CRAIGforCONGRESS

Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

  
 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2012
GOVERNMENT
Statism



Congress should:
  • repudiate statism

Statism is the worship of the State. It is the belief that the State can bring salvation. It is idolatry. America needs to repent of this false religion.

Statism is primarily a Christian heresy. Just like the State was brought into ancient Israel, it was Christians who brought the State into Western Civilization. It is mostly Christians who are statist. Despite their libertarian leanings, America's Founding Fathers were statists. They believed that "the State" was a "divine institution," "ordained by God," and necessary for an orderly human society (erroneously quoting Romans 13:1-7).

Fortunately, America's Founders were not consistent statists. The central concern of "We the People" in ratifying the Constitution was to limit federal power. We become libertarians if we are consistent with this momentum.

But America's Founders also recognized that libertarianism could lead to chaos if unchecked by virtue. And this is where the cure for statism can be found. Americans must trust in God once again. The false religion of statism must be replaced by true religion.


I think Clinton advisor Sidney Blumenthal would call me a "Holy Warrior" for blaspheming his secular state:

When men of God mistake their articles of devotion with political platforms, they ... have set themselves on a collision course with the American political tradition.
In the name of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, democracy without end. Amen.

I guess he's sorta kidding. But I'm afraid he's sorta not.




SALVATION AND STATISM

The biblical concept of salvation is basically restoration to covenant fellowship and life with God based on the redemptive work of Christ. The Old Testament word for salvation, however, specifically focuses on restoration to the garden of Eden, in that it means literally "to put into a large, open place."[1] The name 'Joshua' comes from this word, and Joshua was a savior in this sense indeed. Jesus' command to make disciples of all nations, (i.e., to conquer all the places of the world), shows Him to be the Savior, and indeed the name 'Jesus' is simply the New Testament form of 'Joshua.'

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1. The root is yasha‘.
"The root meaning in Arabic is 'make wide' or 'make sufficient'; this root is in contrast to tsarar 'narrow,' which means 'be restricted' or 'cause distress.' That which is wide connotes freedom from distress and the ability to pursue one's own objectives. To move from distress to safety requires deliverance."
John E. Hartley, in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago, Moody Press, 1980), p. 414.

Thus, Biblical salvation entails not simply the establishment of the Church, but entails the restoration of the whole fabric of life, including social life. Perhaps then we should expect to find God giving us a blueprint of the perfect civil government, of the Christian state. Some people in history have thought that the Bible, in the Mosaic law, was doing just that, but in fact there is no corpus as such of judicial laws in the Bible. The reason why so many people have erred in looking at the Old Testament laws as if they were judicial laws designed for some state is that since the rebellion of man, the human race has been infected with Statism, and thus men tend to look at the Bible through glasses tinted with this Statism.

What is Statism? Satan's offer to mankind was that man should be like God. Specifically, man would not have to learn God's ways and pass judgments in terms of God's word, but man would issue judgments out of himself, reshaping the world to fit his own desires. Thus, man's sinfulness consists essentially of his desire to exercise sovereignty over God's universe - a direct sovereignty, answerable to no one, rather than a derivative dominion in terms of God's law. When God rules over a man, He provides him with his (external) Word, and influences him to obedience by His (internal) Spirit. When one man tries to rule another man, the situation is different. He provides him with an external word of command, but he cannot reach within his neighbor to influence him within. Thus, he must influence him externally, by force, by threat of violence. It is the state which is the repository of force, the threat of the sword. Sinful man, then, turns to the state to enforce his attempted sovereignty.

The world is full of problems, which are the consequences of sin, and sinful man would like to be rid of these problems, so that he can enjoy the good life. The wicked know that some type of salvation is needed. People need to be changed (especially those Christians who refuse to go along with the wicked's plan of salvation). Again, sinful man can only rely on force, on the state, to effect this salvation. The wicked state is thus not only sovereign but also Messianic. Sinful man's social order is state-centered, or Statist. The Bible sets its face against Statism, from Babel to the Beast.

Biblical social order is not state-centered but God-centered. The solution to human ills is not government spending but Divine grace. Protection from the enemy is not guaranteed by the state, though it plays a part here, but by God. Society is not reformed by state-directed education, but by the Gospel of God. The civil government is not to serve (rule) as a savior.

This explains why we do not find a set of judicial laws in the Bible. All the laws of Scripture, including the social laws, are religious. The social laws are God-centered. Some of them relate to Christian civil government, but there is no corpus of civil law or judicial law because the Bible is not a Statist document.

James Jordan, "Appendix E: Salvation and Statism," in The Law of the Covenant, 240-42 (1984), at http://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/: HTML, DjVu.


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