pcosmar
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You can't be Christian and a Libertarian?
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pcosmar
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And the many folks that have posted in this thread gave abundant answers.
And you keep on with both disdain and antagonism.
None here is "forcing" it on you. And yet you keep on denigrating the beliefs of the majority of this board and the man it was named for.
We can discuss this in more detail in the religion forum. I don't want to stumble any lurkers who may be followers of Paul. I understand people's admiration for Paul because he demands it. He speaks with authority, but I will clearly show how he derailed Jesus ministry and caused divisions among Jesus followers. Paul was a troll.
Freedom 4 all
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I'm curious because I don't actually know the bible that well. Is there anything to support the right to self-defense?
pcosmar
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payme_rick
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I'm Christian and got into a similar discussion with my mother once, a hardcore bible-banging Christian/straight-ticket R voter... She was very receptive to my ideas on it... An argument that helped me:
Adam and Eve... If God is all-powerful and mighty, couldn't he have kept them away from the fruit and the temptation? Point is: Even God chose not to govern man..
I also said something along the lines of "what's in it for him if we're forced to obey him? I believe he wants us to chose o obey him and his word willingly..."
I also attempted to quote one of de Tocqueville's observations and butchered it ha, but she understood and was receptive there as well:
"...Thus, while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust..."
Adam and Eve... If God is all-powerful and mighty, couldn't he have kept them away from the fruit and the temptation? Point is: Even God chose not to govern man..
I also said something along the lines of "what's in it for him if we're forced to obey him? I believe he wants us to chose o obey him and his word willingly..."
I also attempted to quote one of de Tocqueville's observations and butchered it ha, but she understood and was receptive there as well:
"...Thus, while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust..."
Interesting comments....
Rule #1 in my book: Throw out all quotes or doctrines which require an individual must do something or follow a belief or he/she be damned to hell. All institutions are designed for above all else self-preservation as they are man-made and rooted in ego whether it be corporations, religions, or governments. All teachings within the Bible and otherwise must be challenged by one's own conscience from a vantage point of love, i.e. the holy spirit that resides within the individual for those how subscribe to the belief of the trinity. I think the argument can be made that very few professed Christians practice striving to live a life as Jesus did because they fail to understand what it means to love and share love.
Rule #1 in my book: Throw out all quotes or doctrines which require an individual must do something or follow a belief or he/she be damned to hell. All institutions are designed for above all else self-preservation as they are man-made and rooted in ego whether it be corporations, religions, or governments. All teachings within the Bible and otherwise must be challenged by one's own conscience from a vantage point of love, i.e. the holy spirit that resides within the individual for those how subscribe to the belief of the trinity. I think the argument can be made that very few professed Christians practice striving to live a life as Jesus did because they fail to understand what it means to love and share love.
Boy, you knocked that one out of the park! I read the gospels. Either I like what I am reading or I don't. If I like it, I either do something about it or I don't. What I do is my business, and what others do and how they believe is their business. But, I want to share things that have helped me and that are helping me, and that is the teachings of Jesus. The greatest teaching Jesus gave was to love one another AND to "Love thy enemy". If I can focus on just that alone, I will be kept very busy. What "saints" do and say is interesting to read, but I am not going to follow other men's opinions. To me, most of the saints that Christians worship were (are) narcissistic megalomaniacs.
osan
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Interesting question. I tend to think you cannot be completely libertarian for at least one reason: the doctrine of being thy brother's keeper. It specifies an obligation to positively act to save or aid a "brother" regardless whether you wish to. This is very un-libertarian.
I know at least one person who, were I to happen upon her and she was on fire, I would not so much as stop to piss on her to put her out. According to Christian doctrine this is a pretty big no-no. To me, it is my inborn right to make the choice and hold no personal accountability whatsoever precisely because I am not my brother's keeper.
It would be interesting to hear an actual Christian perspective on this. Some people attempted to make me one when I was a wee lad. They failed most catastrophically as I was wholly disinclined to accept the limitless pile of bullshit that goes with the core of good stuff. So I kept the good and jettisoned the BS and it's worked out well enough.
Then consider the "ten" commandments, specifically, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. In libertarianism, popping the neighbor's wife is strictly a matter of consent between you and wifey, which may be ethically questionable but still open to all as a legitimate choice. So there is another point of coercion, and Christianity is most certainly coercive, as are most religions.
I suppose in the end, the question turns on one's definition of what it means to be Christian. Put 10 people in a room and I promise you will have at least 11 such definitions.
It is imperative that we understand that everything contained within the Bible is not the absolute word of Jesus and/or God. It was assembled by men who tried to understand Jesus and in some respects never fully understood or embraced his teachings. I have a list of books that all would benefit from reading to better understand what I have come to accept as God..... you can start with the book by Eckhart Tolle A New Earth(yes... a bit new age in its writing!), then Boundaries by Dr. Cloud to better understand how Jesus called us to invoke love in our personal relationships (We are definitely NOT called to help all those who are in the grip of evil/despair in the world) and in fact become enablers/co-dependent in many instances, and also the book Misquoting Jesus for a better understanding of what the Bible is and how it has evolved into what we know it today. It is imperative that we not think in absolutes if our goal as Christians is to become enlightened and serve a love greater than ourselves. Just like the Buddha, Jesus' ultimate message was not to establish any kind of religion which is man-made structure but to exude love and light into the world. Sometimes love involves saying no. As for religion, it is a man-made structure and while necessary to carry the message of Christ it is a necessary evil. Perhaps Paul too used this newly form religion of Jesus for self interest rather than to honor God through love. I wish I knew hte Bible well enough to say for sure from my vantage point. Much of the Catholic faith is rooted in the antithesis of God by using its power over the hearts and minds of individuals to serve evil. While I was a fan of pope John Paul, for much of the Catholic church's existence was all too often authoritative in nature rather than loving which I believe accounted for much of the diversity amongst all the denominations within Christianity. Now a days it is possible to manipulate Jesus to serve anything from Child molestation to marxism, quite pathetic and not at all what I believe to be the true nature or purpose of Christ. jmho.
