Government, Violence, and the Gospel

I’ve noted for some time the tendency of progressive Christians to support the idea of a growing, expansive government to regulate society, albeit for the purposes of properly administering economics and social welfare. While this is a noble cause and Christians should be concerned about proper economics and the social welfare, there is a fundamental problem with such support that conflicts with the very heart of the Christian Faith: large, expansive government is contrary to the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, and is anti-Christian. What is more, there is an irony in those Christians who support an expansive government but also reject war in general.

I readily appreciate that the claim that large government is anti-Gospel runs counter to many generations of progressive Christian thinking. But let it be said that the Gospel runs counter to the way all of humanity is naturally inclined to think. Thus the conclusions drawn below are going to make conservative Christians uncomfortable as well.

We need to start off by acknowledging that there are two ethics at work in the Bible: the “eye for an eye” ethic and the “turn the other cheek” ethic. The first ethic is predominately found in the Old Testament and is spelled out in Leviticus 24:19. It is basically the ethic that states that a person who has injured another person is to be penalized to a similar degree. While you can find this ethic throughout the Old Testament, the legality of it has its antecedent in the Code of Hammurabi and in almost every society that has come before and after in every place society exists. Its near universality should not surprise us. This is the ethic of justice, of equality. This is how the world works and this ethic works very well. And, as my Old Testament professor stated, this ethic is still grace. It is grace because it mandates that a person or a society cannot mete vengeance upon the guilty party beyond the crime they have committed. This is grace. Nevertheless, it is an ethic of retribution, violence, and the implied threat of violence.

This ethic finds its fullest expression and most organized principle in government. The purpose of government is to hold back evil through violence and the threat of violence. Paul talks about this in Romans 13 where government is seen as an instrument of violence whose purpose is to fight against evil. And this is seen as a purpose ordained by God.

Government fights evil, first, by protecting society from external threats and, second, by maintaining order within that society, but both through violence and the threat of violence. Max Weber famously formulated that government has a regional monopoly on violence. This is a core concept of modern public law going back to Jean Bodin and the Enlightenment political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who latter wrote that the sovereign must be invested with the exclusive right to commit violence, the alternative to that being violence, bellum omnium contra omnes. This is the defining conception of the state and what its purpose is on a fundamental level. Indeed, in the Western world, there is near universal consensus that if any person or entity in society is to have such power, then it should be the exclusive right of the state.  And government does violence very well. That’s its purpose. It doesn’t do economics or social welfare very well. Government by its very nature is fundamentally incapable of properly administering economics and social welfare without highly negative results. This is why the standards of living and social welfare are always higher in societies with more limited government. Those areas are far too complex for government to manage. But violence is simple. The purpose of a military is simply to kill people and break things; or, at the very least, to threaten to. The same goes for the national guard and the police. The government uses violence and the threat of violence to protect society from external and internal evil. Ultimately and fundamentally, government is about violence and the threat of violence. And whether it is socialism, communism, Marxism, or dictatorships, what one finds is that massively increased governmental control simultaneously brings a higher increase in governmental violence. The American Founders knew this through both experience and Enlightenment philosophy. They rightfully saw government as a necessary evil but took steps to limit the scope and ability of its violence. Thus we have the U.S. Constitution with its checks, balances, and limitations designed to make it harder for the US government to inflict violence on its own people. As George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force.”

We see the purpose and problem of government played out through the Old Testament. Originally, Israel was designed to be a more theocratic community without a king or a hierarchal, governmental system. Yet the sinful nature that infected the world was also found in God’s covenant community. The primary purpose of the Book of Judges is to explain why it became necessary for Israel to adopt a king (Judges 21:25). Each successive story shows a further descent into evil and chaos culminating with chapter 19, in which Israel was shown to be as bad as Sodom and Gomorrah (oppression of the poor exemplified by sexual violence). Those cities were destroyed. In order to keep the plan and purpose of Israel underway, God gave his people a monarchy but warned them of the violence inherent within it as well as the accompanying loss of freedom, corruption, and seizure of property (1 Samuel 8). And the government did keep evil at bay for a time. It did work as it does in every other society. However, while government can hold back evil, it cannot defeat evil itself. Evil and sin creep in and corrupt. Israel’s government grew and oppressed the people, enacting violence upon them, seizing their property, and over-regulating their society. God continued to send prophets with a constant warning to Israel and its government not to go the way of Sodom. But the end and inevitable result was corruption and destruction by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

So government is a necessary evil ordained by God and fundamentally designed to administer violence in order to hold back evil. Yet, the more expansive and controlling it is, the more violent it becomes. But while it can hold back evil, it cannot defeat evil itself.

