Image (c) talitha and Depositphotos.comThis article is an excerpt from Godvernment: Government as God
Tom Sheppard
9/4/2020
While many today are clamoring for
the exile of religion from the public square and taking down the Ten
Commandments from our courthouses, they do so without thought or understanding
of how the Ten Commandments are perfectly designed to allow us to enjoy the
fruits of a civil society.
The Ten Commandments
give us a glimpse into the stupid and awful things people can do. I have taken the liberty of rephrasing them below,
along with some elaboration of what these say about human nature.
1.
Worship only God. When you put your faith in anything other than
God, you will be let down. [for more on this topic see Faith in Who or What]
2.
Don’t worship the work of your own hands. When you devote all your time, energy, and passion
to the acquisition of material things, you are worshipping the work of your own
hands. You are behaving as though your happiness
and long-term well-being is dependent on, and attainable through, your things.
3.
Don’t refer to God rashly or foolishly. People who are smart or know a lot frequently
get an inflated opinion of themselves. They
begin to think that they are smarter than God, and certainly smarter than people
who believe in God. This leads to a
casual dismissal of wisdom which has helped build and preserve civil societies
throughout history.
4.
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Take one day in a week, and set it aside to do
God’s work.
Being actively engaged in a noble
work that is greater than yourself gives your own life perspective and makes
you more grateful for the abundance you enjoy.
5.
Show respect to your parents. Many people today disregard the wisdom that
has been earned by those who have come before us. First in deserving respect are our
parents. Instead, people succumb to
another tenet of the Communist Manifesto and allow themselves to be separated from
and despise the teachings of their parents.
Divorcing yourself from the wisdom
of your antecedents, you make yourself easy prey to slick arguments which sound
good and seem to make sense, but which cannot stand the test of time—a fact
known to your parents, who have already stood the test of time.
6.
Don’t murder.
There is much ado today about “Black Lives Matter.” Some are willing to justify killing police
officers because they feel that the killing of someone who is a threat to their
fellow human beings is somehow unjustified because he is someone’s son and his
skin color is black.
God’s laws are colorblind. He commands that we have a healthy respect
for all human life and that we only take it when absolutely necessary.
Valuing the life of our neighbor
creates a society that is nurturing, caring, safe, and protective of its members.
When murder runs rampant in the
streets, unchecked by the enforcement of laws, all men and women must look to
the strength of their own arm to protect their own life and the lives of those
they love. Civil society disintegrates
into chaos and barbarism when basic respect for human life doesn’t restrain the
behavior of people.
7.
Don’t commit adultery. There are at least two points in this
commandment. Adultery is when a married
person has sexual relations with someone who is not his or her lawful spouse.
When adultery happens, at least
one person has become a liar, violating the solemn oaths he or she has sworn to
forsake all others, to love and cherish.
The second point is that an attack
on the institution of marriage is an attack on the basic building block of
civil society. If the most intimate
family relationship is not safe from predation, then a higher level of
civilization is unsustainable.
Eventually, every family that wants to maintain its integrity will feel
the need to separate from society at large and keep its activities close to
home.
The third point of this
commandment is related to the first. It
is trust. Mutual trust is utterly
essential for any relationship—marital, societal, or fraternal—to function
effectively. A military unit functions
effectively when each member knows that all other members of the team will do
their part. That is universally true for
any society to function.
Without trust, no group of two or
more people can cooperate to achieve things that are beyond the capability of
the lone individual.
8.
Don’t steal.
Where the commandment against adultery is meant to allow a civil society
to function because of security and trust within the family, the injunction
against taking what you have not earned is designed to allow people to work
together without the need to constantly watch over their belongings and food.
When theft runs rampant, the
faithful provider has no choice other than to take every effort to secure his
or her food and other possessions. At an
extreme, the individual cannot participate in civil society because she or he
is too busy protecting what has been obtained through their industry.
9.
Don’t lie.
As mentioned above, when discussing one of the corrosive effects of
adultery, lying or deceit renders an individual untrustworthy.
Untrustworthy people cannot build
a civil society. That is not to say that
they cannot build a society, but it will not be a civil society, and civil
society provides the opportunities for the higher expressions of human beauty,
such as the arts and literature.
10.
Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, house, servants,
animals, or anything else. Lusting after
the abundance of another has the effect of making you ignore the abundance in
your own life.
Coveting is a gateway anti-social
behavior. All too often, envying what
someone else has leads to trying to find ways to take from the neighbor for
yourself. To do that, you end up lying,
stealing, committing adultery by seducing the neighbor’s spouse, or perhaps
even killing your neighbor to get what they have. And, just in case you missed it, when all
that bad behavior becomes known, that brings shame to your parents.