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Repost from a Facebook Note of mine:
Most theologically conservative Christians are members of a voting bloc known as the religious right who votes almost exclusively Republican. Ideologically, the great majority of these people are neoconservatives. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy characterized by fervent nationalism, warmongering, lukewarm opposition to the welfare state, expansion of the police state in the name of security, and more often than not, state-enforcement of “conservative” values. Unbeknownst to most die-hard Republicans, neoconservatism has its intellectual roots in Trotskyism, a form of Marxism. This explains why government expands rapidly while under Republican control even though Republicans are said to be the party of small government. At its core, Marxism is a Godless worldview which ultimately renders neoconservatism incompatible with Christianity as a political philosophy. It is my contention that libertarianism is the only political philosophy consistent with the basic principles spelled out in the Bible. For this reason, I believe every Christian ought to be a libertarian (but not necessarily a Libertarian, a member of the Libertarian Party). Therefore, I have decided to write a series explaining why I believe this is the case and what the policy implications are. The topics will appear in this order (tentative):
1. Overview of Libertarianism
2. Separation of the Law
3. Principle of Self-Ownership
4. Homestead Principle
5. Non-Aggression Principle
6. Welfare
7. Vice Laws
8. Foreign Policy
9. Gay Marriage
10. Abortion
11. Evolution
12. On the Nature of the State
13. What About Romans 13?
Overview of Libertarianism
Before starting this series, I think an overview of libertarianism is in order. A popular description of libertarianism is “conservative fiscally, liberal socially”. The problem with this simplistic description is that it meshes political and economic philosophy with personal attitudes toward social mores and conventions when the two are really independent spheres of thought. This often leads conservatives to erroneously conflate libertarianism with libertinism. Libertinism is a lifestyle that rejects conventional morality that is often religious in origin. Some libertarians are libertine, others are very conservative culturally. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that advocates the maximization of individual liberty and a minimization of the state. It is not an all-inclusive worldview.
There are three foundational principles of libertarianism from which everything else follows. The first is the principle of self-ownership, or the absolute property right in your own physical person. The second is the homestead principle which states that one can legitimately acquire an unused natural thing by using it or making something out of it. From these two principles we can deduce a third known as the non-aggression principle which states that it is morally illegitimate to initiate (or threaten) force against another individual or his property.
I will begin with the Bible, and show why each of these follows from the Scriptures. Once these are established, I will delve into specific topics from the libertarian perspective. Since the policy prescriptions logically follow from the aforementioned libertarian principles which themselves follow from the Bible, then they must be morally true. I will buttress the libertarian perspective with direct support from the Bible for good measure anyway. All Scriptures come from the New International Version.
Separation of the Law
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment in the Law was, he answered “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 'This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40) What Jesus essentially did here was to divide the Law into two areas. The first governs the relationship between man and God and the second between man and his fellow man.
Take special note of the phrase “hang on these two commandments”. This suggests that all other laws and moral teachings of the prophets can ultimately be reduced to one of these two commandments. My plan is to show that the Bible clearly teaches Christians to approach these two domains of law in drastically different ways. Namely, that only persuasion should be used to promote adherence to loving the Lord but force can be used to ensure that you do not harm your neighbor. Only God may punish infractions of the first law, while man is allowed to enforce infractions of the second. If you take a look at the 10 Commandments, you will see that the 6th, 8th, and 9th Commandments fall into the latter category while the rest fall into the former.
The separation is necessary in order to allow people the freedom to accept or reject God. Consider Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me”. It is telling that God chose this metaphor to teach that Christianity is voluntary. Knocking on someone’s door is a universal sign of respect for another’s property rights. If accepting Jesus is the best thing an individual can do for himself yet he is given the option not to, what justification can a human give for forcing another human into something obviously less beneficial? Furthermore, whereas God’s voluntary offer is made from a position of omniscience, the human’s coercion is committed in fallibility. The neoconservative lust for forcing values onto others through the state is completely unwarranted.
Libertarianism is left to fill the void when governing relations amongst fellow men as a political theory. We will see that the foundational principles of libertarianism follow directly from the Bible so as to establish their moral legitimacy. We will be left with a worldview ultimately predicated on the Bible with two different paths of moral and intellectual thought leading out. One deals with the non-violent efforts to promote Christianity and its associated lifestyle and the other deals with using worldly authorities to resolve disputes and protect property rights.
Principle of Self-Ownership
Starting with the Bible, we know that God owns everyone and everything by virtue of being the Creator, “The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Pslam 24:1). The Bible likens your body to a temple and asks that you honor God with it, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (Corinthians 6:19-20). God bought your body with Christ’s blood, so he owns it and asks that you glorify him with it. This commandment governs your relationship with God, not your fellow man.
Recall that the principle of self-ownership is defined as an absolute property right in your own person. Since we are prohibited from murdering (Exodus 20:13) and harming others, we can also conclude that we have the highest claim of ownership over our own bodies aside from God for the purposes of resolving disputes and ensuring justice. You can view this relationship as being similar to the one between a landlord and tenant. The landlord is the ultimate owner of the property and can step in at anytime and stake his claim over it. The tenant leases the property and assumes responsibility and exercises authority over it in the mean time. The tenant is also required to obey the rules the landlord has set for the property. We are in effect temporary tenants of our physical bodies.
