are not forsaking God’s Kingdom but are its active builders “on earth as in heaven.”

In this false dichotomy, you essentially have (1) non-political/heavenly-minded men and (2) politically-active/kingdom-minded men. This is entirely fallacious. Those who reject worldly politics are not necessarily escapists (though they largely have been), and those who embrace it are not at all godly men concerned about the work of His Kingdom. In fact, the only way to even begin to busy oneself about the Kingdom work of God is to reject worldly politics, and all those who work through the political systems of the world are men who reject the work of building God’s Kingdom. 

A source for this thinking

One of the problems here is that it is often the case that (1) those who do not participate in worldly politics (as no Christian man ever can) have, in practice, been slothful in seeking God’s Kingdom. They have indeed been apathetic to all things earthly, erroneously thinking that Jesus’s teaching that His Kingdom is “not of this world” meant that it was not of this earth. They have been so slothful indeed that they have caused men to think that the way to combat this apathy is to (2) dive into the politics of the world, which is assumed to be the means of getting active and taking your “religion” beyond mere private devotion.

However, it is not necessarily true that all those who refuse to participate in worldly politics must be apathetic to God’s Kingdom; this is only the way it has been among those people who rightly reject worldly politics, but wrongly fail to seek God’s Kingdom. The problem here is that these people have failed to seek God’s Kingdom, not that they have rejected worldly politics. In fact, the true Kingdom-seeker must oppose participating in the politics of the world, because statism is never the means by which the Kingdom of God is to be advanced. However, he must also seek another Kingdom, lest it be true that he is just an apathetic escapist, and lest he give ammunition to the statists to accuse him of such while presenting themselves as the only men who actually are taking their religion beyond mere private devotion, when in reality they are participating in another religion entirely by involving themselves with the State. 

In a false dichotomy, there is always a conflation of concepts going on that work to construct the false choices. In this case, men conflate (1) repentance from politics as just “waiting on the end times” or “looking toward the heavens,” and think of (2) participation in worldly politics as actually being “stewards of God’s resources.” The false dichotomy constructed here is one of (1) escapist political abstainers, where all non-voters are assumed to be non-activists for God’s Kingdom, and (2) Kingdom-building statists, where the only men who are supposedly serious about the Kingdom of God are those who are politically involved in the kingdoms of the world.

Neither of these positions is valid. However, the latter (2) is completely illegitimate: men can never engage in the politics of man’s kingdom and God’s simultaneously, as the one negates the other. The problem with the former (1) choice, where every non-voter is assumed to be a purely heavenly-minded man, is only that it is not necessarily true, ie., it doesn’t have to be the case that everyone who rightly repents of worldly politics must be a man who forsakes the obligation to seek God’s Kingdom, although it has been the case that those who leave behind the voting booths are men who have not began seeking God’s Kingdom as an alternative to the kingdoms of man. However, the (1) escapist political abstainers have gotten one part of the problem right: godly men must reject the politics of the world. Their problem is that they did nothing in this rejection and settled for sitting around and waiting for their trip to heaven after their deaths, such that the (2) statists could come along and present themselves as the only true activists. 

The apathy of political participation

The irony of statists thinking that all those who abstain from the politics of the world are apathetic to seeking God’s Kingdom is that there is nothing more apathetic than outsourcing your personal responsibilities to feed your neighbors, protect them, and seek their justice and liberty, over to human rulers who you think must carry out these things for you. The most apathetic thing a man could ever do towards God’s Kingdom is to hand over the responsibility to administrate it to human civil government, which functions by robbing our neighbors and ruling over them, rather than by operating on freewill offerings and serving them in a Kingdom-network of charity facilitated by servant-ministers in a decentralized and free society. 

The Kingdom of God can only ever be carried out by non-political and non-authoritarian means, such that it never makes sense to conflate abstention from worldly politics with apathy, and on the contrary, makes all the more sense to charge that overt statists who vote and run for office in the man-made kingdoms of the world are the truly apathetic people. Not undertaking the futile and evil endeavor to “Christianize” worldly governments does not mean that one is apathetic to seeking the Kingdom of God, since the Kingdom of God can never be advanced through worldly political means anyway.  In fact, the truly apathetic acts of men are things like voting, where men cast a ballot—now a mail-in one from the convenience of their couch—for false gods to save them, rather than doing the heavy-lifting of organizing their neighbors directly and on their own, as a Kingdom-people who are not of this world and function differently and distinct from it. 