This brings us to the second ethic which is found predominately in the New Testament and is spelled out in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, particularly Matthew 5:38-5:42. However, the antecedents of this ethic are found in the Old Testament. In the second century BCE, the Jews were engaged in a violent struggle against the Seleucid Empire for political and cultural control over Palestine. In this time of cultural persecution and violent resistance, we have the production of the Book of Daniel that teaches a response to governmental persecution through prayer, service, and non-violent resistance. This is a later, higher ethic than that is found in the earlier books of the Bible like that of Esther with its retributive justice. At the same time, the Book of Daniel predicts that God is going to deal with these persecuting nations and governments through a “Messiah” and through resurrection. You can see much earlier in the Old Testament that God is going to establish his Kingdom through a Messiah (Isaiah 11) and that a time and ethic of peace will follow where the wolf will lie down with the lamb (verse 6) and people will no longer need their swords (Isaiah 2:4; Joel 3:10, Micah 4:3). It will be a time of freedom (Isaiah 61:1) and forgiveness (Jeremiah 31:34). This is an ethic of forgiveness, non-violence, and non-retribution. And it flows from the character of God himself. In the first case of human violence recorded in the Bible, God gives Cain grace for murdering his little brother even when Cain deserved death (Genesis 4). This is who God is. And this is who Jesus is. And Jesus taught an ethic where abuse, persecution, and violence are to be dealt with by love, forgiveness, and non-violence. Again, you can see this prominently in the Sermon on the Mount, but it is the ethic Jesus took all the way to the cross where he rejected violence (Matthew 26: 52-54; Luke 22:51) and proclaimed forgiveness (Luke 23:34). The power exhibited and unleashed on the cross is that is that of self-giving love and forgiveness. This is the heart of the Gospel.  You cannot fight force with force because, either way, force wins. You cannot fight violence with violence because, either way, violence wins. The real power lies in self-giving, turn-the –other-cheek love. On the cross, evil and sin were drawn to Jesus. The political parties of Israel’s government (Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, elders, and chief priests) and the Roman government itself attacked him with full force and violence, exhausting themselves upon him. Yet, God raised Jesus from the dead, proving that evil could do its worse but still stand impotent before God’s Kingdom. This is what victory means and this is how it is achieved. This is the ethic that God wants for his people. This is the ethic God wants for the world and will eventually get. This is the superior ethic over that of “eye for an eye”. While the kingdoms of this world run on the basis of force, the Kingdom of God runs on the basis of forgiveness. While the governments of this world run through violence, the government of God runs through non-violence. One is about death, the other is about life.

This is why Christians, progressive or otherwise, should abandon support for large, expansive government. Government is necessarily and essentially violent on a fundamental and unchangeable level. Violence is its raison d’être. It is a beast that cannot be tamed, only unleashed. And it is because of this inherent violence that it runs contrary to the Gospel of the Kingdom of God which is centrally about love, forgiveness, and non-violence. Government must be kept limited in order to limit violence. And while economics and social welfare are very important Kingdom goals and essential to the Gospel, the use of government to achieve them not only fails to work, it utilizes an ethic that is contrary to the Gospel. This is one reason why it doesn’t work. The irony is that those who too often support a big government to administer social change will simultaneously reject government’s essential purpose: to hold back evil through violent war and the threat of violent war.

So what are progressive Christians supposed to do?

1)      Abandon support of a large, expansive, controlling government.

2)      Seek the goals of the Kingdom of God through non-governmental means.

3)      Appreciate that war in general is necessary for a government to hold back evil. Such violence is also necessary for national guards and police.

What are conservative Christians to do?

1)      Do not support war and do not attach Christianity to it. Be sure to state publicly that war is a necessary evil used to hold back evil, but steadfastly maintain that it, and all other forms of violence, are contrary to the Gospel.

2)      Do not fall into the trap of expecting government to be the method by which you advance the moral aspects of the Gospel.

The fact of the matter is that government needs to be put in a proper perspective and limited to its specific, fundamental role. While it is by its nature contrary to the Gospel and at odds with how God intends the world to work, government does fulfill a divine role of holding back the forces of evil. But if government grows and expands beyond its proper role, it becomes a source of violence meted out amongst a fearful populace. Ultimately though, it is the ethic of Jesus, not the ethic of government, that defeats evil.