The logical alternatives to self-ownership are one human owning another or every human owning a piece of every other human. The first is slavery. If the second is true, then can two people coerce a third by claiming they have a fractionally higher claim to his body than he does? If more than half the population agrees to this then there can be no higher claim over that human in the entire world. Also, how would restitution get carried out in the event that the individual is harmed? Would everyone in the world be given his fraction of the restitution? Unsurprisingly, the Bible doesn’t lend any support to such a system of ownership. The alternatives to self-ownership are indeed absurd.
Some Christians object to self-ownership on the grounds that it is a pagan concept logically entailing that everyone is free to do whatever they want with themselves. They fail to realize that a political theory must apply to Christians and non-Christians alike because conflicts between Christians and non-Christians over their bodies will inevitably occur. Self-ownership to a secular libertarian really does mean that he thinks it is ok for him to do whatever he wants to himself. For a Christian, self-ownership carries the extra requirement to glorify god with your body. This extra requirement does not in any way conflict with the separation of the Law. Self-ownership provides a coherent system of property assignment of people’s bodies in order to make dispute resolution of bodily trespasses universally possible.
Homestead Principle
The second foundational principle is the homestead principle. This principle states that one can legitimately acquire an unused natural thing by using it or making something out of it. For example, if there is a plot of unused land, someone could acquire it by fencing it in and doing something productive with it like farming it. There must be some system of original property assignment because at one time, there were vast amounts of land that had no owner aside from God who had provided it as a gift to man. God gave man dominion over the earth, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (Genesis 1:26).
Suppose that the homestead principle is incorrect. This implies, then, that all the land was originally owned. By whom though? God is the original owner (Exodus 9:29, Psalm 24:1, I Corinthians 10:26, Leviticus 25:23) but he gave man permission to fill and dominate it. Does every human have a claim to every piece of land? This cannot be true because God had Joshua apportion land to certain tribes (Joshua 13:7) and people in one tribe had no claim to land given to another. Furthermore, God viewed generational inheritance of land very favorably (Deuteronomy 19:14), which forbids property taxes by the state which is not only a false claim of original ownership of land by the state, but also an attempt to dispossess a family of their land. Therefore, the state is not a communal owner of land either.
When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they had this instruction from God, “…Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). Homesteading new land was their Godly mandate and it remains the natural system of original property appropriation.
Non-Aggression Principle
Since the Bible implies the existence of private property with the commandment not to steal and that un-owned property can be homesteaded, it follows then that the only other means of morally acquiring external property apart from your body is through a voluntary exchange with another individual. Voluntary exchanges include market transactions, gifts, and inheritance via wills. If we physically own ourselves, any form of assault on our physical person is morally wrong. From a legalistic standpoint, it is nearly identical to someone destroying your external property such as your car.
We can generalize these two conclusions and say that coercion, where coercion is the initiation (or threat) of force against another person or property, is morally wrong. Thus, we have the non-aggression principle. An immediately corollary is that individuals cannot delegate a right that they themselves do not have. I can delegate the right to my personal defense because I already have a right to self-defense. For example, it is perfectly legitimate for me to hire a body guard or contract a security firm to protect my home. What I cannot do is delegate the right to take someone else’s money because I don’t have that right. If this were legitimate, then it would necessarily infringe on the rights of another individual, a violation of the non-aggression principle and thus be a self-refuting philosophy of rights.
What about the government though? It does not follow that because people desire security and dispute resolution that there must be a monopoly on the provision of those services. To claim otherwise is simply a non-sequitur. As already mentioned, every property owner already has a right to protect his own property which means he has the right to delegate that right to another party. This other party has no more right to initiate force than the property owner does. As for dispute resolution, any arbiter that the disagreeing parties agree to use is a legitimate arbiter. There is no moral basis for forcing the disagreeing parties to use any particular arbiter. The purpose of any governing authority is to punish evildoers (Romans 13:4), whether it is the state or a private organization.
As you can see, the non-aggression principle has enormous implications for basically all public policy issues. We’ll look at each one from the libertarian Christian perspective.
Welfare
Taxes are an involuntary transfer of property because refusing to pay them will result in the state initiating force against you. Christ never answered the yes or no question on whether or not a Christian should pay taxes. He gave an ingeniously ambiguous statement to avoid conflict that answering in the affirmative or negative would have brought on him. When Christ was approached by the rich man who wanted to know how to go to Heaven, Jesus responded by saying “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me"(Matthew 19:21). The rich man walked away disappointed because he enjoyed his riches. Notice that Christ gave the man the choice to give or not give to the poor.
Like any other government intervention, welfare has unintended consequences that only serve to create more problems. One of these is that the net taxpayer begins to harbor feelings of contempt towards the net tax receiver. He wonders why he should be charitable through his church or other voluntary organization when the government is already taking his money to fund handouts to others. On the flipside, the welfare recipient develops a dependency and sense of entitlement, also immoral. The Bible clearly states that “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Since humans are not entitled to each other food, the most basic necessity of all, then it follows that they are not entitled to anything at all. This includes services such as health care which require the labor of a real person along with medical equipment.