Yet people like “Christian” nationalists and other statists often employ this false dichotomy as a means of both excusing their own participation in evil and patting themselves on the back as if they’re the true “activists” for God’s Kingdom. They think that anyone who shuns worldly politics, as all true Kingdom-seekers must, is someone who doesn’t care about God, while thinking that the only people who do care about Him are those who seek to “apply our Christian faith to the government.”

Both these ideas are wrong. Engaging in worldly politics doesn’t mean you’re actually seeking God’s Kingdom, and abstaining from putting your hand to these evils doesn’t mean that you’re an escapist who isn’t grounded on the earth. In fact, since the Kingdom of God can only be sought outside of the kingdoms of the world, a rejection of worldly politics is the first step to actually seeking it (though, as we can concede, many who take this one step do not take the next and actually work to further the Kingdom of God once they have walked away from the kingdoms of man). Those who have not taken even this step are in no position of painting all abstainers as apathetic, because they have not even taken the first step to seeking God’s Kingdom, which must begin by repenting of participating in the world’s politics. It is true that abstention from worldly politics alone is no proof that one is seeking the Kingdom of God, which must be an active effort in addition to one’s repentance from this sin. However, it is decidedly the case that anyone who is still involved in the kingdoms of the world is an unrepentant sinner who is not even doing the first thing necessary to being an active seeker of the Kingdom of God, which is only advanced outside the Egyptian systems of the world and never through them.

Apathy and action

As a way of presenting themselves as the true Kingdom-seekers, the statists who falsely claim to be Christians will often accuse us anti-statists who have repented from the politics of the world as being people who are forsaking social order altogether for heavenly escapism. It is assumed that everyone who opposes the politics of Babylon, as all true Christians must, is someone who does not actually care about “taking the faith to the public square,” as if involving oneself in the ways of the world that God called us away from is actually a means of doing this. This is their way of feeling good about their own slothfulness, in the same way that men “go to church” and substitute vain rituals for the real work of seeking God’s Kingdom as their way of pretending they’re keeping God’s commands.

Yet it is not for the purpose of escaping our earthly duties to our neighbors that we reject the use of the political means to further the Kingdom of God, but rather that the violent political means of the world are opposed by the Lord himself, as well as morally inappropriate and practically insufficient for obtaining the ends sought. They are anathema to the Christ follower and can be rejected for that reason alone. Furthermore, we reject worldly politics because we believe that “salvation belongs to the LORD” (Psalm 3:8) and cannot be found in human government. We don’t not need men to save us from other men, but need the blessings of God that come to those who seek His Kingdom, which is never done through worldly means.

The statists are simply making an illegitimate conflation here where all those men who refuse to undertake the futile and evil endeavor to “Christianize” worldly governments are assumed to be men who are apathetic to seeking the Kingdom of God. The statists set up this false dichotomy where anyone who shuns worldly politics is said not to care about God, so as to make themselves out to be men who are supposedly carrying out this work. They cannot even imagine that it is possible to seek God’s Kingdom outside of man’s politics, because this is how deeply they have been given over to a reprobate mind for precisely these statist idolatries of theirs. Hence why anytime they come upon a Christian who doesn’t vote, they just assume us to be people who are merely sitting around and waiting on heaven, when many of us are, in fact, set on the great Abolitionist cause of building God’s Kingdom that abolishes the kingdoms of man.

Again, the whole conception of things here is wrong, which has all anti-statists as men who fail to seek God’s Kingdom and all Kingdom-seekers as men who must be statists. The Kingdom of God can only be sought outside of the politics of the world, i.e., entirely apart from the statist institutions of the earth. Not only is worldly political participation not advancing the Kingdom work of God, but it is decidedly working against it. Those who participate in the politics of the world are not merely not seeking God’s Kingdom, but are actively opposed to it and exist as its enemies. The kingdoms of the world are enemies of God’s Kingdom, and there is no reconciliation possible between the two. Men must choose which kingdom they serve, and this choice necessarily excludes the other kingdom, since a man can only serve one master and work to further one kingdom. All men who truly seek the Kingdom of God are anarchists who reject statist politics, and all those who embrace statist politics are men who reject the Kingdom of God. 

Unfortunately, participating in the elections of the man-made kingdoms of the world has always been a means of convincing men that they are men who love their neighbors. This is how regular socialists, as well as so-called “Christian” nationalists, reason that they care for the poor or for their neighbors in general. Because they have slothfully voted for others to do things for them and need to tell themselves otherwise, they imagine they are “activists” in the plight of the masses. This is how democracy has been so successful at roping people into the bondage of the world: it makes “the people” believe that “we are the government” and that worldly politics is just “society” taking care of itself. Hence why the fake Christians who involve themselves in worldly politics can accuse those who reject this sin and evil of being people who don’t care about others and “are just waiting to go to heaven.”

