Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Outcomes
Government
Myron Magnet outlines the prophetic vision of Alexis de Tocqueville, who foresaw for America what had happened in France: the stranglehold growth of administrative government and the enslavement of the people to their own lust for equality (“The End of Democracy in America,” City Journal, Spring 2016).

After a survey of volume 1 of Democracy in America, Mr. Magnet turns to volume 2, and seeks to discover an explanation for the change of tone from admiring and celebratory to pensive and admonitory. He finds the answer in Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the French Revolution, published some years after the two volumes of Democracy in America.

In The Old Regime and the French Revolution, the French aristocrat and scholar recounted the slow drift of his nation into a bureaucratic state, where everyone beneath the ruling elite was reduced to democratic equality without any opportunity to flourish as individuals. A regulatory and confiscatory government positioned itself as the shepherd of “flock France”, reduced the people to the status of dependent and stupid sheep, and effectively leveled society into two classes, the elite and the non-elite or, the planners and the planned.

This is where Tocqueville feared America was heading, and Mr. Magnet sees plenty of indicators to suggest that we are well on our way to that condition. This “Second American Revolution”, as he refers to it, has led to a massive State apparatus which seeks to regulate all of life in the name of making life better for all – more equal in every way. The effect, of course, is to stymie creativity, stifle initiatives of all sorts, suffocate individual expression, and encourage increasing dependency on the State.

But while making life better and more equal for all is the stated objective of the progressive State, its true purpose is nothing so noble. Gaining, keeping, and expanding political power is what government seeks, and the loss of liberty is the price dependent citizens must pay.

Mr. Magnet writes, “Today the iron cage of administrative rules prevents new businesses from opening, old ones from hiring, doctors from treating patients as they think best, groups of citizens from uttering political speech, even a landowner from moving a pile of sand from one spot to another on his property, purportedly because it could affect a navigable waterway 50 miles away.”

Mr. Magnet does not offer any specific suggestions for redressing this situation, but he insists that whatever must be done must begin now. Alexis de Tocqueville saw the tragedy which had become his own nation, and he feared this might be the destiny of the America he so admired in the 1830s. Myron Magnet takes up that warning, wondering, as he does, whether it might not already be too late.

We would like to think that Christians, whose Scriptures explain government’s role to be that of serving rather than playing God, would be able to rein in this runaway and tame it to its proper functions. But doing so would require a vision of government defined within a larger vision of Christ and His Kingdom, and all things submissive to the Law and Word of God.

Regrettably, such a vision simply does not exist.

Americans have become inebriated on the narcissism and materialism of our secular age; Christians also have embraced the inward-looking vision of the good life, albeit behind the thin veneer of a form of near Christianity which finds them thanking Jesus for saving and blessing them with so much that is good and fun.

But gaining, keeping, and advancing the Kingdom of God is a struggle against powers of wickedness within and without. Submission to God’s Word, prayer without ceasing, self-denial and cross-bearing, loving our neighbors, being witnesses for Christ, building His Church – these are the watchwords and disciplines of those who have come to full faith and are following Jesus as His disciples.

The kingdom of American democracy continues its drift from the moorings of the Founders, and is taking on the waters of secularism and with it, the flotsam and jetsam of enslavement and despair. At such a time, the citizens of the Kingdom not of this world must not look to the mechanisms of democracy for the renewal we need. We must rather seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness if we hope to offer anything of lasting value to our neighbors, our nation, and our children.

For reflection
1.  Does your church have a vision for the Kingdom of God, coming on earth as it is in heaven?

2.  Seeking the Kingdom is not an activity on your schedule but a way of life. Explain.

3.  “But gaining, keeping, and advancing the Kingdom of God is a struggle against powers of wickedness within and without. Submission to God’s Word, prayer without ceasing, self-denial and cross-bearing, loving our neighbors, being witnesses for Christ, building His Church – these are the watchwords and disciplines of those who have come to full faith and are following Jesus as His disciples.” Would people describe you this way?

Next steps: What is required of church leaders in equipping the members of their congregation for Kingdom living? Talk with a pastor or church leader about this question. Offer to help in this effort in any way you can.

A vision of the Kingdom begins in understanding the work of King Jesus, as He rules at the right hand of God. Order the book, The Kingship of Jesus, and begin to bring your life more into line with His ongoing work (click here).

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