The notion that people have a right to the scarce resource of another is known as a positive right which is totally incompatible with the Bible. When we say that someone has a right to something, what we mean is that it is ok to use proportional force to see that the right is respected. If a crazed man approaches me with a hatchet, it is ok for me to use force to ensure that my property right in my person is not violated. This is a negative right because it requires inaction on the part of the crazed man to see that my property rights are not violated. Now let’s say that someone has a right to healthcare. What this means is that if he is sick, and a doctor is around, it is ok for him to use force against the doctor to protect his right to healthcare because the doctor has a positive obligation to see that his healthcare needs are met. Since no one would go for this, the state decides that the doctor should be compensated. By whom though? The answer of course is everyone else through taxes. Why stop with healthcare though? How about housing, clothing, or transportation? The fundamental problem with positive rights is that it logically reduces to claim that anyone is entitled to use force against anyone else (usually indirectly through the state) to secure his property or service. We can conclude then that the only morally legitimate aid to the poor is voluntary charity.
Vice Laws
All laws against vices are morally illegitimate. These include laws dealing with heathens, prostitutes, drunks, adulterers, gays, lazy people, greedy people, et al. Since vices do not involve the property rights of others, they are not real crimes because they lack a victim whose rights have been violated. For example, if I steal your car, it’s clear who the victim is. Who is the victim if I get caught gambling one Saturday afternoon? Nobody’s property was stolen because I was using my own money nor have I physically hurt anyone. The Bible also forbids being a busybody (Proverbs 20:3, 2 Thessalonians 3:11, 1 Peter 4:15) which is exactly what a statist “moral crusader” is. It simply isn’t anyone’s business what two adults do in a bedroom or how an individual spends his money. Initiating force against someone who has committed a vice is a violation of the non-aggression principle and is immoral.
Rather than being crimes, vices are personal spiritual and health matters that should be dealt with by families, churches, and doctors. Jesus dealt with these types of people during his ministry and never once advocated initiating force against them. He instead asked them to cease their behavior and make their peace with God. Christians would be wise to follow his example considering that they themselves are far from perfect.
Foreign Policy
One source of misunderstanding on this issue is caused by people failing to reject collectivism. For example, suppose a Christian thinks someone somewhere in the world poses a threat to his safety. Given the choice, he would almost always choose to not take that individual’s life directly himself because the justification is obviously not there. He instead absolves himself by passing on the dirty deed to a member in the military. More often than you think, the guy in the military knows that individual isn’t a threat yet kills him anyway. He absolves himself by claiming he was killing for the government and just following orders so it’s not murder. To tie this back to libertarian theory, a group of people doesn’t possess any more rights than any single individual because a group of people is really just a collection of individuals that have been arbitrarily grouped according to some criteria. Therefore, a group is subject to the non-aggression principle because all of its individual members are. Since the state is really just a group of people, it too must abide by the non-aggression principle. Asking someone else to murder on your behalf makes you equally guilty of murder. Christians should not ask agents of the state, such as the individuals in the military, to kill foreigners on their behalf. Ignorance is not an excuse. If you personally have not studied the threat, for months or years if necessary, so that you can in good conscience state that the threat is just as real and imminent as a burglar in your home with a gun, then you are guilty of murder. Given the number of Americans who can’t find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, I think I’ve made my case.
During WWI, Randolph Bourne astutely observed that “war is the health of the state”. War always results in an expansion of state power under the guise of some nationalistic collective effort to emerge victorious. Common expansions of power include wiretapping, detention, conscription, central economic planning, increased government spending, warrantless searches, and suspension of free speech to name a few. Christians are unwittingly sowing the seeds of their own destruction because they are empowering the very state that will mercilessly persecute them down the road. Jesus gave a direct warning as to who the enemy will be, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles” (Matthew 10:16-18). If American Christians think this is ludicrous, perhaps they should look across the Atlantic at a secularized Europe where Christians are imprisoned for quoting Biblical condemnations of homosexual acts because it is considered “hate speech”. Given the increasing secularization of America, it won’t be long before we’re there.
Finally, on to the neoconservative justification for warmongering that so many Christians have openly embraced. Neoconservatives attempt to justify their warmongering by claiming they are doing good by “spreading democracy”. In reality, it’s heavily disguised Satanic evangelism. God’s Word has been replaced by a human idea for a form of government. Politicians, academics, and media personalities have replaced pastors and priests. God’s field servants are the soldiers of an evil government. The Holy Spirit has been replaced by a gun. Churches have been replaced by military bases. Conversion is brought about by fear rather than love. Failure to convert is punished by man rather than by God.
Indeed, it is truly a sign of the times that an entry on foreign policy is needed in this series. I’ll end with the clearest verse in the entire Bible on this matter, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Gay Marriage
The libertarian solution to this problem is to simply eliminate government involvement in marriage altogether. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a license as “permission granted by competent authority to engage in a business or occupation or in an activity otherwise unlawful”. The question then becomes, how did a government bureaucrat become a competent authority on deciding who can get married? This is idolatrous to its core because it substitutes the state for God. A marriage becomes not a contract between the husband, wife, and God, but one between the husband, wife, and the state.
Let’s go back several thousand years to a time before megalomaniacal politicians. Adam and Eve were married by God and all that was required was that it was done in the presence of God (Genesis 2:24). It is an institution created and ordained by God and precedes any worldly government. Since the beginning of time, fathers have arranged marriages (Genesis 24:1-4, Genesis 28:1-2), including Adam’s who is the son of God (Luke 3:38). The Scriptures state that the father of the bride is to give her hand in marriage (Deuteronomy 22:16; Exodus 22:17), but familial approval is not needed (Genesis 28:6-9). By all accounts, marriage is a family institution.
