(I wrote this article a few years ago as a primer for Christian libertarianism, but many of my friends have been asking me about my libertarian beliefs, so I decided to repost this article as a blog entry. So, it may be a repeat for some of you.)

 

Culture commentator, Michael Medved, has a saying that I think rings true in our country today: When people don’t put their trust in the big G (God), they have no choice but to put their trust in the little g (government). Don’t believe that’s true? Well then answer these questions without including statements that deal directly with eternal life, salvation, God, Jesus, the Bible, or religion in general: Who decides what is right and wrong? Who is supposed to take care of the poor? Who is supposed to right wrongs/enact justice? What is the purpose or role of government in a citizen’s life? Follow my logic in this article and you will see why the only answer outside of God to those questions has to be government. And trust me when I say, “That isn’t a good thing.”

 

For most of human history, mankind has been ruled by a monarchy of one sort or another. In these monarchies, the king took care of everybody. If you had a just ruler, then living in that king’s kingdom was pleasant and peasant life was bearable, maybe even enjoyable. If you had a tyrant for a king, then living in that king’s kingdom was a nightmare. Centuries upon centuries of repeated history has shown mankind that living under a kingship was more of a nightmare than anything else.

 

The story began to change (at least in the West) when in the 16^th Century the Protestant Reformation took place followed by the Renaissance and the Copernican Revolution. These movements allowed ideologies and political philosophies the oxygen it needed to spark a flame that could ultimately not be quenched. These political philosophies centered around one idea: freedom.

 

Many European countries struggled with the thought that monarchy was not the best way to govern the people. It was a struggle for change mostly because they had centuries of tradition and monarchical power working against them.

 

This was not so for the American revolutionaries of 1776. For the first time in history, a country was started on an ideology, not on a royal bloodline or military rule. The United States of America was able to hit the reset button on history and start making up its own rules from scratch. The main driving force behind these new rules (the Declaration of Independence and later, the Constitution) was one thought: ensuring personal freedom.

 

So, how did the Founding Fathers of our country arrive at this thought? Why was personal freedom so important to them? After all, they gained independence from the most powerful empire in the world- they could have just set up yet another kingdom and would have been able to enjoy the spoils of victory against the British. Although many historians disagree over the degree in which Christianity had influenced each of the Founding Fathers, there is no denying that it DID influence all of them to at least some degree. And seeing how they set up our government, we can definitely notice how Christianity influenced them.

 

  

How Christian Beliefs Influenced the Formation of America

 

The corruption of man

Our government is based on a checks-and-balances system. The people elect representatives to the legislative branch of the government. Legislators write the laws for the people. The executive branch is what enforces or vetoes the law. The judicial branch judges in cases of discrepancies in the law. In this way, no one branch of the government has all of the power, is held accountable by the other branches, and is ultimately held accountable by voters. Furthermore, the power of the federal government is limited by the states and the states power is limited by local districts and the power of all levels is limited by the people (i.e. Reserve Clause, 10^th amendment).

 

There are four things that our government allows to ensure that this limited government stayed limited: freedom of the press, a free market, a democratically elected government, and right to petition and common law judiciary. With freedom of the press people are free to investigate claims politicians make and can hold opinions that disagree with those in power without fear of reprisal from the government. With a free market, the people are enabled to pursue happiness and upgrade their standard of living without government control or class restrictions (such as nobility). With a democratically elected government, politicians’ feet are held to the fire, knowing that unemployment is always right around the corner if they don’t get reelected. Our government’s power is checked and balanced at every turn to ensure its citizens freedom. In fact, the only constitutional power our government has to enforce its will on the people is when the private citizens’ personal freedom is violated! (Usually, this happens through acts of aggression such as murder or stealing or it happens through breech of contract between two private citizens.)

 

Why so much accountability? The Founding Fathers believed what Lord Acton famously said: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” And, built into an engrained Biblical worldview, the Fathers understood that the reason why power corrupts people is because the people themselves are corrupt. The idea that corruption comes from within is uniquely a Biblical concept. No other religion in the world gives such a poor view of the present state of man than the Bible. Jeremiah 17: 9 says, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?”  Jesus said in Mark 7:22-24, “For from within out of the heart of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile the man.” In Romans 3:10-12 it says, “There is none righteous, no not one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. There are none that do good.” Isaiah 64:6 says, “our righteous deeds are as filthy rags in the eyes of God.” Even our best is tainted by sin and deceit!

 

This is why monarchies ultimately don’t work. This is also why dictatorships don’t work. Finally, this is why communism and socialism do not work. They all give the government too much power over private citizens’ lives, thus ensuring the further corruption that our elected officials already have in their own hearts.

