ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

            "The primary role of government is to keep us safe."  Do you believe that?  I've heard it from both liberals and conservatives, and it's not true.

             Plenty has been written about the role of government, but none as succinct and profound as holy writ:  I Peter 2:14 says that "governors" are "appointed by God to punish the evildoers and to praise those who do good."

             It's quite simple, really.  I don't see anything there about safety.  To add a bit of flesh on this directive, what's doing good, or righteousness?  Another passage explains:  James 2:27 says "pure religion" is this--"to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

             And what would "the world" be?  I John 2:15 gives a clear answer that the world is "the lust of the flesh (sexual immorality and deviation), the lust of the eyes (materialism and wanting more wealth), and the pride of life (wanting fame, celebrity and power)."

             When you link all these Biblical instructions together, you arrive at clarity and precision about what governance is all about.  It's to extend God's hand into the culture to both discipline and reward within the confines of divine desire.

             For any of you who think this is all a simplistic and elementary view toward something as complex as governance, I would merely suggest that the human temptation is to make things complex that are actually quite simple.  We take herbivores that are supposed to eat forages and wrap them in feedlots that require planting, harvesting, transporting feed in and manure out, drugs, and lawyers to protect from nuisance suits, not to mention superbugs and toxin buildup in eaters.

             Nowhere do I see safety as a goal.  Safety is highly subjective; it's not empirical.  I think drinking Coca-cola is not safe.  Manure lagoons aren't safe.  Glyphosate isn't safe, even though the official U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is.  On the other hand, I think backyard processed chickens are safer than the chlorinated ones in the store.  I think raw milk is safer than pasteurized. 

             You can only imagine what I think about Covid pharmaceutical solutions.

             This steady slide into safety will soon capture us all in tyranny.  From alcohol prohibition to social security to mandatory seat belts to mandatory motorcycle helmets to food safety laws, every time the government enters the safety arena it diminishes choice, innovation, and belief diversity.

             We are fast moving into belief apartheid and that is probably just as detrimental as racial apartheid.  By the way, notice that although the Biblical rules for governance do not specifically use the word "freedom" it is implied by offering great latitude within righteous behavior.  And it confines the government's punishment to evil, which is far beyond preference, desire, or even inconvenience.

             When society implores the government to define and enforce safety, the trajectory is always toward tyranny.  Isn't it interesting that nowhere does the Bible enjoin a government to even protect its borders, or fight foreign foes?  It's almost like God wraps an umbrella of protection around a society that actually does the simple domestic stuff:  punish evil and reward righteousness.  Perhaps hoeing in our own garden is enough.

             I don't have all the answers and I'm wrestling just like the rest of you, but God's rulebook has wisdom and answers in a day of unsettledness.  Application is a never-ending search.

             If you were to define the greatest evil that the government should punish, what would it be?