If the best Christians can do is to look to state coercion to prevent moral decay, in violation of the non-aggression principle, then the battle is already over and they have lost. Homosexuality is a sin of the heart and not a crime with victims who deserve restitution. Marriage was and always will be a God-ordained union between one man and one woman and nobody can change that. Just because Rick and Bob get together and call their relationship a marriage doesn’t make it so, even if the state says it is. Instead, Christians should peacefully teach people why it isn’t a marriage rather than resort to indirect violence through the state.
Abortion
The Bible is clear that the unborn are human (Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:41-44). Therefore, from a purely Biblical perspective, we know that abortion is morally wrong. However, a great number of libertarians are pro-abortion, usually on the grounds that the woman is a self-owner and therefore anything residing in her is on her property. She is free, then, to remove the unwanted baby. Many Christians are immediately turned away on this issue because they perceive libertarianism as being incompatible with Christianity. While I agree that she is a self-owner, I do not agree that she can remove the baby.
Suppose you invite your friend onto your boat that is docked. While your friend is on your boat, your boat undocks because of your inept rope work. Eventually, you find yourself lost at sea, but you have plenty of provisions for yourself and your friend to subsist on while awaiting rescue. You are very confident that your boat will be discovered within several months at most. Now let’s say you no longer want your friend on your boat perhaps because you two got into an argument or you just simply have grown tired of him. Is it ok for you to toss him off the boat so that he will surely die? The answer is of course no. It is true that you own your boat but you do not own your friend. When your friend agreed to board your boat, he was not agreeing to being thrown off to his death some time later because of your foolishness. Had he known you were about to put him in a potentially dangerous situation and that you were not willing to see through a crisis to the finish with him, then he would never have agreed to board your boat. For the same reason, a woman cannot dump the baby from her body to sure death.
This analogy is of course imperfect. It’s impossible to create a realistic analogy of conception, pregnancy, and birth because conception is unique in that it is the only way a human can spontaneously come into existence. Another difference is that the unborn baby is incapable of giving consent unlike the friend in the above scenario. However, it doesn’t follow that it is ok to abort the baby. People who are incapable of giving consent because they are unconscious, mentally retarded, or in a vegetative state do not automatically lose their rights. Instead, those who own the custodial rights make the decisions on their behalf. Finally, this analogy does not take into account the fact that most abortions involve deliberately killing the fetus before expelling it from the womb. Bludgeoning your friend to death and tossing him overboard would clearly be unconscionable.
More generally, when an individual is placed into a potentially dangerous predicament as a consequence of another person’s actions, there exists an obligation to see that the victim has his bodily integrity protected. This obligation is not to be confused with a positive obligation resulting from a governmental decree of a positive right. Clearly, a doctor minding his own business and a random sick stranger is not analogous to the above scenario. Rather, this obligation stems from the gray area between self-defense and restitution. In the course of a given transgression, the window for self-defense closes and the one for restitution opens. This is in accordance with the Bible, where a burglar at night whose intentions are not clear may be killed, but using force against him the next day when there is light is considered vengeance (Exodus 22:2-3). On the one hand, the victim can use proportional force to protect himself because the event is ongoing. On the other hand, the responsible individual can begin the process of restitution by ensuring that the victim is not physically hurt.
Theoretical arguments aside, I think the best answer on this issue comes from looking at the big picture. First, Christians must acknowledge that widespread acceptance of abortion is a direct consequence of secularization. Therefore, any solution to abortion requires an abatement of secularization. The government is not an evangelizer. Second, when 150 million Americans think abortion is a-ok, getting government coercion on your side isn’t going to magically make abortion disappear. Third, abortion is used as a tool to control the masses, especially the religious right. Republicans harness “value voters” by dangling a federal abortion ban carrot in exchange for federal warmongering, welfarism, police statism, and other expansions of the federal leviathan. Christians looking at this issue on purely moral grounds should avoid entangling themselves in the political baggage with its associated moral hazards. Fourth, there are tremendous opportunities to reduce the number of abortions by working through churches and pro-life organizations. Voluntary goodwill goes a lot further in changing a pregnant woman’s mind than a shallow, impersonal threat through the government.
In conclusion, the mother has an obligation to see her pregnancy through to the finish. Once the baby is born, the mother can publicly relinquish her custodial rights to the child, allowing another individual to homestead those rights and provide for the baby. As long as the mother does not abandon the baby in a dangerous situation like in a dumpster, then from a legalistic standpoint, she hasn’t done anything wrong. As for her Godly imperative to be a loving mother (Proverbs 31:25-30), she will have to answer to God.
Most theologically conservative Christians are members of a voting bloc known as the religious right who votes almost exclusively Republican. Ideologically, the great majority of these people are neoconservatives. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy characterized by fervent nationalism, warmongering, lukewarm opposition to the welfare state, expansion of the police state in the name of security, and more often than not, state-enforcement of “conservative” values. Unbeknownst to most die-hard Republicans, neoconservatism has its intellectual roots in Trotskyism, a form of Marxism. This explains why government expands rapidly while under Republican control even though Republicans are said to be the party of small government. At its core, Marxism is a Godless worldview which ultimately renders neoconservatism incompatible with Christianity as a political philosophy. It is my contention that libertarianism is the only political philosophy consistent with the basic principles spelled out in the Bible. For this reason, I believe every Christian ought to be a libertarian (but not necessarily a Libertarian, a member of the Libertarian Party). Therefore, I have decided to write a series explaining why I believe this is the case and what the policy implications are. The topics will appear in this order (tentative):
1. Overview of Libertarianism
2. Separation of the Law
3. Principle of Self-Ownership
4. Homestead Principle
5. Non-Aggression Principle
6. Welfare
7. Vice Laws
8. Foreign Policy
9. Gay Marriage
10. Abortion
11. Evolution
12. On the Nature of the State
13. What About Romans 13?
Overview of Libertarianism
Before starting this series, I think an overview of libertarianism is in order. A popular description of libertarianism is “conservative fiscally, liberal socially”. The problem with this simplistic description is that it meshes political and economic philosophy with personal attitudes toward social mores and conventions when the two are really independent spheres of thought. This often leads conservatives to erroneously conflate libertarianism with libertinism. Libertinism is a lifestyle that rejects conventional morality that is often religious in origin. Some libertarians are libertine, others are very conservative culturally. Libertarianism is a political philosophy that advocates the maximization of individual liberty and a minimization of the state. It is not an all-inclusive worldview.
