No faith unites us as does faith in the state. We look to the state to insure that our food is edible, that our clothes aren’t flammable, that our air is breathable, that our water is potable, that our roads are wide and pothole-free, that our tires won’t explode, that we won’t drive too fast, that we won’t forget to buckle up, that we won’t stand on the top step of our ladder, that our vices will have warning labels, that there be a cure for the ones we indulge in anyway, that the cure will be affordable, that we won’t be mean to other people, that other people won’t be mean to us. We ask the state to keep us from temptation, and to mitigate the consequences when it can’t. We ask the state to relieve us of our responsibilities and to bear the cost of our irresponsibility.
And the state is pleased to justify this faith, to take over responsibility for our health, our well-being, our cholesterol levels, our golden years, our disputes with neighbors, our defense, our working conditions, our posture, our trash, our heritage, our children, our minds. All it asks in return is that we have faith in it, that we continue to turn to the state to supply all our needs, that we come to look to the state as not merely an enforcer armed with a sword, but as a benevolent protector, a standard of righteousness, the source of all that is good. All it asks is that we entrust it with our lives, our liberty, our property, and our souls.
The state was not always held in such high regard. The state was given the sword that it might protect and defend its citizens against aggressors foreign and domestic, i.e. that it might keep the peace. And peace was the only benefit for which a citizen would look to the state.
A quick read of Psalm 2 is sufficient to remind anyone that seeking to escape God’s law is certain to evoke God’s laughter and scorn, as well as to kindle His wrath in due time. And a brief study of Romans 1:18-32 would have spelled out for them what God has in store for those who choose to suppress the truth in unrighteousness, to exchange the truth of God for a lie, to substitute a false light for the true Light. But the Enlightened chose debasement over transformation, and so God revealed His wrath against them by giving them over to their false light, allowing them to continue debasing their minds through the futility of their thoughts. You want a false standard? You shall have a false standard.
But where to incarnate this standard, that mankind might be united in its observance? Some of the Enlightened simply jettisoned any hope of catholicity by reinterpreting man is the measure of all things as the self-worshipping I am the measure of all things, most notably the Romantics of the 19th century, the existentialists of the 20th, and the postmodernists of our own day. But most agreed with Jean-Jacques Rousseau that the standard should be embodied in the state.
Rousseau claimed that as each individual will was surrendered to the good of the whole, a General Will (note the capitalization) would arise which would somehow exemplify a human wisdom which was much more that the sum of its parts, a circumstance in which the good of the whole would be identical to the good of the state. Why it was that the General Will would be pieced together from the best bits of human wisdom, rather than the worst bits, is something that Rousseau never made clear. One thing he did make clear is that individuals would be easily motivated to strike such a bargain with the state, that they would willingly forsake freedom and dignity and enter into slavery, for the sake of the benefits that the state is capable of bestowing, namely personal peace and affluence. Good call, Jean-Jacques.
And so the people were encouraged to look to the state for the riches of wisdom and knowledge, to submit to its unsearchable judgments and its unfathomable ways, to acknowledge that from the State and through the State and to the State are all things. And God gave them over to their lie, and they proceeded to worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.
We evangelicals are quick to acknowledge this as an accurate description of them, i.e. secular society. And we placate ourselves with a thoroughly romantic vision of us, a vision of a Babylonian captivity in which we have hung our harps upon the willows as we wait patiently and faithfully for the Lord to deliver us.
But are we in fact faithful? Perhaps we are not completely given over to worship of the state, but have we resisted the ever-present temptation of syncretism, of blended loyalties, of creating a pantheon so that the state might have a place near to God? Even as we reject the state’s offer to indoctrinate our children, we look to the state to fund their education through tax- funded vouchers. Even as we reject the state’s offer to support us financially, we look to the state to subsidize our job training, our medical expenses, our periods of unemployment, our retirement. Even as we reject the state’s offer to intrude in the details of our own lives, we look to the state for levers of power which can (in the right hands, of course) be used to reshape society into something more pleasing to us.
And are we so confident that the place of the state in our pantheon is minor? Visit any European cathedral and note that among the plethora of idols that one is conspicuous by its absence, namely a national flag; yet foreigners who visit our churches are often shocked and offended to find the idol of our own state displayed prominently in the sanctuary. And, as our friend Jonathan Daugherty has pointed out, after September 11 many Christians turned to the President of the United States to handle a situation which they believed that God was incapable of preventing.
Statism is the air we breathe, the water we swim in. In this environment, the price of faithful obedience is eternal vigilance.