Today is Worse Than Days Gone By
2 Timothy 3:1-8
I believe that any honest
assessment of our society today will demonstrate that all these bad behaviors
are not only extant today, but are actually celebrated in many parts of our
society. When I say celebrated, I mean
that instead of being decried as bad behaviors, they are held up as evidence of
being modern and enlightened.
Traitors, for instance. Most people would say being a traitor is a
bad thing, yet many will praise the likes of Edward Snowden as being a noble
man of conscience for stealing secrets from the National Security Agency and
delivering them both to the press and to the enemies of the United States. Yet, regardless of opinion, there can be no
debate regarding the fact that to do what he did required him to break the
oaths of secrecy which he swore.
Incontinent is another thing. Today, we hear ads for Depends and think of
incontinence as having something to do with not having control over your
bowels. However, incontinence actually
means “lacking self-control.” Paul, in
his letter to Timothy, was talking about how people would come to celebrate
their lack of self-restraint.
And that last verse about Jannes
and Jambre? Paul was referring to the
court magicians of Pharoah who did their own imitations of the signs Moses gave
Pharoah and convinced him not to let the Israelites go, in spite of all the
plagues that came.
Today, we are awash in people who
are ungrateful for the abundance they enjoy.
You don’t believe me? Consider
this, the average “poor” person in the U.S. today lives indoors in a regularly
constructed building. They have
electricity, indoor plumbing, television, cell phones, a fridge, a stove,
perhaps even a car or two, some kind of stereo, and ready access to food and
clothing.
In contrast, the poor I worked with
in Ecuador lived in cane shacks built on stilts over top of open sewers. Their water was either delivered into a
barrel in front of the house or caught from the rain. And when it rained, most folks went out into
the street and used the opportunity to get a rare shower. They had no electricity. The one house in the neighborhood that had
electricity and a fridge used the fridge as a small business, selling cold
drinks and frozen treats. Stoves were
run from small propane tanks. In short,
they lived every day slightly less well off than most of us do when we go
camping.
Having seen real poverty, where
children go swimming in open sewers, have no shirts or shoes, and no
healthcare, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see and hear the
“poor” in the U.S. complaining, because, while they live like the upper middle
class of most third-world countries, they don’t have all of the creature
comforts that others enjoy.
Their answer to this disparity is
to covet what others have and advocate that the government steal from others on
their behalf. Or, they justify criminal
activities to rob and steal directly to get the material things which others
have earned by their own hard work and industry.
Paul, in his letter to Timothy,
left out the usual bad behaviors that have prevailed throughout history—those
that the Ten Commandments were designed to counter.
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with
their bones.
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
After reading the last segment, you
are probably convinced that I have a pretty low opinion of people. Perhaps you believe, as some religions
preach, that we are basically evil people when we come into this world. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that people come into this world
with a disposition to be good.
Unfortunately, for all of us, the
pleasures and distresses of the flesh are powerful intoxicants, and they too
often divert us from our good intentions.
Thus the verity of the aphorism, “the spirit is willing, but the flesh
is weak.”
Genuinely good people are capable
of such incredibly selfless acts and kindness as to be breathtaking.
When I think of the good nature of
people, I think of the firefighters who went into the twin towers in New York
on September 11, 2001, and those who go into burning buildings every day. They put their lives at risk to save the
lives and property of others.
Likewise, I think of the men and
women who are ordinary police officers.
Every day, they put their lives at risk so that the rest of us can live
without the fear of falling prey to violent people who are gleefully embracing
the worst behaviors they can exhibit.
Mother Teresa is recognized the
world over for her decades-long, selfless work to physically and spiritually
administer salvation to impoverished orphans in Calcutta, India.
A survey by sociologist James Davison Hunter testifies to
the underlying moral consensus that still exists in America. Hunter's survey
found that 97 percent of Americans agree with the statement that "with
hard work and perseverance, anyone can succeed in America." Ninety-six percent agree that "American democracy
is only as strong as the virtue of its citizens." Ninety-three percent agree that
"America's contribution is one of expanding freedom for more and more
people."
Nearly every major religion in the
world is built on a foundation of trying to encourage people to cultivate their
better natures. I believe that Jesus of
Nazareth put it best when he encapsulated good behavior in what has become
known as The Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
When we treat others with the
respect, kindness, attentiveness, compassion, and care that we would like to
receive in return, we establish the firmest foundation for a civil society.
Good people—truly good people—are
those who not only behave well, but really don’t even want to behave badly.
They don’t lust after their
neighbor’s goods. They don’t lie. They don’t steal. They don’t murder. They don’t commit adultery. They are respectful of their parents and the
wisdom of their antecedents. They are
actively engaged in a good and noble cause that is greater than themselves.