There are three foundational principles of libertarianism from which everything else follows. The first is the principle of self-ownership, or the absolute property right in your own physical person. The second is the homestead principle which states that one can legitimately acquire an unused natural thing by using it or making something out of it. From these two principles we can deduce a third known as the non-aggression principle which states that it is morally illegitimate to initiate (or threaten) force against another individual or his property.
I will begin with the Bible, and show why each of these follows from the Scriptures. Once these are established, I will delve into specific topics from the libertarian perspective. Since the policy prescriptions logically follow from the aforementioned libertarian principles which themselves follow from the Bible, then they must be morally true. I will buttress the libertarian perspective with direct support from the Bible for good measure anyway. All Scriptures come from the New International Version.
Separation of the Law
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment in the Law was, he answered “'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 'This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself'. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (Matthew 22:37-40) What Jesus essentially did here was to divide the Law into two areas. The first governs the relationship between man and God and the second between man and his fellow man.
Take special note of the phrase “hang on these two commandments”. This suggests that all other laws and moral teachings of the prophets can ultimately be reduced to one of these two commandments. My plan is to show that the Bible clearly teaches Christians to approach these two domains of law in drastically different ways. Namely, that only persuasion should be used to promote adherence to loving the Lord but force can be used to ensure that you do not harm your neighbor. Only God may punish infractions of the first law, while man is allowed to enforce infractions of the second. If you take a look at the 10 Commandments, you will see that the 6th, 8th, and 9th Commandments fall into the latter category while the rest fall into the former.
The separation is necessary in order to allow people the freedom to accept or reject God. Consider Revelation 3:20, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me”. It is telling that God chose this metaphor to teach that Christianity is voluntary. Knocking on someone’s door is a universal sign of respect for another’s property rights. If accepting Jesus is the best thing an individual can do for himself yet he is given the option not to, what justification can a human give for forcing another human into something obviously less beneficial? Furthermore, whereas God’s voluntary offer is made from a position of omniscience, the human’s coercion is committed in fallibility. The neoconservative lust for forcing values onto others through the state is completely unwarranted.
Libertarianism is left to fill the void when governing relations amongst fellow men as a political theory. We will see that the foundational principles of libertarianism follow directly from the Bible so as to establish their moral legitimacy. We will be left with a worldview ultimately predicated on the Bible with two different paths of moral and intellectual thought leading out. One deals with the non-violent efforts to promote Christianity and its associated lifestyle and the other deals with using worldly authorities to resolve disputes and protect property rights.
Principle of Self-Ownership
Starting with the Bible, we know that God owns everyone and everything by virtue of being the Creator, “The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Pslam 24:1). The Bible likens your body to a temple and asks that you honor God with it, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (Corinthians 6:19-20). God bought your body with Christ’s blood, so he owns it and asks that you glorify him with it. This commandment governs your relationship with God, not your fellow man.
Recall that the principle of self-ownership is defined as an absolute property right in your own person. Since we are prohibited from murdering (Exodus 20:13) and harming others, we can also conclude that we have the highest claim of ownership over our own bodies aside from God for the purposes of resolving disputes and ensuring justice. You can view this relationship as being similar to the one between a landlord and tenant. The landlord is the ultimate owner of the property and can step in at anytime and stake his claim over it. The tenant leases the property and assumes responsibility and exercises authority over it in the mean time. The tenant is also required to obey the rules the landlord has set for the property. We are in effect temporary tenants of our physical bodies.
The logical alternatives to self-ownership are one human owning another or every human owning a piece of every other human. The first is slavery. If the second is true, then can two people coerce a third by claiming they have a fractionally higher claim to his body than he does? If more than half the population agrees to this then there can be no higher claim over that human in the entire world. Also, how would restitution get carried out in the event that the individual is harmed? Would everyone in the world be given his fraction of the restitution? Unsurprisingly, the Bible doesn’t lend any support to such a system of ownership. The alternatives to self-ownership are indeed absurd.
Some Christians object to self-ownership on the grounds that it is a pagan concept logically entailing that everyone is free to do whatever they want with themselves. They fail to realize that a political theory must apply to Christians and non-Christians alike because conflicts between Christians and non-Christians over their bodies will inevitably occur. Self-ownership to a secular libertarian really does mean that he thinks it is ok for him to do whatever he wants to himself. For a Christian, self-ownership carries the extra requirement to glorify god with your body. This extra requirement does not in any way conflict with the separation of the Law. Self-ownership provides a coherent system of property assignment of people’s bodies in order to make dispute resolution of bodily trespasses universally possible.
Homestead Principle
The second foundational principle is the homestead principle. This principle states that one can legitimately acquire an unused natural thing by using it or making something out of it. For example, if there is a plot of unused land, someone could acquire it by fencing it in and doing something productive with it like farming it. There must be some system of original property assignment because at one time, there were vast amounts of land that had no owner aside from God who had provided it as a gift to man. God gave man dominion over the earth, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (Genesis 1:26).
