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God Is Not A Democrat
by Jeremiah Hineman
A Few Simple Reasons God Is Not a Democrat
As a college teacher of American Government I often discover that my students have fused the state with the church rather than separating the church from the state as has been traditionally believed. What I mean is that American ideas of democracy are so persuasive and popular due to American economic gain, global humanitarian interests, and the illusion of unlimited opportunities that students who interpret religion, God, or Scripture do so through a democratic lens. Rather than using Scripture as their foundation of truth and applying its messages of God's character and man's nature to their view of the responsibilities of the state, many of my students and many, I believe, of the general Christian American public tend to believe in the God of America more than the God of Scripture.
This statement is an unnecessary or odd dichotomy to many people, one that might be followed by defensive arguments declaring the "Christian heritage" of America. My statement however is intended to say nothing concerning the founding of this country; it is an analysis of the subtle shift in the current thought process of many Christians in our country. Regardless of the degree of influence of Christianity on our founding fathers and documents, we are now a nation composed of people who seem to love democracy more than we love God. This misplaced desire to be a democrat more than a martyr leads me to this question: Is the God of America understood and accepted in matters of character, worth, and purpose the same as Yahweh, Christ, and the Holy Spirit of Scripture?
When characterizing the God of America, I use the term democrat broadly to refer to ideas of nationalism and democracy which gained prominence in the late 18th century and have experienced somewhat of a metamorphosis in meaning since that time. Liberty of action, equality of opportunity, fraternity, majority rule, and, to an extent, sovereignty of the individual are some of the more prominent democratic ideals that leaked from the pens of philosophers like John Locke, David Hume, and Jean Jacque Rousseau. These democratic ideals transferred from the pages of the Constitution and The Rights of Man to the pages of Scripture in our American interpretation of God. (The term democratic here is not to be understood as the vague title of a political party. In other words, if I would have said God is not a republican my statement should carry the same connotation.)
The applications of these political principles to biblical interpretation result in many misconceptions regarding the nature of God and the nature of man. The most consequential mistake of many American Christians is their tendency to disregard certain spiritual aspects of God's character, most notably His sovereignty, by exalting certain profane political objectives. A completely autonomous and sovereign God who works all things to the counsel of his good will (Ephesians 1:3-14), who guides the kings heart however he wills (Proverbs 21:1), whose purposes can never be thwarted (Job 42:2), and who refines the hearts of his people as he wills for His name's sake (Isaiah 48:9-11) simply contradicts the American democratic list of ideals. Man's liberty is essential to American democratic thinking. By liberty I mean Americans generally believe they are free to act in any manner so long as that action does not harm another directly. This understanding of liberty is fundamentally flawed in several ways. First, the tendency to forget the non-absolute state of liberty, or to put it another way, the necessary restraints on freedom, is a common and dangerous practice. Liberty is never free, it must always be purchased either by the blood of patriots or of a Savior, and it is never absolute for a human. The paradox of liberty is that you become the bondslave of whatever philosophy or person gave you that liberty. Therefore God's absolute sovereignty, His ability to carry His purposes through exactly as He planned "before the foundations of the earth" (through Christ I Peter 1:20, in man Ephesians 1:4) and man's absolute liberty are contradictions in terms. Next, citizens who argue for absolute human liberty fail to understand that all actions affect other people either directly or at least indirectly. Neither man's existence nor man's actions occur in a vacuum. This Scriptural truth was established in the Garden of Eden and is included in the doctrine of original sin. Sinful actions will affect not only the actor but all those who come into contact with that actor's actions through direct or indirect means.
Finally, man's actions are not absolutely free because freedom horizontally, meaning man's relationship to man, are restrained due to all mankind's sin against a holy God. But of chief importance is the fact that man's actions are not free vertically, meaning man's relationship to God, because of God's character. According to the overall picture of God's purpose as seen from a complete view of the fulfillment of God's covenant relationship with man, man in his depraved nature is not at liberty to harm himself or help himself. When man's sin is forgiven by Christ's gracious sacrifice through faith, his relationship is restored with the Father and he is then able to love his fellow man. But the forgiveness still does not make man free to do whatever he desires; he still exists in his humanity or his non-glorified imperfect state even though he is no longer under the law and he still exists as the creature not the Creator. Therefore, man is never free to act independently of His creator's decreed will.
