The Ground of Liberty
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. II Cor. 3:17Christian Reconstruction, though often misconstrued as some form of religious tyranny by man, is in reality Christianity's strongest advocate for the total lordship of God in all things--and therefore, the strongest advocate of liberty (this is not a contradiction). Because the average man, both Christian and non-Christian, is a statist, they can only interpret the lordship of God in statist terms, i.e., theocracy = statist rule by unelected Christians. They believe a Biblical theocracy will amount to a tyranny of Christian clerics not unlike the merciless rule of the Taliban.
But there is no small difference between the respective positions of statism and Biblical theocracy, and this distinction is represented well in the concept of regulation and controls. For the statist, both regulation and controls reside with the state so that any man claiming self-government is deemed an anarchist. This is because, for the statist, there can be no regulation outside of the state. Rushdoony makes this clear:
[I]t is a myth, propagated by all statists, that apart from the state, man's life remains unregulated and hence lawless...it is held that all life outside the state and its controlling government is unregulated life. In promoting this myth, the statists also promote a "remedy" implicit in that assertion. If all life outside the state is unregulated life, the the "answer" to that unregulated life is state regulation. To be outside the state is presupposed to be in anarchy and chaos, and to be within the state is assumed to be orderly and just. This was an article of faith in ancient paganism, so that a stateless man was seen as virtually a dead man without being. [1]Therefore, in all things, the state is the necessary ground of being. We see this demonstrated in the separation of money from the Gold Standard which left the only basis for currency in its substantiation by the state. The word of the state is now "good as gold," because behind the currency lies nothing more than that. This fiat authority by the state now transcends the monetary into being the basis for all of man's life. Therefore, a self-governed man is a lawless man, because he is seeking to live beyond the regulations and controls of the state--and outside of the state's authority, no such regulations can exist. A self-governed Christian man finds the ground of being in God and His regulations and controls, and the state must labor to sever this idea from the Christian man. The modern antinomian church is a most helpful ally in the state's mission to unseat God from the throne of the heart.
The Religious Right is remarkably ignorant of the fact that the humanistic state is inherently atheistic--you cannot reform it by filling its thousands of bureaucratic seats with graduates from Patrick Henry College. Or, as David Chilton once wrote, "We are not to help build the Tower of Babel in hopes of getting a Bible study in the basement. We must build the city of God."
The state cannot acknowledge a god other than itself. Therefore, God's name must be removed from every post and pillar. This is the identifying mark of man's utopia--his millennial reign--when the name of the Lord is no longer seen or heard. The reverse is equally true: the name of the Lord on all things is evidence of the postmillennial reign. Consider that in light of Zechariah's prophecy:
In that day "HOLINESS TO THE LORD" shall be engraved on the bells of the horses. The pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of Hosts. Zechariah 14:20-21When we are consumed with the exaltation, or celebration, of something, we engrave it. Whether plaque, trophy, or even lovebirds marking their initials on a tree, to engrave is to honor. It's also to create a sense of permanency to that honor, so that the honored ones live on for future generations to read their names and accomplishments.
When the greatness of God is honored in every heart, we shall see the name of Lord engraved on "horses bells" and "every pot in Jerusalem." Man will be compelled to acknowledge his love and worship of God in all he puts his hand to. This is why the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is in actuality a "postmillennial step of faith." The Divines of Westminster recognized the need to glorify God in ALL things, and they based that supposition squarely on I Corinthians 10:31, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." In other words, don't wait for a postmillennial era to see the Lord's name engraved on all things, begin engraving it NOW in "whatever you do" by doing it all for the glory of God!
For man to live solely in terms of God's regulations by Word and Spirit is the only true freedom man can experience; and as I mentioned above, this is not a contradiction. Man cannot be a law to himself, and anarchy is in reality a threat to liberty, not its most pristine expression:
There are all kinds of legitimate and necessary restrictions on every kind of liberty man has, and these are necessary for the maintenance of liberty, because liberty cannot be equated with anarchy. [2]When the god-hater decries the tyranny of theocracy, he's only advocating a kind of anarchy he wants protected by the state. And that means, he wants the freedom to be perverse, to steal, and to kill. He wants liberty for sodomy and pornography. He desires freedom to abort and rob his neighbor through unjust taxation. Deny him these sins in the name of God, and he will whine incessantly about your Christian fascism. Refuse him his perversion, and he will "defame you" and "revile your good conduct in Christ" (I Peter 3:16).
Self-government in terms of God is not anarchy, but rather a limiting factor on the jurisdiction of the state. For example, the state may only punish the evildoer for only those crimes allotted to its sphere of authority. The state should not, therefore, be responsible for disciplining your children. Nor should you be responsible for prosecuting your uncle for murder.
But the state regularly seeks to expand its jurisdiction. Even now, it clamors for the paternal sphere in the form of Health and Human Services by seeking to criminalize parental discipline in order to establish state authority over children. This is also why regulation for homeschooling is bound to come again. The state cannot allow "anarchy," and anarchy is defined by the state as any activity outside its jurisdiction. As Rushdoony says, freedom for man is immorality to the state:
The more we are truly governed by God's law and the Spirit of God, the less we are then governed by the state, and the greater our freedom. For the state, freedom is immoral: it means an uncontrolled life, a life outside the state and its laws. The free man becomes the immoral man, the enemy, to the statist. [3]What shall the anti-theocrat now do? On the one hand, the remaining vestiges of the politically-driven Religious Right still represent a very real threat to a completely secular state, while on the other hand, self-governing Christian Reconstructionists are advocating a life under God's regulation, and not that of the state. The anti-theocrats have no choice: they must fight the Religious Right for each "seat" in the American bureaucracy, and then demand of that same bureaucracy to clamp down on homeschooling and the like--and all the while, they call us dominionists!
1. R. J. Rushdoony, Larceny in the Heart: The Economics of Satan and the Inflationary State (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982), 23.
2. R. J. Rushoony, Law and Liberty (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1984), 13.
3. Rushdoony, Larceny, 26.