Suppose that the homestead principle is incorrect. This implies, then, that all the land was originally owned. By whom though? God is the original owner (Exodus 9:29, Psalm 24:1, I Corinthians 10:26, Leviticus 25:23) but he gave man permission to fill and dominate it. Does every human have a claim to every piece of land? This cannot be true because God had Joshua apportion land to certain tribes (Joshua 13:7) and people in one tribe had no claim to land given to another. Furthermore, God viewed generational inheritance of land very favorably (Deuteronomy 19:14), which forbids property taxes by the state which is not only a false claim of original ownership of land by the state, but also an attempt to dispossess a family of their land. Therefore, the state is not a communal owner of land either.
When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, they had this instruction from God, “…Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28). Homesteading new land was their Godly mandate and it remains the natural system of original property appropriation.
Non-Aggression Principle
Since the Bible implies the existence of private property with the commandment not to steal and that un-owned property can be homesteaded, it follows then that the only other means of morally acquiring external property apart from your body is through a voluntary exchange with another individual. Voluntary exchanges include market transactions, gifts, and inheritance via wills. If we physically own ourselves, any form of assault on our physical person is morally wrong. From a legalistic standpoint, it is nearly identical to someone destroying your external property such as your car.
We can generalize these two conclusions and say that coercion, where coercion is the initiation (or threat) of force against another person or property, is morally wrong. Thus, we have the non-aggression principle. An immediately corollary is that individuals cannot delegate a right that they themselves do not have. I can delegate the right to my personal defense because I already have a right to self-defense. For example, it is perfectly legitimate for me to hire a body guard or contract a security firm to protect my home. What I cannot do is delegate the right to take someone else’s money because I don’t have that right. If this were legitimate, then it would necessarily infringe on the rights of another individual, a violation of the non-aggression principle and thus be a self-refuting philosophy of rights.
What about the government though? It does not follow that because people desire security and dispute resolution that there must be a monopoly on the provision of those services. To claim otherwise is simply a non-sequitur. As already mentioned, every property owner already has a right to protect his own property which means he has the right to delegate that right to another party. This other party has no more right to initiate force than the property owner does. As for dispute resolution, any arbiter that the disagreeing parties agree to use is a legitimate arbiter. There is no moral basis for forcing the disagreeing parties to use any particular arbiter. The purpose of any governing authority is to punish evildoers (Romans 13:4), whether it is the state or a private organization.
As you can see, the non-aggression principle has enormous implications for basically all public policy issues. We’ll look at each one from the libertarian Christian perspective.
Welfare
Taxes are an involuntary transfer of property because refusing to pay them will result in the state initiating force against you. Christ never answered the yes or no question on whether or not a Christian should pay taxes. He gave an ingeniously ambiguous statement to avoid conflict that answering in the affirmative or negative would have brought on him. When Christ was approached by the rich man who wanted to know how to go to Heaven, Jesus responded by saying “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me"(Matthew 19:21). The rich man walked away disappointed because he enjoyed his riches. Notice that Christ gave the man the choice to give or not give to the poor.
Like any other government intervention, welfare has unintended consequences that only serve to create more problems. One of these is that the net taxpayer begins to harbor feelings of contempt towards the net tax receiver. He wonders why he should be charitable through his church or other voluntary organization when the government is already taking his money to fund handouts to others. On the flipside, the welfare recipient develops a dependency and sense of entitlement, also immoral. The Bible clearly states that “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Since humans are not entitled to each other food, the most basic necessity of all, then it follows that they are not entitled to anything at all. This includes services such as health care which require the labor of a real person along with medical equipment.
The notion that people have a right to the scarce resource of another is known as a positive right which is totally incompatible with the Bible. When we say that someone has a right to something, what we mean is that it is ok to use proportional force to see that the right is respected. If a crazed man approaches me with a hatchet, it is ok for me to use force to ensure that my property right in my person is not violated. This is a negative right because it requires inaction on the part of the crazed man to see that my property rights are not violated. Now let’s say that someone has a right to healthcare. What this means is that if he is sick, and a doctor is around, it is ok for him to use force against the doctor to protect his right to healthcare because the doctor has a positive obligation to see that his healthcare needs are met. Since no one would go for this, the state decides that the doctor should be compensated. By whom though? The answer of course is everyone else through taxes. Why stop with healthcare though? How about housing, clothing, or transportation? The fundamental problem with positive rights is that it logically reduces to claim that anyone is entitled to use force against anyone else (usually indirectly through the state) to secure his property or service. We can conclude then that the only morally legitimate aid to the poor is voluntary charity.
Vice Laws
All laws against vices are morally illegitimate. These include laws dealing with heathens, prostitutes, drunks, adulterers, gays, lazy people, greedy people, et al. Since vices do not involve the property rights of others, they are not real crimes because they lack a victim whose rights have been violated. For example, if I steal your car, it’s clear who the victim is. Who is the victim if I get caught gambling one Saturday afternoon? Nobody’s property was stolen because I was using my own money nor have I physically hurt anyone. The Bible also forbids being a busybody (Proverbs 20:3, 2 Thessalonians 3:11, 1 Peter 4:15) which is exactly what a statist “moral crusader” is. It simply isn’t anyone’s business what two adults do in a bedroom or how an individual spends his money. Initiating force against someone who has committed a vice is a violation of the non-aggression principle and is immoral.
Rather than being crimes, vices are personal spiritual and health matters that should be dealt with by families, churches, and doctors. Jesus dealt with these types of people during his ministry and never once advocated initiating force against them. He instead asked them to cease their behavior and make their peace with God. Christians would be wise to follow his example considering that they themselves are far from perfect.
