My Confession

Christian Democracy

Occupy was a political opposition, and any doubt that there is a strong political aspect to my calling was dispelled by the timing of this revelation – one week after the election.

By 2012, I had turned completely against democracy, believing it to be another communism, another “people’s government” that had become an excuse for depraved tyranny. Then I was shocked by a religious call to run a political campaign of some kind! I’m still very suspicious of democracy. It’s just so hard to believe that after years of being talked to like garbage, being treated like garbage, being throw away homeless on the streets like so much human trash, that we would suddenly achieve some miraculous transformation of American society just because yours truly made it onto TV.

Let me be very clear about this. There’s nothing wrong with the idea that the masses of people should have a voice in a country’s leadership. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have free and fair elections; in fact, we should have more of them. There’s no reason not to have a vibrant political opposition, limitations on government power, and a free press.

On the other hand, there are some points that we need get absolutely clear about. Governmental authority does not come from “the people” or the “consent of the governed” or any such nonsense. Legitimate authority comes from God, nowhere else.

America’s political philosophy proposes far more than the notion that the people have a voice in their government. American democracy proposes that the only legitimate source of governmental authority is the “consent of the governed”. This is an almost meaningless propaganda phrase; taken literally, it would seem to imply that nobody should be imprisoned, for who would consent to their own incarceration? “Consent of the governed” is a code phrase that means “majority rule”, and what our system of government really proposes is that the majority have the right to rule over everyone else, even if that leadership is absolutely wicked.

Last July 4th, American Atheists made headlines by flying an “Atheism is Patriotic” banner over New York City. Dave Silverman, the group’s president, stated that “Religion is unpatriotic at its core, because it places its law above the law of the land.” Teresa MacBain, the group’s Public Relations Director, added “Atheism, being the absence of any religious beliefs, implies that human law alone is supreme over humanity.”

This has been the collection sin of humanity since Genesis 3. We want human law to be supreme over humanity. We don’t need God’s law; man can govern himself. God might not even exist!

Of course, atheism is an extreme position relative to the beliefs of the average American, but these comments are prescient. The atheists describe exactly where our country is going. “Human law alone is supreme.” Under our democracy, majority rule is supreme, it has produced the largest prison system in the world, a depraved economic system, and is conquering the entire planet to enslave it under democracy.

We’ve seen this style of government enough times in the last century that it’s become sickeningly rote. Some group is declared to be “the people”, whether it’s the proletariat, the Aryan race, or the majority. Then we build a “people’s government”; who would argue with that? Who wouldn’t want “the people” to govern? We don’t really need limits on government power; it’s what “the people” want. Our society is totally dominated by money; it’s what “the people” want. You have to obey the laws; it’s what “the people” want. Anyone who doesn’t like it can leave; it’s what “the people” want.

Part of the problem is that “the people” are never all of the people. There’s always one group that is labeled “the people” and those who oppose them are derided as thieves, bums, criminals, terrorists, and generally speaking, the lowest form of human scum imaginable. Anyone who opposes “the people” absolutely must be broken. It never hurts that “the people” so dominate and control all of the means of public expression that opposing voices are drowned into silence.

According to the communists, the proletariat were “the people” because they did the actual work that kept an industrial society going. Marx’s “labor theory of value” argued that the value of a product is related principally to the labor required to produce it. According to the fascists, the Aryan race were “the people” because they are more evolved, more genetically advanced. “Gattica”, named by NASA as the most plausible science fiction movie ever made, envisions a future dominated by a super-race of genetically engineered humans.

Many readers easily discard the pro-communist and pro-fascist propaganda while accepting our corresponding pro-democracy propaganda without question. The majority are “the people” in a sense that neither the proletariat nor the Aryan race could claim to be. Democracy is a “legitimate” system of government in a way that neither communism or fascism were. Shocked outrage at anyone who doesn’t “believe” in democracy serves to eliminate any real discussion. Lambasting opponents as racists or communists disguises the fundamental similarities shared by all of these tyrannical philosophies. We accept our own propaganda, that the majority have the right to rule, and reject fascism and communism because they are not supported by “the people”, i.e, the majority.

