Part 4: Implementation: How Do We Get There from Here?
In my first three posts (see here, here, and here), I laid the groundwork for tetranomy, the idea that nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, defraud them, or defame them; I argued that to assign legitimacy to the state as described in Romans 13:1–7 is by nature to set up a class of people exempt from tetranomy, defended a reading of Romans 13:1–7 that comports with tetranomy, and showed that the command to honor one’s parents (Exod 20:12) cannot be extended to imply that the state is ordained to command or forbid behavior apart from the criteria of tetranomy. In this final post, I argue that the implementation of tetranomy must itself be tetranomic in nature: it must make the righteousness of the kingdom of God and the fulfillment of the Great Commission its means as well as its end.
States are almost always established and run from the top down: someone wins a war and establishes the system. The only exceptions I can think of to this rule are King Saul and later King Jeroboam of Israel. Saul was anointed by Samuel and became king without armed conflict within his society. His successor David, while also anointed by Samuel (1 Sam 16:13), was able to establish his dynasty only after armed conflict (2 Sam 2:8–4:12). David’s son Solomon inherited the dynasty peaceably, but armed conflict at the inception of Jeroboam’s secession from Rehoboam was prevented only by divine intervention (1 Kgs 12:21–24). Israel’s monarchy was marked by changes in dynasty through assassinations by Baasha, Zimri, Jehu, Shallum, Menahem, Pekah, and Hosheah—and, of course, the deportation by Nebuchadnezzar. The United States is no different. It was born of a revolutionary war; the victors—the leaders of the armed conflict—wrote its constitution, and the winners of elections since then and their appointees have determined how that constitution is to be put into practice. While the shift is viewed as salubrious by some and deleterious by others, both sides agree that the balance of power has shifted from the local level to the national level: as some have noted, the United States have become the United State, run from the top down.
It is therefore natural that when the question of implementing tetranomy is raised, the first reaction is to think of a top-down implementation, as though tetranomy’s proponents expect to win elections, repeal antitetranomic laws, and pass tetranomic ones or stage a coup or violent revolution and install a tetranomic government. Such an antitetranomic implementation is sure to fail. However, the success of tetranomy depends on the hearts of the population; there has to be a critical mass of the population that believes that nobody but nobody has the right to kill innocent people, take their property, defraud them, or defame them. It can only be implemented from the bottom up through a change in the hearts of the people. Only the Holy Spirit can change hearts, and he does so through the preaching of the message of Jesus. The implementation of tetranomy goes hand in hand with obedience to the Great Commission.
I said in the first post that a person obeys the commandment to love God in Deuteronomy 6:5 only insofar as they obey the commandment to love their neighbor (Matt 9:18–19; 25:31–46; Rom 13:8–10; 1 John 4:20). The Great Commission not only includes the command to tell people that they are incorrigible rebels against God, that Jesus died to pay for their sins, and that they need to repent (Matt 28:19); it also includes the command to teach them to obey Christ’s commands, the most important of which is to love their neighbors by respecting and promoting life, property, and truth. As individuals respect and promote life, property, and truth, the groups that they form will in turn protect and promote life, property and truth. As those groups cooperate with each other, they will gain influence and eventually control over their circumstances.