Yet these voters are merely mistaking their motion for action. They think that because they have cast ballots to raise up false gods, which is but a grievous sin against God and His Kingdom, that they are not part of the apathetic men “who are of no earthly good,” but are now men who are working to bring God’s work down to earth. They think that because they have turned to civil fathers to administrate their societies for them, who do so through the use of the sword, that they are part of a “movement” for God’s Kingdom while everyone else is neglecting this supposedly great cause of furthering God’s work through Caesar’s throne.

The issue here is that these people conflate the call to be active and advance God’s Kingdom with engaging in worldly politics, and mistaking motion that contradicts God’s Kingdom-work (voting or campaigning) for true action, when these things only negate it. This allows them to believe that not being involved in politics is somehow akin to doing nothing. In the same way regular socialists think that the only way to feed and shelter others is to have human government do it, the false Christians who advocate voting believe that if you oppose these methods that you’re someone who doesn’t believe in furthering Christian society. In their reprobate statist minds, the only possible way to “do something” is to be politically-involved. Everyone who rejects worldly politics is said to be someone who doesn’t believe in doing anything for anyone. As Frédéric Bastiat famously said, 

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain” (Bastiat, The Law). 

Those false Christians who tell us that we are not seeking the Kingdom of God unless we are involved in the politics of the world are no different from the statists who tell us that we don’t wish for men to be served unless we appoint such a role to human civil government, when in reality the only way to actually serve others, seek God’s Kingdom, and break out of the apathy of mankind, is to do these things outside of these statist systems. 

Godly men are to be acting. But this by no means implies that we should be acting through the political methods of the world. Indeed, this is the very thing we are not to do! We do not get away from heavenly-mindedness by becoming worldly-minded. Worldly politics is not the opposite of heavenly-minded escapism; seeking God’s anarchistic Kingdom on earth is. Politics is not godly work, and to refuse politics does not mean that one is inactive or apathetic. We are to seek the Kingdom of God, but this Kingdom is not of the governments of this world.

A Kingdom not of this world

What’s curious is that the heavenly-minded escapists and the earthly-minded statists have both misunderstood the lesson of Jesus’s teaching that His Kingdom is “not of this world.” The former have taken this to mean that it is not of this earth, such that they forsake all their obligations to their neighbors while down here below, and the latter have neglected it entirely, thinking they can engage in the politics of the world without contradicting themselves. 

It is only under this conflation of earthly and worldly by the statists that they can think anyone who righteously abstains from worldly politics is a person who rejects earthly activism for God’s Kingdom and is just a heavenly-minded man “of no earthly good.” The problem here is that these “Christians” assume that we must engage in worldly politics because Christ’s Kingdom should indeed be advanced “on earth as in heaven.” They forget, however, that His Kingdom is also “not of this world.” They effectively conflate earth and world, or dismiss Jesus’s teaching altogether, so as to permit them to extend the call to make things “on earth as in heaven” to the statist systems of the world. Because the Kingdom of God is earthly, they assume that it is also of this world (i.e., of the systems of human government of the earth). This is the opposite error of those who think that because it is not of this world, that it is not of this earth. Statists think that because we are to seek God’s Kingdom “on earth as in heaven,” that it is, therefore, of the world. 

If the statists were able to see the distinction here that God’s Kingdom is earthly but it is not worldly, they would be able to see that opposition to worldly methods of its advancement is not an abandonment of all earthly pursuits, but one of the very first things a man must do if he is ever to begin further the work of a Kingdom that is not of this (statist) world. (As we have said, though, it is often true that the few Christians who do reject worldly politics often fail to seek anything in its place, such that they can often be accused of being apathetic. However, it is not even strictly the case that heavenly-minded escapists reject worldly politics. Most of these people still vote for men, reasoning that, though the world may end soon and they’re just waiting on their ride to heaven, we at least need men to order our societies in the meantime). It by no means follows from our call to withdraw from worldly politics that we must call for a withdraw from social life and responsibilities altogether. On the contrary, the only way to actually serve your neighbor and love them is to carry out these duties outside of these man-made systems that are precisely set up against this great cause. Thus, the main people forsaking the Kingdom of God are precisely those involved with the man-made kingdoms of the world. However, those who reject worldly politics but fail to seek this Kingdom are slothful, too.