In fact, there is no person or group of people who have any right to rule. Only God has that authority. Leadership of any kind is justified only if it is moral and just, and this is decided by God.

A fascinating system of government. I absolutely hate it. How much? I thought that my religious call was to overthrow this government! I even told people that! Well, I knew that it was something like that! (anybody can screw up a discernment) Now I understand better. I was called to preach! I was called to give you a choice, through your democracy, by breaking into this political system and at least giving voice to the Christian gospel and letting you choose in your election. And I blew it.

What system of government is better? What could replace it?

When ancient Israel was enslaved in Egypt, God raised two prophets named Moses and Aaron who led Israel out of bondage and into freedom, as told in the book of Exodus. After years in the desert, Moses died and was replaced by Joshua, who led Israel into the promised land, as told in the book named after him. When he was 110 years old, he led Israeli to renew the covenant, died, and was peacefully buried.

The Israeli government then vanished. Ceased to exist.

Individual tribes continued to operate, but there was no longer any central organization. The tribes and their leaders were devout, they worshiped God, they prayed to God, they listened to God, they discerned God’s will, and things went pretty well. We’re now into the book of Judges.

Things didn’t keep going well, mainly because individuals and tribes turned away from God. They stopped trying to be disciples and just settled for being believers. Little wars began to crop up.

The Lord let this go so far as to allow brief returns to slavery. The Philistines ruled Israel for forty years, and then God raised a judge, Samson, to liberate them starting in Judges 13. Samson was a bit like me; he really bungled things up, too, but he got rid of the Philistines, though he died in the victory. (oh well)

This is how God led Israeli for years, through men and woman like Samson and Deborah, Gideon and Ehud, until the Israelites demanded a king, mainly because everyone else around them had a king. That transition was overseen by Samuel, the last of the judges.

In short, after the Exodus, the most dramatic of God’s interventions in the political life of a nation, a certain system of government resulted. Very loose, very weak, often non-existent central government unified only occasionally by a special kind of disciple called a judge.

Interestingly enough, a lot of people today advocate a weaker central government! It’s important to remember, however, that decentralized government and deregulated society isn’t some cure-all elixir to be hawked on AM talk radio like a nineteenth century patent medicine. An absolutely essential characteristic of this form of government is the devotion to God of the bulk of the populace.

Essential! This is essential! There is no magic system of government that produces freedom, liberty, equality, human rights, civil liberties and economic opportunity apart from God! The modern attempt, in the name of religious pluralism, to detach God into a Sunday morning exercise is an experiment doomed to failure. No government programs, no matter how well managed, can mitigate a fundamentally immoral society. No economic system, no matter how competitive, will reward hard work if subjugation is the only way to obtain it. Likewise, a society of people dedicated to God, with a healthy dose of genuine disciples, needs little in the way of governance, because God is the leader.

Now, I’ve studied the Bible, I understood what judges were, I advocated for that system of government, but I did not grasp that such governance was possible in this country until I myself was called to lead an opposition. I hate our leadership, but if I could have played Occupy like a fiddle, something would have happened. Maybe I wouldn’t be President, but it would have at least let people listen and vote.

So maybe I was wrong about democracy. Maybe.

I’d fantasized about overthrowing it, I’d settled down to opposing it, I’d sought ways to escape from it, I would have used an election to reform it, but actually I was just called to preach to it.

Of course, there is no such thing as democracy. There is only the American system of government, the Canadian system of government, the Mexican system of government, the Australian system of government, etc. Democracy is only a vague concept, that somehow “the people” should have “a voice” in their government.

There’s nothing wrong with giving people a voice in their government, but the American system of government is a total disaster, partially mitigated by freedom. Our leaders are chosen on a TV game show, vastly elaborate, with stages all over the country, and oh so expensive! You’ve got to be flying everywhere, giving speeches, buses, banners, balloons, all kinds of buttons and bumper stickers! It costs huuuuge amounts of money to play, the judges watch everything on TV, and then they vote!