They do all these things because,
although they can behave badly, they don’t enjoy behaving badly and they relish
the fruits of good behavior.
In the interest of being honest, I
confess that I am not a consistently, truly good person. If anyone goes looking for bad behaviors in
my life, they will find them. However, I
need to confess a couple of more things on this point.
I am closer to consistently being a
truly good person now than I have ever been before. I believe that I can continue to improve and
become, more consistently, a truly good person.
The atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ makes it possible for me to put my
bad behaviors behind me and make real progress toward becoming the kind of person
God wants me to be.
The effort to become a good person
is not trivial, and it doesn’t have a really firm finish line in this
life. It is, in fact, more of a process
than a destination.
The first step toward becoming a
good person is to have the desire to be a good person.
The second step is to immediately
begin to act like a good person.
The third step is to immediately
begin to think and talk like a truly good person.
Many of us have heard the advice,
“fake it until you make it.” When it
comes to becoming a good person, this is better phrased as “behave the way you
should until you begin to enjoy behaving the way you should.”
When you reach the stage where you
no longer enjoy bad behaviors and you truly enjoy a life filled with good
behavior, you have become a truly good person.
I look forward to the day when I am
changed completely into a truly good person and I have no more desire or
disposition to behave badly.
For those of you who think that
living among a lot of truly good people would be boring, I am here to tell you
that there are a lot of interesting and fun things to do that don’t involve
damaging myself or others in any way. However,
it is really easy to indulge in bad behavior for your “fun.” Remember the aphorism, “That which we attain
too easily, we esteem too lightly,” or in other words, nothing worth having (or
becoming) is going to be easy.
A truly
good society is nothing more or less than a society that is peopled by truly
good individuals.
In a truly good society,
individuals have freedom of conscience and they are secure in their property
and their person.
This freedom of conscience means
that they can act according to their own beliefs as long as their actions do
not persecute others for their beliefs or threaten the person or property of
others.
Being secure in their person means
that the society is one where violence against individuals does not exist. No one has to fear death at the hands of a
fellow citizen.
Being secure in their property
means that people are able to live without fear that others will arbitrarily or
unjustly take their property or deny them use and enjoyment of their own
property.
To put it in terms of the Founding
Fathers, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are the rights to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
When it comes to a prescription for
how we can become a good society, the primary difference between Christianity
and collectivism is this:
Christianity seeks to make a good
society by establishing just laws to protect freedom of conscience and property
rights and encouraging individuals to willingly, individually decide to do
their best to submit themselves to the will of God.
Please note here that submission to
the will of God and submission to the will of a cleric are not the same
things. This unfortunate fact is all too
often the reason why religions have been agitators of significant human misery
and warfare.
All too often, organized religion
is quickly converted from a noble mission of helping people to create a
community of individuals striving to support each other in their efforts to
understand and live the will of God into a vehicle for the personal
aggrandizement and wealth of the clergy, collectively and individually.
In contrast with the voluntary
submission that God seeks from us, collectivism and Godvernment really doesn’t
care whether our submission is forced or not.
It attempts to legislate, bully, and forcibly compel every individual to
adopt a submissive attitude toward government, accepting the bureaucracy as the
final arbiter of who is a good person and who is not.
Once Godvernment gains the absolute
power it needs to survive, its agents will begin their programs to exterminate “bad”
people so that they can create a good society.
In a world where government
replaces God as our savior, bad people are those who don’t wholeheartedly
support every mandate handed down by our government. And bad people, with their failure to
energetically get on board with the dictates of government, are a danger to
society.
The U.S. Constitution and the Bill
of Rights established a structure where the government was limited to
establishing an environment where people would be able to have freedom of
conscience while being secure in both their persons and property.
Today, many people are actively
seeking to negate the U.S. Constitution, in whole or in part, in order to
establish a government that is both the sole object of our devotion and the
only arbiter of what rights we will be allowed to enjoy.
This anti-constitutional effort is
the greatest threat to the happiness of the people of the U.S. and the
world. If it is successful, it will mean
that the rule of law and the chance for a truly good society will be utterly
beyond the reach of generations to come, until the Godvernment is removed from
its throne and constitutional government is once again the law of the land.
[i]
Just in case you don’t get the reference to Jannes and Jambres, I looked them
up. It seems they are the magicians of
Pharoah who, when Moses invoked the plagues on Egypt, did their own parlor
tricks to convince Pharoah that God was not really backing Moses. They succeeded so well in blinding the mind
of Pharoah to the reality that was before him, that he resisted God until all
the firstborn of Egypt died in a single night.
I am going to go out on
a limb and speculate that they had a hand in convincing him later to take his
army in pursuit of the Israelites, an effort which led to the utter destruction
of Pharoah’s army.