Health and education are two areas in which we can see this at work already. I assume that school taxes are a violation of the command not to steal. But no candidate who runs on a platform of defunding the schools would be elected anywhere, and no such initiative would pass. However, as tax-funded schools are becoming self-consistent with their ungodly presuppositions, parents—even non-Christian parents—are becoming frustrated that their children are becoming not so much educated as indoctrinated. Many have pulled their children out of the tax-funded schools and begun educating them at home, but home education is beyond the reach of many people of modest means. While the idea is viewed askance in the United States, Christian schools in many less-affluent countries welcome children who will obey the rules from non-Christian families who will pay the fees. While not all non-Christian students at Christian schools come to Christ, and some Christian children at those same schools apostatize, a Christian staff serving the worldly needs of nonbelievers in Christ’s name and speaking his words as the opportunity arises seems to me a reasonable way to try to fulfill the Great Commission. Rather than trying to top-down legislate policies in tax-funded schools, a tetranomic strategy is to provide a godly alternative, hoping that eventually enough taxpayers find themselves served better by the Christian schools that they vote to stop taxing themselves for anti-Christian schools.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has given us ample evidence that a tax-funded, state-run health system will inevitably be subject to the whims of the rich and powerful who run the political system: that is, such systems are by nature political, not moral, and not based on science. As a result of the politicization of the health care industry—actually, the system has been heavily political for a long time, but it has only recently alienated so many of the people it supposedly exists to serve—many Christians and non-Christians have chosen to seek treatment outside the official system. While there are strident calls for this or that official to be replaced because of their performance during the pandemic, so far there have been few calls for the system to be defunded. However, again, the Western church has much to learn from less-affluent parts of the world. In Cameroon, every Baptist mission consists of a church, a school, and a hospital. I do not know if the level of care in the Baptist hospitals is as high as that in the tax-funded hospitals, but a safe assumption is that if it is, people will choose to go to them.
But what about national defense and law enforcement, those areas considered sacred by proponents of the “watchman” state? Wouldn’t a tetranomic state dissolve into internal chaos and be taken over by foreign invaders?
Again, because a tetranomic society would have to be built from the bottom up, it would not exist until there were a critical mass of the population who believed that life, property, and truth are sacred. Such people would not only not promote chaos in their society, they would not tolerate chaotic behavior. And as a critical mass, they would (eventually, anyway) by definition be in control. They might not all agree on every point—deviant sexuality and abortion being probable examples—just as today not all private schools are Christian and some private health establishments perform abortions. But today, Christians pay taxes to promote sexual perversion in schools and perform abortions in tax-funded health systems; not having to pay for what we consider immoral would be an improvement, and one can hope and pray that once the gun of politically directed, tax-funded law enforcement is taken off the table, the groups—and most importantly, individuals—can talk to each other, and as the Spirit moves, people come to Christ and repent of their sins.
As for foreign invaders, who is more likely to put up a daunting defense: mercenaries paid by people who despise their overlords and vice versa, or a militia of free people accustomed to being responsible for themselves and who view their neighbors as partners in mutually beneficial relationships? Will defense budgets and professional soldiers be needed? Probably—freedom isn’t free. But the lower the social level at which the budget for these budgets and soldiers is established—as should be plain by now, the money would come from membership fees to what would amount to mutual aid societies, not taxes—the less likely the money will go for extravagance and fool’s errands.
Finally, who will build the roads? I don’t know. But I am sure that if I want to buy oranges from Florida and visit my children on the West Coast, as I look for a mutual aid society to buy into, I will look for one with cordial relationships with other such societies that will enable me to travel across the continent, and those who have invested their hard-earned capital in such societies will be looking to serve me. I believe that just societies are peaceful and peaceful societies are prosperous, and a tetranomic society, which has to be built by a tetranomic process, will be just, peaceful, and prosperous.
I submit that in attempting to build prosperous societies through taxation, Christians through the ages have gained the world to the degree that they have found prosperity, but they have lost their soul. The unpleasantness since March 2020 is a symptom of that loss, and until the church pursues justice and compassion based on justice as the most important part of her own discipleship and the discipleship to which she calls the nations, things will continue to get worse. Jesus has promised that his people will be persecuted, so Christians in even the most just society will suffer persecution, but he has promised to bless such people (1 Pet 3:14). If people hate or persecute us for doing evil, however, even our suffering has no value (1 Pet 2:22).
The book of Judges chronicles a society that began as something of a tetranomy and ended in tyranny. Even a tetranomy will be imperfect, will be semper reformanda, and will eventually perish, sharing the fate of the worst tyranny, though it will surely leave a vision for those who would rebuild the ruins. But those who lived in the fear of God during the periods in which “the land had rest” (Jdg 3:11, 30; 5:31) were the freest and most prosperous people the world has ever known. We can do no better than to build such a society for our progeny.
No comments:
Post a Comment