FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS, volume 8, number 16, April 16, 2009

You shall have no other gods before Me, Exodus 20:3.

Big Brother

First it was the $750 billion bailout of AIG, Citibank et al. Then it was the bailout of the big three automakers. Now it is the $3 trillion proposed budget deficit in order to fund the largest transfer of wealth in our nation’s history. Just recently our President fired the CEO of General Motors, and there is now talk of universal health care. We continue to prop up public school systems to the tune of billions of dollars and these, especially in our inner cities, are failing miserably. This insanity did not begin with President Bush or President Obama. Nor did it begin with President Lyndon Johnson and his War on Poverty, or with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. This goes back at least to the origination of the Federal Reserve Bank under President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. Wilson was the first of many presidents who believed in government as our savior. Actually this goes back to the debate between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The former wanted less government and the latter wanted more government. It is quite remarkable that states like New Hampshire and Texas are now evoking the old “states rights” arguments based on the Tenth Amendment that southern Democrats used in the 1960’s to slow down desegregation.

But why do so many welcome Big Brother’s intrusion into their lives? Why are so many keen on taking rights and money from the well to do and middle class and redistributing them to the poor? At the root of this desire is idolatry. We are a nation of idolaters. Instead of looking to the great Triune God for sustenance, we have in turn looked to the state as our sustainer and savior. The new church and the new religion is the state, clearly usurping the place reserved only for God and His Christ. The same thing happened in Eighteenth century France with the French Revolution. It happened in the Twentieth century with Italian and Nazi Fascism, Soviet Communism, and western European Socialism. I suggest that almost without exception most under forty in the United States unknowingly, unconsciously look to Big Brother for their needs.

The Bible paints a different picture. The individual is directly accountable to God for his life. If he does not work, then he shall not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Next comes the family unit. The father is the covenant head of his wife and children and is responsible to God for their welfare (Ephesians 5:25- 6:4). This includes the education of his children. Then one is responsible to his own church community. The plethora of “one another” passages in the New Testament make clear that believers are to care for one another. The local body of Christ is to care for the orphan and widow. This is true and undefiled religion (James 1:27). Then the local covenant community is to care for the community at large, the unbelievers or “sojourners” in their midst (Exodus 23:21ff). Beyond that local communities ought to be concerned about caring for those in other communities who are hurting due to natural calamity or the ravages of war. Paul spent a great deal of time encouraging Corinthian and Macedonian Christians to come to the aid of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who were suffering from a famine. (2 Corinthians 8-9). You will note that government is nowhere found in these scenarios. Only after all these levels of help is the civil magistrate or government to be involved, and then only to administer justice (Romans 13:1ff) and to provide for the common defense against evil people who seek to invade the country (1 Samuel 30:1ff). There is no biblical reason for state education, welfare, or business. None, absolutely none! We have given up our individual and God-given rights and are rapidly moving toward serfdom, working on the plantation for the man!

How does God direct us to finance legitimate government responsibilities of justice and defense? God’s tax is the tithe. The tithe, along with offerings, financed all the needs of the local and national covenant community, aided the sojourner, provided for calamity, and funded the military. The people were free then to work, live, and enjoy the fruit of their labors. We have slowly but surely and willingly jettisoned our individual liberty for serfdom. Some of you, when figuring up all the federal, state, local, property, excise taxes, etc. are paying over 50 % of your gross salary to feed Big Brother. The reason government demands more and more of our money is because at his very core he is corrupt. He has usurped God’s rightful place as Lord of the nations. We are bowing down to the state as our savior, and it takes a lot to feed his insatiable appetite.

What are we to do? The “Boston Tea Parties” that are popping up around the country are a good idea, but these fall short. They only treat the symptoms of the problem. At the root is idolatry. We are a nation that has forgotten the worship of Yahweh, instead going after the gods of the Amalekites. Mere demonstrations and voting the “bad guys” out of office will not do. Personal salvation, where people “come to Jesus” and worship God on Sundays but live like the rest of the world during the week, will not do either. We are saved to serve Christ and His kingdom. Without revival, ushering millions of Americans into the kingdom of God; and without a consequent reformation of biblical Christianity, I fear we have no hope at all. Without revival and reformation your children will live like the Dutch and Germans do today— a secular, compromised, restricted life where individuality gives way to fascism, a way of life where everything is viewed as political, where any action of the state is justified to achieve the common good, where Big Brother assumes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, seeking to impose uniformity of thought and action, either by force or regulation, where everything including religion must be aligned with Big Brother’s objectives for our common good.

We best wake up before it is too late. We have been “at ease in Zion” far too long. Preachers, fathers and mothers, Christian school educators, and the general Christian populace need to get to work. I challenge many of you to go into politics. If you are successful in business and life, then you are precisely the kind of people we need serving in the public arena. You would do it, not to have a job, but to serve people. You would serve for a few years and then go back to the private sector, the way the framers of our constitution intended it to be. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Our help is not in Big Brother. Can we finally get this into our minds and hearts!

FORGET NONE OF HIS BENEFITS is a weekly devotional by Reverend Al Baker, pastor of Christ Community Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, Connecticut.

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