I am going to start a series about what I consider a critical theme in the Bible: the idea that human rule is inherently corrupt and corrupting. Human rule and human power structures, despite their prevalence through the ages, are utterly unacceptable. This theme extends into the New Testament too, which while I am not a Christian I respect much of the New Testament, and is if nothing else proof that the New Testament writers knew their Tanakh. It is not for nothing that Jesus says that the rulers of the Earth are minions of Satan. This is true even if they truly believe they mean well.
This transcends a criticism of left or right: both leftists and rightists want State power and want to use State power for their own ends. The right has on its side another axis: there are rightist libertarians and rightist statists, but almost all rightists, Republicans in this country, are in fact statists of a different flavor. They are totally okay with using State power for things they consider important. Fascism and Communism are different faces of the same brute lust for State power. Both end in the same ways: in war, want, suffering and oppression.
Before I begin, I want to issue a mea culpa. I used to be a liberal. I have been known lately to either support conservatives or at least criticize liberals more than I do conservatives. This I have done in what I perceived to be self-defense: that is not an excuse, that was simply my thought process. Self defense in the sense of, if the liberals win things will rapidly go to hell for all of us. At least, if they mean any part of the things they say. Perhaps though, it will be a necessary ride into hell for us: perhaps then we will come to our senses. I doubt it though.
Liberals appear to be on an extreme rapid downhill toboggan ride to identitarianism, the restriction of religious rights, socialism and the State-directed redistribution of wealth, utter renunciation of what were originally American principles like individual rights and limited government, and the normalization of sexual immorality, sexual perversion, and abortion. However, I now better understand that all these are the symptoms of a disease that Republicans and Democrats alike suffer from: Stateolatry. The combination of Statism and godlessness. Even a Republican status quo is not a GOOD condition, it is merely better than what COULD happen. Even a Republican ruled America is still statist. It could be heading further in that direction in the various forms of fascism.
What is the antidote to Stateolatry? The rulership of the only One that could rule justly, that could preserve human freedom. The rulership, the Kingdom, of G-d.
We are not talking about theocracy as it is commonly known. Human theocracy is another form of human control organization. It is a statism just as much as any other form of human government. The Kingdom of G-d is the antidote to human control.
Lets start with Genesis. At the beginning of Genesis we see humans using their freedom to steal what wasn't theirs: the apple of knowledge. On the one side, we have human beings. On the other side, G-d. Now G-d did not HAVE to either cut humans loose or indeed allow this action to stand at all. This is G-d we're talking about. He could have used force to make their minds right. He could have reversed time to undo the action. He could have wiped out Adam and Eve and started over. This action did not have to stand. Why did it?
This is something revealing about the nature of G-d. He respects our integrity as beings. He respects human dignity. He invented it. What dignity did we have of our own nature? We were critters made of mud. G-d respecting human dignity is G-d respecting his own, we are an image of Him. And so the human decision, the act of human freedom used for ill, stood. They weren't erased, their minds weren't made right, they weren't brainwashed, they were cast out of the Garden.
There followed from this a litany of human abuses and monstrosities, but also human promises. The Earth was wiped clean except for one righteous family, that of Noah. It is irrelevant whether this is literal history or not: this is spiritual history. These are spiritual origins to the relationship between Man and G-d. Noah prefigures a promised future resolution to the whole terrible human drama: the Earth wiped clean, a fresh start. The Kingdom of the Righteous, in which all the righteous who ever lived on Earth will be reborn into a new Earth. Genesis also shows the origin of G-d's vessel of message, the human Abraham who was found faithful.
We then move to Exodus. Here the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, are in bondage to a human government, a human god-king. Does this sound familiar? It won't, not in the way I mean, but it should. We have our own sort of god-kings today. This is the painting on the dome of the Capitol. It is a painting depicting George Washington being raised to godhood surrounded by pagan deities:
It's called "The Apotheosis of Washington," apotheosis meaning raising to godhood. This idolatrous piece of shit is in the dome of the fucking capitol building. Every elementary school child should be shown this and someone should tell them, "this is what our government really is." Because it is.
Anyway, back to Exodus. The Israelites cry out to G-d to free them from their cruel overlords. What does G-d do? He not only does that, He teaches them a way to be free from ALL human overlords. A way to be free forever. The one who stands under G-d's Law and obeys it is freed from human law. G-d's laws are like the laws of nature in that they are not subject to craven human desires and lust for power. They simply are what they are.