As with other false dichotomies, like the “Christian statist” vs. the “secular statist,” these people actually deserve to be in the same camp with one another rather than on the opposite ends of a dichotomy. For both the slothful escapists and the outright idolatrous statists are ultimately people who do not care a thing about seeking God’s anarchistic Kingdom. One forsakes it altogether, and the other employs means that are antagonistic to furthering it.

The earth and the “world”

Part of the reason that we have had slothful Christians has been that many have understood “not of this world” to mean not of this earth, such that they have abandoned any idea of pursuing of God’s Kingdom whatsoever, whether through the contradictory political means of the world or the true means of furthering it outside of man’s political systems. On the other hand, the statists have not understood “the world” (the kosmos) at all to mean the earth’s political systems, and have believed that God’s Kingdom can be sought through them

This false dichotomy, where one is either (1) slothful and not seeking the Kingdom of God because they aren’t working through the political means of the world, or (2) bringing Christianity to the world because they are politically active, has worked to produce a scene of professing believers who are getting things wrong on all accounts. Instead of pointing out that their main problem is their worldly-statist means and not their ostensible interest in seeking God’s Kingdom, heavenly-minded men only challenge the statists by saying “the world is not our home” and we shouldn’t be seeking anything down here below, through the political means or not. Rather than refute the statists by demonstrating God’s Kingdom to be an anarchist one that is incompatible with their statist methods of its advancement, they merely reply that “we’re supposed to just be strangers here passing through.” The statists then are able to pounce on this escapism and present worldly political participation as the alleged means of countering those who have been slothful to do anything for God. 

Yet both these people are wrong. The purely heavenly-minded men—this has been a major problem in Christianity—are wrong for not carrying out the Dominion Mandate and seeking the Kingdom of God, and the political activists—another major error in modern Christianity—are wrong for thinking God’s Kingdom is furthered through voting or taking over human government, as opposed to abolishing it and seeking another Kingdom altogether. The latter, we may concede, are right to criticize the former for having their heads in the clouds, yet they are entirely wrong to think that God’s Kingdom—this anarchist order where the Lord is our only King—has anything to do with the kingdoms of the world. They are right to point out that “on earth as in heaven” is a serious prooftext for seeking the Kingdom of God on Earth and criticizing those who want nothing to do with earthly life in thinking that “not of this world” meant not of this earth, yet they fall for the opposite fallacy of adopting a position that suggests earthly means worldly, i.e., that it has to do with the man-made kingdoms of the earth. Whereas the “dominionists,” if they knew any better, could have just pointed out that it is a mistake to think “not of this world” means “not of this planet” and shown that God’s Kingdom is to be sought on earth, instead they dive into the opposite fallacy of thinking that earthly has something to do with the man-made kingdoms of the world that are, in fact, the very thing Jesus is dismissing when He says His Kingdom is not of it. He is distinguishing His Kingdom from the kingdoms of the world that these statists think can be made “Christian.”

Those who rightly criticize the heavenly-minded, “earth is not my home” people are not doing any better than the these escapists to bring the context of God’s Kingdom down to earth, only to say that it has something to do with the kingdoms of the world. To act as if the Kingdom of God has anything to do with the man’s false kingdoms is just as problematic as making it out to be entirely heavenly and otherworldly. Both are serious errors. The Kingdom of God is earthly, but it is not worldly. Those who believe their worldly political pursuits make them earthly-minded and non-apathetic men only show that they do not understand God’s Kingdom anymore than the heavenly-minded men who don’t think about seeking it at all. 

Those who think Babylons can be “Christianized” only imagine that they are truly activists for the Kingdom of God who stand opposite from those who they (rightly so) point out to be men who only sit around waiting only on a heavenly afterlife. They are not providing a true counter to the escapists, but only overreacting in the opposite direction. Just because one group of people oppose the idea of an earthly Kingdom, does not make God’s Kingdom of the world and its institutions. The real way of opposing the escapists is to seek God’s anarchistic Kingdom on earth, not to seek it through the politics of the world and kid yourself that you’re now a non-apathetic man. Statists are just as apathetic as those who do nothing but wait on their trip to Heaven in the afterlife, only in a slightly different way.