The great reliance on TV means that the media has tremendous influence over the outcome of the election, and the media is now massively corrupt. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign cost $700 million, of which $300 million was spent on advertising. In other words, $300 million went into the pockets of the “free press”, and that’s just one national campaign. Add up all of the campaigns for President, for Congress, for state houses, and probably $1 billion per election got paid to the media to buy TV, radio, and newspaper ads. Before you can even think about winning an election, you need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars just to be heard.

Our leaders are chosen like sporting champions. There’s a regular season, then the postseason and the conference championships, and finally two contenders square off in the fall debates to see who can claim the greatest political prize of all, Leader of the Free World.

The Giants play the Patriots in the Super Bowl, everybody watches on TV, but it doesn’t really matter who wins. What if it did matter? What if the Buffalo Bills absolutely had to win the Super Bowl; what if it was essential for national security? The Bills haven’t made the playoffs since Doug Flutie was quarterback. What if the Toronto Argonauts had to win? They’re not even allowed to play.

This is how our political system is structured, except that it really does matter who wins. Of course, it could be worse. A lot worse.

In his book “The Gulag Archipelago”, Alexander Solzhenitsyn tells the story of Viktor Alekseyevich Belov, whom he met while in prison. God had probably raised Belov to become Czar after the death of Stalin. Belov was warned by a prophet not to begin organizing until 1948, but Belov, even though he was only an automobile mechanic at the time, felt so responsible for what was happening in his country that he began organizing in 1943. He was betrayed to the police, arrested, and disappeared into the gulag. Instead of Czar Mikhail we got Khrushchev. This is the real world; men of God make mistakes.

You vote, you lose, then you do what you’re told. If you don’t like it, get the hell out. The logic here is that the majority run this country, this is how they’ve chosen to do so, if you live here you should accept that, and if you won’t accept it then you should leave.

So why not just leave?

First and foremost, I am a disciple of Christ. In many ways, I hate living in this country because of how I am treated, but I’m not going to leave until God tells me to leave. In the meantime, I’ve got a job to do and it’s not one that the majority wants or respects, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t work for the majority. I work for God.

Furthermore, where are you going to go? Whenever we are told to “love it or leave it” or to “get the hell out”, I reply first that I go where I am called by God, and then I want to know where? Where are we supposed to go to when we leave? There really is no place to go. The problems of America are the problems of humanity. There is no other country that offers the freedom that we lack. There certainly is no other country that offers it to immigrants.

It was America, ironically enough, that not only promised freedom, but promised it especially to immigrants! Now we’ve come full circle. We were born here, we were promised freedom all of our lives, and now we are told that if we want the freedom that we were promised, we should leave, go to another country and become immigrants to obtain it.

I am learning to be reluctantly grateful for the oppression that I suffer here in this country. If I had freedom, I probably would use it to work on technology R&D, I’d go to church, I’d worship God, but I wouldn’t develop the total reliance on him that I have now. The scripture is true! It is only by loosing my life that I have gained it! It is only by being stripped of the life that I desired that I have obtained the one God wants me to have!

There is no freedom without Christ.

the·oc·ra·cy

noun

1 : government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided

(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

That is almost exactly what we need, except of course that it’s not enough for the officials to be regarded as divinely guided. They have to actually be divinely guided. Human beings are not capable of administering a government without divine guidance.

When I suggest theocratic government, the secularists howl and start screaming about their rights! We’re thrown away like human garbage because our religion teaches that capitalism is immoral and they talk about rights! We’re told to “get the hell out” if we don’t like it and they talk about freedom! Our political opposition is busted up by SWAT teams, they shrug their shoulders and tell us that we have to obey the law! Our speeches are blacked out by the media and they’re very concerned about the stifling effect of religious fanaticism on free expression.