Now, is that divine law administered by a government? No, you're not getting it. That divine law is the OPPOSITE of government. Sure, the Israelites had their own judges and other people in charge, that is because they wouldn't keep G-d's Law. Indeed Moses was so harried by complaints and lawsuits and criminal cases that he couldn't keep up with them, he had to appoint people to deal with the lesser cases. And so government was born even there. Because people wouldn't keep the Law, not to administer the Law or to create new ones. If they kept the Law, those wouldn't be needed. And what is one of those Laws? Love neighbor as self. If the Israelites truly loved neighbor as self, they wouldn't be transgressing against each other all the time and hence Moses wouldn't need to judge anyone or appoint judges over anyone. This is an ongoing principle of degeneration: if you won't accept the Law, people are going to make themselves judges, which means eventually they are going to make new laws that aren't G-d's Law.
G-d's Law or Human Tyrants: this is the choice before you.
So it is not fitting for anyone to support human tyrants or human government at all. Human government is a disease symptom, not the cure. The cure is to love G-d and obey His Law, and love neighbor equally as self.
The more government is called upon to fix the problems of human sinfulness, the more humans will rely on government instead of upon G-d and doing what is right, and the more that sinfulness will increase. Using government to solve the problem of human sin is like using heroin to fix pain: ultimately you will get dependent and weaker. The difference is that sometimes opiates might be needed medicine (if you break your leg or something,) but government always leaves the people worse off than before they started.
Is it any wonder that the family has eroded and sexual perversions and "lifestyles" have increased? No. As people become more and more dependent on government and corporations, they more and more abandon families and G-d. A family is a burden to being a successful corporate employee. And you don't need loved ones to take care of you when you are old or sick, government will do that. If you have a gay couple or any of the other unwell variations that are possible now, well you both can work and women won't get pregnant (which pregnancy looks real bad on the resume) and there are no children to raise. Better employees! No wonder corporations are getting on the Pride bandwagon. It is clearly in their self-interest. If you are in a hetero couple, well you can ditch the useless kids onto the State schools where they can be taught godlessness and perversion and dependence on government. Is it any wonder that things are degenerating??
The people who are responsible for raising and educating children are PARENTS. Period. Full Stop.
Ah, what a mess we are in.
Now from what I have said, you may think I am in favor of libertarian government. You have not understood. Sure, libertarianism or traditional American limited government policies are a slower-acting poison than Communism, but still poison.
THE ANTIDOTE TO GOVERNMENT IS THE RULE OF GOD.
So I don't say I am libertarian, that would be ascribing to a political philosophy, a theory of human rule. No. I am saying that G-d alone is my king and I recognize no other king.
Now, how does that work out in practice? People always say of anarchism, sounds great but it would never work. What is it you think I am suggesting, that our human government adopt a political philosophy of deiarchy? No. I am suggesting exactly zero government policy or anything else other than it go away period.
Kingdom rule is lived out, directly, by those who belong to it. We don't need permission from the government for it, and they wouldn't give it if we did. We refuse to play. The government may force out obedience to certain things but never our consent. We must not consent to politics at all period. We must live out every second of every day the truth:
G-D ALONE IS OUR KING
Now, I am not saying it is easy. I get sucked into politics a lot, because I see things that are absolutely scandalous and massively wrongheaded and I say
WAIT A DAMN MINUTE, HELL TO THE NO
...and maybe some of the Republicans are also saying hell no too, and so I say, well, I like them better. Everyone wants to belong, to fit in with their own. To imagine that there is a "their own" to belong to.
But actually I am being seduced. I am participating in a contest for raw human power, between those who practice the milder forms of insanity that I became used to in the past, versus new batshit loco gaga zany-brained forms of insanity. But it's all bad, and both Democrats and Republicans are committed to the dominion of human Statist power. Both have pronounced their own kind of fatwas on the rule of G-d.
I admit I have a problem with this sometimes. I'm only human, I look around for someone in this wide world who is sane, and over there are some Republicans who look half-sane and say they love G-d, and I think, well that is better than Mr/Ms/Mx Bongo Silly Party over there, but it's kind of a trap. I am missing the deeper point. Republicans at their best are slow gradual death, Democrats are rapid death, but both are death. It's like boiling a frog: do you want to turn up the heat so gradually that the frog does not notice they are boiling, or do you throw the 40,000 BTU burner on max and boil that puppy straight away? Either way, at the end you get a boiled frog. It may be possible to imagine a form of conservative government which is so relatively innocuous an evil that it might almost be excusable, but realistically power always seeks more of its own. Power seeks more power. The people you get in power are not good people or wise people, but people who want power. I used to hate the Tea Party, but the one thing I truly admire about them is that their main strategy seems to be throwing a wrench into the gears of government repeatedly in the hopes of stopping it altogether. That is almost an objective I can get behind. Of course, really, they only throw wrenches into the machinery until they get their way. If obstructing government period was their one and only political objective, I could almost support them.
So, I struggle with refraining from throwing support behind those I disagree with the least, against those I disagree with the most. Like I said, I sometimes feel that supporting the Republicans is justified purely for the sake of self-preservation. But truly I should not support any of them, or involve myself with human power conflicts at all. My only King is G-d. I must learn to live out that belief better.
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