Some Americans would like to believe they should be free to act even irreverently if they wish. "I should be free to curse God and live my life as hedonistically as desirable on an individual basis because it is MY life. After all, because of man's liberty being an inalienable right 'according to nature' no government should be allowed to legislate morality!" But this argument fails to account that God as Creator is the individual who is being affected by all actions of His creatures (either he is being worshiped as He deserves or He is not) and God is the one who gave man his nature to do all things for God's name sake. To expect a non-Christian to believe any of what I have said thus far would be foolish because to understand these truths that are founded upon God's character you must first know God. But those who do claim to know God and thereby love His character must love Him as Sovereign just as much as they love him as Father. Many Christian Americans focus on God's love absent from God's justice because they want to be free from God's wrath and yet free to sin. But if we want to be free from part of our Maker's character and thereby free to do what we believe brings us ultimate satisfaction, does that not make us desirous to be gods ourselves? And if we have that desire do we not then want God to serve us rather than rule us? A lover serves, a sovereign rules, but only a Sovereign Lover satisfies man's ultimate desires by glorifying Himself. Just as we desire our government to guarantee our liberty and our rights we desire God to guarantee our liberty and our rights as WE define and understand liberty and right according to our sinful passions. What we fail to realize is we have neither liberty nor rights above a sovereign God.
Because God is all that is perfect, His name alone is worthy of any praise and his name alone demands all our praise as his creatures. Every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea declaring the Lamb's worth in Revelation 5 reveal the truth that God in Christ Jesus alone is worthy of glory, honor, and praise. Why then do so many of us who believe this Scriptural truth substitute worthless idols for the worth of God? The pleasures of democracy so often lead to this substitutionary idolatry as we revel in temporal pleasures. The more we gain, the more we glory in the goods we have gained. Like a toddler who strives to reach an unattainable shiny but harmful knife on a high counter, we desperately strive to find our satisfaction in the worth of those fleeting gains, and yet they do not satisfy. Whether the goods we have gained are sex, money, drink, food, play, work, family, or friends matters not. None of them are worthy of our worship because none of them are like God. We glory more in substance and more frequently in the goods because the length of the temporary satisfaction of the goods becomes shorter and shorter, leaving us feeling utterly hollow in the end. The shallowness we feel is a result of the fact that all of these goods that a democratic society can produce are void of worth in themselves, meaning they are void of worth when separated from the One who makes them truly "goods."
Persuasive democracy has been instrumental in keeping many men blinded to their need of a Christ. Not only do men deny a sovereign God, they deny they need a living Savior. America holds as heroes those barons or politicians or socialites who have "pulled themselves up from their own bootstraps" because they are given freedom of opportunity. Rather than praise the God of grace who showed mercy to the baron by humbling him through taking away his fortune or to the politician by "dethroning him" through political scandal or to the socialite by sickening him with some form of cancer so that all of these rebels may recognize their needy state, repent, and worship the God who is in control of all things, we desire to praise their talent. And we do this for our own sakes. We as rebellious men would much rather give praise to other rebellious men for their rebellious talents because in reality, our praise of them causes us in some selfish way to feel justified in our glorification of ourselves as individuals at the expense of the Creator. We in our flesh will always leap at the opportunity to substitute the praise of grace with the praise of work ethic. No man, unless he has been Graced, desires to wear the scarlet letter of his sin so that others may see him for what he truly was before grace. And those who do declare their inherent rebellion against a holy God are branded by society as fanatics or oddities so that the lie of man's existence may continue. Because the democratic government finds its legitimacy in representation and majority rule, the government in turn reflects this lie, this suppression of truth, suppression by the non-redeemed clearly taught in Romans 1. However, the deconstruction of truth by influential members of society that is reflected in government is reinserted into mainstream society through the legislative process. Thus, many believers even have begun to accept government social theory as gospel in place of Christ's gospel.
An improper emphasis and application of democratic ideals has caused many Christians to lose sight of their purpose for existence. The apostle John in his first epistle declares that a true saint who is continually abiding in the grace of his Propitiator, Advocate, and Savior will "walk in the same way in which He walked" (I John 2:6). An examination of Christ's walk in the gospel of this same apostle reveals a walk that is radically anti-American culture. Every action of Christ from his birth in a cave to his death on a cross is antithetical to the American dream. And the reason for this antithesis is simple: the Christian life is not the American dream.