 

Preserving personal freedom (from a large federal government) has the added benefit of keeping corrupt sinners in check. If you take away the democratic election, there is no way to reform a failing or corrupt system. If you take away freedom of the press, you take away the ability for private citizens to take public officials to task concerning their actions.  If you take away a free market, through heavy taxation and regulation on our businesses, then you take away the ability to make a living apart from the government’s influence. The more power you give to the government the easier it gets for them to become corrupt—not because of the system, but because of the already corrupted hearts that they were born with.

 

 

Being made in the image of God

The second doctrine that our Founding Fathers assumed was the image of God. In Genesis, in the creation story, God made man and woman in His image and after His own likeness. Although there is some debate among Christian theologians as to what that means, the basic understanding is that we share some attributes with God. These attributes include the ability to communicate, express emotion, think logically, develop relationships with other living creatures, and the ability to create.

 

Of course, we cannot create things out of nothing like God can, but we do have the ability to express ourselves in the arts and in the things we invent or produce. The freedom to express that image in us is well articulated in the statement from the Declaration of Independence, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The only way we can have all three of those in full is by preserving personal freedom.

 

Private citizens should have the right to invent, express themselves, or produce whatever they want  without “big brother” looming over their shoulders- or at least that’s the general idea…

 

The awkward state of humanity

How do we balance the two above-stated doctrines (the sinfulness of man and being made in God’s image)? In other words, if it is true that private citizens should be able to express any opinion, should that really include offensive opinions such as anti-religious or racially bigoted opinions? Or, if a free market is to be left unregulated by the government, should a company be allowed to hire child labor?

 

Well, this is a very tough topic to tackle and cannot be done in this article alone, but I will try to at least address a few quick points about how the government should balance out the doctrine of sin with the doctrine of man made in God’s image.

 

1. People should be able to do whatever they want and say whatever they want as long as it does not violate the rights of another human being. Let me repeat: as long as it does not violate the rights of another human being.

 

2. When two private citizens come into an agreement (or contract) with one another, the government should only interfere when that agreement is violated. And even then, they should only interfere if one of the two private citizens wants them to interfere.

 

3. When at all possible, private citizens should seek to govern themselves when it comes to “gray” areas. For example, when it comes to freedom of speech issues, the Movie Picture Association of America (MPAA) does a great job of governing themselves concerning the content of movies. When it comes to free market issues, many drug companies and hospitals can hold themselves accountable by putting certain seals of approval by other private medical organizations (such as the American Cancer Society).

 

4. If government absolutely has to get involved with its private citizens (such examples could include environmental concerns or roadways), then local government entities are to be preferred over the federal government. The reason why is that if you do not like the way a local government does things, you can move to another city/county/state more easily than you can move to another country. It is also easier to vote out local officials, making them more accountable knowing that they could always lose their job when the next election rolls around.

 

5. The government should not be in the business of doing what private citizens can do just fine by themselves. This includes, but is not limited to the medical industry, education, the lottery, postal service, and civic duties like taking care of the poor and elderly. It is easier to ignore, reform, or just do your own private organization than it is to change a corrupted government organization.

 

Those points made above do not always set well with Christians mostly because Christians in America have a tendency to want to legislate morality. They want laws passed against all conceivable evils in our country. This is understandable, but it misrepresents the sin that makes us evil in the first place. Remember, Jesus said that corruption comes from the heart, not from our actions. If government limits our actions, then all we will do is either break the law to commit those actions or find other ways to express our corrupt hearts. Changing the system does not change the heart.

 

So, what actions should the government consider illegal? Obviously, we cannot go around raping and pillaging as we please. As I said before, ensuring personal freedom does NOT mean total freedom. It means freedom to the extent that it does not directly violate another person’s personal freedom.  So, any aggressive action against another human (such as rape, murder, stealing, etc) should be considered a crime. This also includes violating business contracts.

 

However, nonviolent immoral actions like drunkenness, sexual immorality, hate speech, and having bad labor practices should not be considered crimes since they do not directly violate the personal freedom of another individual. If you do not like drunkenness, don’t go to a bar. If you do not like hearing cuss words on television, turn the channel, and if you do not agree with a company’s labor policies, go work for a company with labor policies you agree with.

 

Christians may not like allowing non-aggressive sins to be legal, but remember, in our pluralistic society, someone who is anti-Christian can get elected and turn all of those “non-aggressive morality” laws against Christians. It has already happened in Canada. Up there, Christians are not allowed to broadcast religious programming on television or radio. So, letting sinners be sinners allows our country to let Christians be Christians.

 

I know this seems nice and neat on paper and you are probably thinking, “Will this work?” Well, the answer is: It has worked in this way in our country in the past—specifically before the 1940’s. Unfortunately, both of the major political parties today have made strides to strengthen our federal government. If we want to be Biblical, we must strive to ensure personal freedom so that our sin nature is kept in check and so that our ability to express the image that God made us in is preserved. If we don’t have those two doctrines as our starting point, then we will end up relying on the little “g” to solve our problems and rely less on the big “g”. And trust me when I say, “That isn’t a good thing.”

 

 

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