Rejecting worldly politics 

In our objection to worldly politics, however, we must not make the mistake of many escapists who are right to reject statism but do nothing to seek another Kingdom, which ultimately only allows for the kingdoms of the world to fill the void of their slothfulness anyway. The politics of the world, the Christian is to have nothing to do with. However, we must be highly concerned with the politics of God’s Kingdom, i.e., with the administration of a decentralized, anti-statist Kingdom-network of families congregated together for mutual service to one another, carried out through freely appointed servant-ministers who make up the non-authoritarian government of this Kingdom and distribute the charity of these families to the people of this Kingdom who are in need of it. Even though it’s hardly the case that heavenly-minded Christians (who make up the vast majority of professing Christians) have been anti-statists or non-voters anyway, most all of the people whose sights are more on the afterlife have failed to seek God’s Kingdom. Even among the few people who would consider themselves Christian Anarchists, which is a rarity in itself, very few of them have seen the need to literally build the Kingdom of God. Many of them are just men who slothfully sit in so-called “churches” or men who just do nothing at all to form their neighbors together into congregations of people who are truly seeking to be a Kingdom-people set apart from the world, but not set apart from the earth. This means that anarchist Kingdom-seekers are a minority even among other Christian Anarchists, who just do not have the ideology or motivation necessary to carry out the work we should be doing if we truly loved God and our neighbors.

What is really needed to refute the statists and to put non-voters on the respectable map of actually being interested in serving God is to get them to take the next step in their rightful rejection of worldly politics and to begin seeking the Kingdom of God with us. When we seek to further another literal Kingdom in our necessary abstention from the politics of man’s kingdoms, we will show the statists that rejecting worldly politics is not akin to retreating in despair and that the truly apathetic people are those who seek to change the world through its political methods. We will show the statists that they are the people who don’t care about doing the real work of the Lord and evangelizing men into His Kingdom and building it up, and are only apathetic and pathetic men who lick their mail-in ballots from their recliners and pretend they “did their part” in bringing “the gospel” to the world.

Far from thinking of rejecting worldly politics as “sitting on the sidelines,” or the participation in it as “stepping it up and winning,” the only people who are actually seeking the Kingdom of God are Christian Abolitionists who see such worldly methods as antagonistic to God’s Kingdom and seek another path outside of them. Those who work to further the kingdoms of men are people who hate God and their neighbors, because these are systems of human domination that operate by plundering men, by using compulsory taxation to fund their operations. Statists are sinners if only for the fact that they support robbing their neighbors, and that “he who despises his neighbor sins” (Proverbs 14:21).

Rejecting escapism 

It has undeniably been a problem that men have used Jesus’s teaching that His Kingdom is “not of this world” to forsake all their earthly duties to advance God’s Kingdom and serve their neighbors. But it is no better that statists come along and mock these people for their escapism and suggest we should be involved in worldly politics, which is only to further the kingdoms of man — the very thing that was meant by “world.” Again, they could have just told the heavenly-minded people that “world” doesn’t mean earth and that the Kingdom of God should be sought, albeit outside the institutions of the world. But instead, they broke with the lesson altogether, basically just mocked the scripture, and told everyone that we must be involved in worldly politics if we want to do our earthly duties.

We must criticize the purely heavenly-minded man, too. After all, their failure to seek God’s Kingdom after their rightful rejection of worldly politics—which is only the first but not the last step men must take—has not only allowed the kingdoms of man to expand in their sloth, but has also allowed a growing group of men (eg., “Christian nationalists”) to claim that statist methods are the means of furthering God’s Kingdom. If they had not simply given up when they left the voting booths (which has to be done anyway), but had sought to build God’s Kingdom as they began to leave the world, it would be much harder for statists to come along and act like their worldly political participation is genuinely activism for God’s Kingdom. The escapists who have indeed forsook God’s Kingdom are largely the reason that statists believe they are furthering it by voting and running for office, and why these same men think that those of us who reject worldly politics as a means of advancing the Kingdom of God are retreatist hippies who care not to confront the social order around us and bring our Christianity out of the house. Those who entirely forsake the Dominion Mandate and Great Commission and all earthly responsibilities (which, ironically for them, is precisely why the doomed society they complain about is the way it is), only end up leaving the door open for people who rightly reject this message to come along and mistakenly adopt worldly political means as their method of “countering” it.

The error of both camps

As false dichotomies often work, the two options given are not simply deceitful because they exclude other possible options, as if multiple things could be true. Even worse, the choices presented are often entirely false in themselves and actually exclude the only true position. This is the case here, just as it is in the false dichotomy of the “Christian statist” or the “atheist statist,” both of whom buy into the same false religion of statism. The true Christian calling is not to (1) disengage from worldly politics and sit around or to (2) launch yourselves into worldly politics and think you’re an activist for God’s Kingdom. It is to take both of the parts that both of these people are missing: to further the work of God’s Kingdom (which the escapists fail to do), but to do so entirely outside of the politics of the world (which the statists fail to do). 