Suffering due to compassionate sacrifice described Christ's walk. He consistently sought to pour himself out, literally in His death, for the sake of His Father's will, which is tied by grace to His children's redemption. We think how horrible for a baby to be born in a cave, but we neglect to realize the meager conditions at birth were nothing compared to the glory Christ gave up in heaven to come to earth. We cringe at a torturous public death at the hands of a hateful public and fail to recognize the pain of death paled when compared to His Father's rejection. Both Christ's birth and His death, and every action between the two that all have an eternal affect have no place in the American dream, which frequently is defined by temporal goods and selfish pleasures. In the one hand we have a 2,500 square foot house with an attached two car garage in the suburbs, two children, and a dog, and in the other hand we have Christ and His walk, infinite joy that requires extreme sacrifice of these temporal pleasures. Too often Christ is "invited" in our 2,500 square foot house to fulfill the role of butler so that we may continue to lounge in the pajamas of our secure and comfortable democracy instead of suiting up in the armor of Christ's righteousness to die in His service. We have flipped Christianity on its head, making Christ the sovereign Christ the slave, taking Christian from the role of steward to the role of lord. Is the brick of the house really worth more than the blood of the cross?
Obviously the temporal objects are not the problem in and of themselves. Job, Abraham, and Joseph all had large amounts of wealth, but they also gave it all up to suffer for the sake of the name of God. The motivation of those who have been called as stewards is at the heart of the issue of the goods of democracy. Do those who have the American dream have it because they desire their house to be a house of worship, their car to be transportation for the needy to hospitals, their children to be ministers to their classmates? To walk as Christ walked does not mean we must be poor in wealth, just poor in spirit, not starving for food, just starving for righteousness. The more goods a person has the more responsibility he also has to search for his contentment in Christ rather than in his wealth.
The rapid spread of the American dream across the globe through liberation movements has had in some ways a negative affect on Christian missions. Once they have tasted the ripe fruit of America's fields and the soft comfort of America's factories, few Americans love to exchange them for the physically incomparable goods and stringent demands of distant lands and peoples. Furthermore, as Americans we are not defined by foreigners primarily according to the gospel or the political liberty we have nearly as much as we are defined by the economic wealth we enjoy. And when we enter other lands to spread the good news of Christ's sacrifice that causes His followers to walk as He walked the hearers believe this walk mirrors the success and comforts tied to the American dream. What a shocking discovery when they hear that the walk of a Christian is not accomplished in one hundred dollar, comfortable Nike tennis shoes but in the worn out, blistered and bloodied bare feet of a pilgrim. We should not be recruiting other countries to democracy for democracy's sake; we should be serving other countries in Christian love, bathing them in fervent prayer, and teaching them the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Those spiritual riches are infinitely satisfying whereas the leather, foam and rubber of even the best shoe will wear out through frequent use. We are never called to be professional advertisers of a democratic philosophy, but we are called to be amateur servants who delight in a professional God.
A proper understanding of our democratic ideals-taking the meaning of liberty, equality, fraternity, sovereignty, and majority rule from Scripture instead of taking Scripture's meaning from them-reconfirms the fact that in Christ alone and because of Christ alone we can revel in these democratic ideals (Colossians 1:15-20). All of the goods of a democracy, whether tangible or philosophical, are not evil in and of themselves. They are abused when we abuse them, when we make them idols by loving them and worshiping them rather than the Creator who gave them to us. But when they are used as tools of worship the results for God, His praise, and the people, their happiness, are magnificent. We are truly liberated from sin while becoming a slave to Christ (Romans 6:5-23). Sin has no more dominion over those who are in grace! But those who are in grace are slaves to righteousness. Grace is the ultimate equalizer, as all those who are under saving grace recognize their previous absolute equal state of depravity outside grace (Romans 3:10-18). None of those in grace deserve grace (Romans 9:10-18), and all are absolutely equal in their position in grace, hidden in Christ and absolutely holy due to the imputation of His righteousness (Romans 11:11-24). Sovereignty is recognized as being attributed not to the individual but to God alone (Psalm 115). True, joy-filled fraternal fellowship, fellowship as an act of worship, can only be experienced amongst those in the common bond of grace (I John 1:7). Democracy is good, but it is not our guideline for life. When we apply its tenets to our interpretation of God and Scripture the results are hollow Americans seeking liberty but finding bondage. John's admonition to his contemporary readers is the solution to this hollowness that must be applied by his present American readers: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."
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