The frying pan or the fire?

For a number of years I have been impressed by the continuity between conservative thought and biblical doctrine. As I was finishing my reading of Francis Schaeffer's "How Should We Then Live," I was brought up short by something he said.

"...the words left or right will make no difference. They are only two roads to the same end. There is no difference between an authoritarian government from the right or the left; the results are the same. An elite, an authoritarianism as such, will gradually force form on society so that it will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it--from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business, and the affairs of daily life. This is just what Rome did with Caesar Augustus."

Frankly, conservativism still marries closely to what God's word says, but that's not Schaeffer's point.

Our government for years has had a conservative form because that is what was imposed upon it by the founders. It was the natural form because the people of America were a deeply religious (in the good sense) people. There was a deep devotion to the God of the Bible, and that manifest itself in all aspects of their lives to include the founding of a new nation. That's why George Washington said,

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Here's the friction: we are no longer a Christian people. I know that's not a new revelation, but it bears upon what is happening around us.

Bob says conservatism is best. Joe says liberalism. Who's to say? Who will win? The stronger (or the majority) will always win and impose their position upon the other. That is the authoritarianism of which Schaeffer speaks.

When our nation was founded, the debate in the first century was over varying degrees of rule with the overwhelming majority bending their knee to Christ. The people were already ruled by a far greater Motivator than any government could ever be. In submission to Christ and His hand, the people essentially governed themselves.

As we (America) has rejected God, government has exploded in size, laws have increased in quantity, and we have shaken off any constraint within.

And so the conservative forms of our founded government no longer exist within the hearts of the people. For them to be implemented again, they would have to be imposed upon a people who do not want them. Tragic.

What will become of our nation? Left or right? Unless we recognize our rebellion against our Creator and submit ourselves under His hand through the finished work of Jesus Christ, government that should come from within will be imposed from without.

"I am sure that never was a people, who had more reason to acknowledge a Divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States; and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them."

George Washington, March 11, 1792