Enough! We’re done with these rights! We live in an oppressive society determined to jam its depraved leadership down our throats, we’re disenfranchised by a political system controlled by money and dominated by secularism and sham Christianity, and now we’ve seen an entire political opposition eliminated by the police and silenced by the media! If the secularists wanted rights, they should have stood up for ours! What they really want is secular government.

The choice is not between a free, peaceful, democratic, secular society and an oppressive, fanatic, conquering theocracy. The choice is between an oppressive, fanatic, conquering democracy and peaceful, Godly leadership. Our leaders are absolute fanatics. They “believe” in democracy, no matter what it produces or how it produces it. They will not negotiate with their opponents. You have to “accept” democracy, either at home or abroad, and you will be crushed and beaten until you do.

We’re told to wait until the next election, things will get better, we can work within the system. Instead, we vote for “change we can believe in” and get more oppressive, fanatic, conquering, militant capitalist democracy. This is why the only visible theocracies are so militant. It’s not because all theocracy is militant; it’s because no merely human opposition to secular democracy is possible. Only God can oppose this government.

The election of 2012 was the biggest political disaster in American history. The opposition degenerated into street riots and was eliminated by SWAT teams. No meaningful election took place. The presidential campaign pitted a militant capitalist against a militant capitalist and a militant capitalist won. What’s more, this time the opposition was raised by God, so what does that imply about the consequences of its failure?

2012 was also the biggest failure of my life, but there is no way to go back. The only way is forward. We need to discuss these issues, we need to form a Christian opposition, and we ultimately need to form a Christian government. We need to make a solid commitment, across the board, to have Christian leadership in every aspect of our society. General assemblies, legislative sessions, and board meetings all need to start with prayer. Not rote prayer, either. Our farms and factories need to be managed by people determined to seek God’s will for the disposition of those resources, not multinational corporations determined to maximize profits. We can not be dependent on a global economy, no matter how cheap its products, because we can not trust that it will be managed by disciples of Christ.

Christian government. Many will howl in terror at the thought. Remember, though, that it is secular government that has produced the largest prison system in the world, the most crushing military juggernaut in human history, our cynical economic system, and an overarching government that spends money like a Siam princess.

Remember, too, that many claim to be Christian disciples who are not. Capitalism is an acid test for this brand of “Christianity”. Review Matthew 5, Matthew 25, Mark 10, Luke 6, Luke 12, James 2. What happens when a man walks into a restaurant without money? How do we treat the homeless? How do we fund our buses and trains, schools and hospitals? Can we develop proprietary technology and outlaw on-line public libraries, or must technology and information be open and free?

A Christian restaurant must be run as a soup kitchen; a Christian hotel must be run as a homeless shelter. If we can’t provide sufficient housing, then establish free camping sites. They will need to be provided with sanitation facilities like port-a-potties, which must be cleaned regularly, and the homeless can not afford this. So it must be provided for them at “public expense”, but not through taxes, but rather through well-meaning citizens who donate their time, money and equipment. If enough of those people exist, we’re fine. If those people don’t exist, then that’s not a place worth living in.

The government must be run by Christians, too. I can’t figure out whether to get on a plane and go to Anchorage or Fairbanks; I most certainly can’t figure out how to deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Only God can lead a government. Only through discernment can people on Earth tap into that wisdom.

A Christian political party must be formed. Its primary process can include rallies and speeches, general assemblies and town hall meetings, yet the ultimate selection of a party ticket must be carried out by the most select Christian disciples, using all of our techniques of discernment, all of the prophetic gifts and spiritual resources at our disposal. There can be no primary election. Once that slate of candidates has been prepared, it will be presented to the populace in a general election, to be accepted or rejected in favor of other candidates. If the disciples do our jobs, then the electorate should be pleasantly surprised to find us nominating quality leaders who will effectively guide the nation.

So, Christian democracy is a political and spiritual movement that proposes a comprehensive social revolution, replacing capitalism with the Gospel, introducing a strong element of theocracy into our democratic government, and warning of dire consequences if this prescription is not followed.