Yet both of these errors have been dominant in modern Christianity. There are hundreds of millions of professing Christians who don’t care whatsoever to seek the Kingdom of God, and are merely slothfully sitting around in so-called churches waiting to be raptured from the pews as they’re singing hymns one Sunday morning. And there are millions of professing Christians who, on the other hand, have come to believe that true Kingdom-work takes place by working through the kingdoms of the world.

We’re stalling on getting anywhere because each way you turn, you have professing Christians filled with one of two main ideas about the Kingdom of God, both of which are false: that (1) “it’s not for us to build or further God’s Kingdom” or that (2) “we must launch ourselves into politics to advance it.” You can’t get anywhere with these types of people, both who often fight against each other but who really make up one big slothful and apathetic camp of men who work against God’s Kingdom, either by flat-out doing nothing or by engaging in worldly politics (respectively). One wants to keep staring into the clouds and waiting for their heavenly rescue from this cursed earth that mankind can never succeed on, and the other wants to use Roman methods to further God’s work.

Each of these people confuses the other and gives rise to further fallacies. The statists (2) believe they are countering the slothfulness of the escapists, and (1) the slothful believe that anyone who thinks the Kingdom should be advanced must be a statist. Those false Christians who tell us we must participate in the politics of the world to be “activists” for “God’s” Kingdom think that they’re the ones busying themselves with the work of God while those who object to such political means are all just men who are hiding out in caves. They think that anyone who doesn’t vote is necessarily a man who doesn’t care to expand his Christian faith beyond a mere private-personal “religion,” and that the people who do are actually on a crusade to bring God’s Kingdom to the earth when they’re really just on an ungodly mission to expand man’s kingdoms.

The real case is that Christian Abolitionists are the only ones ready to do the real work needed to further God’s Kingdom. We object to both the worldly political participation of the statists and the slothful pew-sitting of the escapists. We see that we are to be carrying out the Kingdom-work of God, and that this business is antagonistic to the politics of the world. We see that there is absolutely nothing radical or monumental about casting a ballot for false gods, and that voting is for losers who want to stay behind in Egypt and raise up new Pharaohs rather than face the actual hard work of building something else.

The false solution of “Christian statists”

It is highly common for fake Christians (i.e., statists) to charge that non-participation in worldly politics by Christians is “the reason our country is in such bad shape.” In their minds, which fail to see that we must seek the Kingdom of God apart from the world and its systems, it has been a failure to participate in worldly politics that has led to our current situation. This idea that everything has gone bad because “godly men” quit voting only shows how detached from scripture the statists are. On the contrary, we’re in bad shape because idolaters like them work to advance the kingdoms of men rather than the Kingdom of God, or rather, believe they are advancing God’s work by working through man’s kingdoms. 

To think that the truly apathetic attitudes of many professing Christians is to be combatted by diving head-first into worldly politics is probably a perfectly fitting case for the old saying that a people are jumping from the frying pan and into the fire. Their “solution” to one problem—the indeed condemnable apathy among so many heavenly-minded Christians today—is only to adopt another error: to engage in the politics of the world and kid themselves that they are now among the non-apathetic men who care so much to launch God’s Kingdom work on earth, simply because they licked an envelope and put a stamp on it. Combating heavenly-minded escapists, who indeed make the blameworthy mistake of thinking “not of this world” meant “not of this earth,” by insisting God’s Kingdom is to be advanced through worldly politics, merely plunges into the opposite error: that “on earth as in heaven” means God’s Kingdom belongs to the world and its systems.

From the slothfulness of those who fail to seek God’s Kingdom, the “Christian” nationalists and other such “postmillennial” types often just embrace another error: to think that dominion implies conquering the systems of human government of the world. They believe they are “taking dominion” by seeking to rebrand Babylon as a “Christian” institution. If slothfulness is the sin of those who don’t care at all to seek God’s Kingdom, idolatry and outright putting their feet to evil are the sins of those who think they are seeking God’s Kingdom by participating in worldly politics. They are not actually doing the slothful escapists one better, either, since they are merely mistaking their motion for action. Both sins have the same effect: the expansion of man-made kingdoms at the expense of God’s. One allows for its expansion through heavenly-minded escapism, the other through thinking that voting to raise up false gods who take the Lord’s name in vain is a legitimate reply to heavenly-mindedness. Either way, both contribute to the political bondage we’re living under today, whether by putting their hand to it directly or failing to build the alternative. The heavenly-minded escapists who forsake all earthly duty are guilty of sins of omission, failing to seek the Kingdom of God and thereby allowing for the expansion of man’s kingdoms of the world in their sloth. The “dominionists” who mock the first category are, however, guilty of sins of commission, positively encouraging others to participate in the politics of worldly kingdoms that should be abolished. They merely think they are seeking the Kingdom of God, but they are only playing around with the government of the devil while saying “Lord, Lord” with their lips.

Neither of these people understands the Christian Abolitionist position where we are to be seeking God’s Kingdom, unlike the slothful who deny this, yet not through the kingdoms of the world, which the “dominionists” cannot understand. This is why the latter assume that all calls to avoid participating in worldly politics are an abandonment of the calling to seek God’s Kingdom (while actively working against it themselves), and why the former assume that any call to seek the Kingdom of God must be a statist one. 

Fixing the false dichotomy 

This false dichotomy of non-political escapists vs. statists Kingdom-activists is unfortunately only the case because men have made it that way. Those who have walked away from worldly politics for the most part have also failed to build God’s Kingdom, and those who thought they were seeking it have mostly sought to do so through worldly-political methods. 

Though it’s largely true that most Christians who don’t vote also fail to seek God’s Kingdom and that most of those who think they’re seeking God’s Kingdom are statists, neither one of these is a valid position to be found in. Both of these ideas must be criticized and completed by presenting a better picture where the Kingdom of God is indeed to be sought, albeit not through the political means of the world, which fixes the errors of both camps. The idea that the Gospel of Jesus is nothing more than saving souls into eternity and that we shouldn’t be seeking the politics of God’s Kingdom is indeed escapist nonsense, and the idea that we should be pursuing the politics of worldly kingdoms is idolatrously opposed to the politics of God’s Kingdom. The Gospel is political, albeit it is not about the politics of the world but the politics of another Kingdom entirely. 

The false dichotomy where men are either (1) heavenly-minded escapists or (2) earthly-minded statists needs to be destroyed completely, exposing both as weak and apathetic men who haven’t known the true Kingdom ways of the Lord. What we desperately need today are earthly-minded builders of God’s Kingdom who know that God’s Kingdom is anarchist, but what we have gotten is either men who (1) aren’t interested in doing this work whatsoever, or men who (2) think it is to be accomplished through political means. For thousands of years, we have barely ever been able to find anti-statists who aren’t escapists or Kingdom-builders who aren’t statists. Men have typically always fallen into one of these errors. They have walked away from the politics of the world and into the trap of doing nothing, or they have walked into the trap of worldly politics while believing they are men who are working to further the work of God’s Kingdom on earth. 

The problem with both these people is that they have each gotten one part half-right. Plenty of escapists (though far from a majority of them) happily reject worldly politics, yet they care not one bit about furthering God’s Kingdom work on earth. The “dominionists” rightly see that we shouldn’t be heavenly-minded escapists, yet they wrongly think that God’s work is carried out in man’s voting booths and legislatures. If we took the best of both of these people’s half-truths, that is the opposition to worldly politics of many escapists on one hand and earthly-mindedness of the dominionists on the other, then we would finally be landing in the right territory, throwing out the bad of both of these people (their escapism and statism, respectively) and reconciling God’s Kingdom by earthly-minded Scriptures (“on earth as in heaven) that must be tempered with warnings against worldly means (“not of this world”), which both of these camps fail to square in their dichotomy of heavenly-kingdom vs. statist-kingdom, which conveniently excludes an anti-statist earthly-kingdom.

The anti-statist Kingdom of God 

To correct the false dichotomy, then we can first concede that both camps have one thing right, but must also see that they have one thing majorly wrong. The escapists are right to reject worldly politics (when they do), but are wrong to fail to seek God’s Kingdom; the statists are right to think that God’s Kingdom must be advanced, but wrong to think that it is done through the politics of the world. 

Since this false dichotomy has been so prevalent, neither of these people have been able to see the correct position of anti-statist Kingdom-seeking. The escapists have assumed that all Kingdom-seekers are statists, and the statists have assumed that anyone who isn’t a statist is an escapist. Most people who rightly see the need to leave behind worldly politics have turned their energy toward nothing but heavenly hopes, and those who have rightly seen a need to seek God’s Kingdom have set their eyes on the statist politics of the world. Most of the people who newly come to the faith believe they need to decide which side they’ll join: the (1) end-timers waiting on heaven, or (2) the supposedly dominion-minded men who will work through the politics of Egypt to produce God’s Kingdom order. Unfortunately in our time, the latter will continue to be a rising response to the utter slothfulness of the twentieth century, where men barely lifted a finger for God. The statist method, that is, will continue to be seen as the means of combatting apathy, when it is but another form of it.

What we must demonstrate to men is that rejecting worldly political activism is not to embrace escapist withdraw from earthly life, that opposing worldly politics—the first step all men must take before becoming true Kingdom-seekers—does not equal retreat. We must show that to ever even begin to seek God’s Kingdom order, men must repent from the (statist) kingdom-model of man. Far from anti-statists being men who don’t care a thing about society, repenting from worldly politics is a prerequisite to seeking God’s Kingdom, which cannot be furthered until men stop furthering man’s kingdoms that grow at its expense. In an even more general sense, no work of God whatsoever can be furthered until men renounce their statism and make the Lord their only King. 

When the true political-theological dichotomy of godly anarchism and ungodly statism is not understood, people fall into the fallacy of thinking that all those who forsake worldly politics (which all Christians must) are abandoning the work of God, when the fact of the matter is that all statists who engage in worldly politics are the guilty party here. Since the idea of this false dichotomy presents only the “Christian” or the “secular” State, these people can only imagine that anyone who abandons the governments of the world is failing to further the work of God, when nothing could be further from the truth: the work of God is only furthered outside of these political institutions of the world, and anyone who is voting or running for office is running away from God and His Kingdom. 

But won’t the pagans take over? 

Those men who imagine they’re at the forefront of taking their Christian faith to the moon by engaging in the politics of the world like to argue that anyone who fails to do the same is someone who wishes to be ruled by evil men. The typical reply is, “So you just want to be ruled by ungodly men and pagans then?” Or, “So you want the secularists to take over then?” Even aside from the false dichotomy that has been the subject of this article, where it should be seen that repenting from worldly politics is not akin to wanting to be ruled by men but indeed a belief in being ruled by God, there is another, even more basic way of rebutting this idea. We should ask, why do people get ruled at all? What does the Bible say? How is it that men ever get ruled by men in the first place? 

If we took to the word of God, we would see that men get ruled and dominated by other men precisely for the very thing being advocated by the statists who believe they’re activists for God’s Kingdom: for participating in and furthering the kingdoms of the world, which only become a judgment to them. Yet rather than see that being ruled by men, period, and not just being ruled by women, homosexuals, or socialists, is a judgment against a statist people who would not make the Lord their God, these men think the only problem has been a lack of “Christians” whoring themselves out the political systems of the world to be their saviors. Instead of repenting upon realizing that being ruled by men is a judgment on their sin of statism, and seeking God’s Kingdom apart from the Kingdoms of the world, the statist Christians (contradiction) tell us that we must “vote Christians into office” and throw all we’ve got into the political arena to “save the country.”

What we see among those who insist Christians must vote to turn society around is just a further refusal to confess that their own sins have been responsible for finding themselves living in captivity to men who hate them, who they believe could be made “Christian” with enough voting. If they actually knew their Bibles, however, they would know that state rule only comes upon a people who, like them, refuse to repent from their worldliness and be ruled by God. Human rulers are a judgment for the sin of statism and the idolatry and covetousness that these systems entail. Thus, they are the only ones who want rulers at all. They just like to imagine that some non-evil ones could be there if they voted hard enough and all the churches started sending out candidates for political office. They refuse to acknowledge the present system as a judgment for the very sins they continue to engage in. If they truly wanted to be free from evil men, they would seek the Kingdom of God in exclusion of all other kingdoms. But they are so hardheaded that they still believe the solution is getting “the right” men into power. 

Only ungodly men can be ruled. Only people who believe that human rulers are necessary, rejecting God as their only King, find themselves ruled by men. People who make God their King, which is only possible in an anarchist society, do not have to worry about rulers at all; human rule is exclusively a problem for men who won’t be ruled by God. Those so-called Christians who call for participation in worldly politics are not the faith-crusaders they believe they are, who are supposedly doing one better than the escapists by casting ballots and running for office. In fact, all men who want to rule over other men are ungodly men, and only ungodly men seek political power for themselves or to raise others up into these positions through their votes. Christian Anarchists, who seek God’s Kingdom outside of the politics of the world, need not worry about getting ruled by men. For we are told that “the LORD guards the path of the righteous” (Psalm 1:6). It is only statists who need to worry about getting ruled by men. Those who seek God’s anarchistic Kingdom have none of the fears of the statists who believe they would be dominated by men if it weren’t for their political activism. We know that human rulers can’t save us, and we profess, rather, that “you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8). Whereas statists believe they will have nothing without raising up human rulers to protect them, Christian Anarchists “say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you’” (Psalm 16:2). Whereas statists say that we will be ruled by socialists if we don’t vote or run for office in man’s governments, godly men say, “I will call upon the LORD…so shall I be saved from my enemies” (Psalm 18:3).