Foreign Policy
One source of misunderstanding on this issue is caused by people failing to reject collectivism. For example, suppose a Christian thinks someone somewhere in the world poses a threat to his safety. Given the choice, he would almost always choose to not take that individual’s life directly himself because the justification is obviously not there. He instead absolves himself by passing on the dirty deed to a member in the military. More often than you think, the guy in the military knows that individual isn’t a threat yet kills him anyway. He absolves himself by claiming he was killing for the government and just following orders so it’s not murder. To tie this back to libertarian theory, a group of people doesn’t possess any more rights than any single individual because a group of people is really just a collection of individuals that have been arbitrarily grouped according to some criteria. Therefore, a group is subject to the non-aggression principle because all of its individual members are. Since the state is really just a group of people, it too must abide by the non-aggression principle. Asking someone else to murder on your behalf makes you equally guilty of murder. Christians should not ask agents of the state, such as the individuals in the military, to kill foreigners on their behalf. Ignorance is not an excuse. If you personally have not studied the threat, for months or years if necessary, so that you can in good conscience state that the threat is just as real and imminent as a burglar in your home with a gun, then you are guilty of murder. Given the number of Americans who can’t find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, I think I’ve made my case.
During WWI, Randolph Bourne astutely observed that “war is the health of the state”. War always results in an expansion of state power under the guise of some nationalistic collective effort to emerge victorious. Common expansions of power include wiretapping, detention, conscription, central economic planning, increased government spending, warrantless searches, and suspension of free speech to name a few. Christians are unwittingly sowing the seeds of their own destruction because they are empowering the very state that will mercilessly persecute them down the road. Jesus gave a direct warning as to who the enemy will be, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles” (Matthew 10:16-18). If American Christians think this is ludicrous, perhaps they should look across the Atlantic at a secularized Europe where Christians are imprisoned for quoting Biblical condemnations of homosexual acts because it is considered “hate speech”. Given the increasing secularization of America, it won’t be long before we’re there.
Finally, on to the neoconservative justification for warmongering that so many Christians have openly embraced. Neoconservatives attempt to justify their warmongering by claiming they are doing good by “spreading democracy”. In reality, it’s heavily disguised Satanic evangelism. God’s Word has been replaced by a human idea for a form of government. Politicians, academics, and media personalities have replaced pastors and priests. God’s field servants are the soldiers of an evil government. The Holy Spirit has been replaced by a gun. Churches have been replaced by military bases. Conversion is brought about by fear rather than love. Failure to convert is punished by man rather than by God.
Indeed, it is truly a sign of the times that an entry on foreign policy is needed in this series. I’ll end with the clearest verse in the entire Bible on this matter, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Gay Marriage
The libertarian solution to this problem is to simply eliminate government involvement in marriage altogether. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a license as “permission granted by competent authority to engage in a business or occupation or in an activity otherwise unlawful”. The question then becomes, how did a government bureaucrat become a competent authority on deciding who can get married? This is idolatrous to its core because it substitutes the state for God. A marriage becomes not a contract between the husband, wife, and God, but one between the husband, wife, and the state.
Let’s go back several thousand years to a time before megalomaniacal politicians. Adam and Eve were married by God and all that was required was that it was done in the presence of God (Genesis 2:24). It is an institution created and ordained by God and precedes any worldly government. Since the beginning of time, fathers have arranged marriages (Genesis 24:1-4, Genesis 28:1-2), including Adam’s who is the son of God (Luke 3:38). The Scriptures state that the father of the bride is to give her hand in marriage (Deuteronomy 22:16; Exodus 22:17), but familial approval is not needed (Genesis 28:6-9). By all accounts, marriage is a family institution.
If the best Christians can do is to look to state coercion to prevent moral decay, in violation of the non-aggression principle, then the battle is already over and they have lost. Homosexuality is a sin of the heart and not a crime with victims who deserve restitution. Marriage was and always will be a God-ordained union between one man and one woman and nobody can change that. Just because Rick and Bob get together and call their relationship a marriage doesn’t make it so, even if the state says it is. Instead, Christians should peacefully teach people why it isn’t a marriage rather than resort to indirect violence through the state.
Abortion
The Bible is clear that the unborn are human (Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:41-44). Therefore, from a purely Biblical perspective, we know that abortion is morally wrong. However, a great number of libertarians are pro-abortion, usually on the grounds that the woman is a self-owner and therefore anything residing in her is on her property. She is free, then, to remove the unwanted baby. Many Christians are immediately turned away on this issue because they perceive libertarianism as being incompatible with Christianity. While I agree that she is a self-owner, I do not agree that she can remove the baby.
Suppose you invite your friend onto your boat that is docked. While your friend is on your boat, your boat undocks because of your inept rope work. Eventually, you find yourself lost at sea, but you have plenty of provisions for yourself and your friend to subsist on while awaiting rescue. You are very confident that your boat will be discovered within several months at most. Now let’s say you no longer want your friend on your boat perhaps because you two got into an argument or you just simply have grown tired of him. Is it ok for you to toss him off the boat so that he will surely die? The answer is of course no. It is true that you own your boat but you do not own your friend. When your friend agreed to board your boat, he was not agreeing to being thrown off to his death some time later because of your foolishness. Had he known you were about to put him in a potentially dangerous situation and that you were not willing to see through a crisis to the finish with him, then he would never have agreed to board your boat. For the same reason, a woman cannot dump the baby from her body to sure death.
This analogy is of course imperfect. It’s impossible to create a realistic analogy of conception, pregnancy, and birth because conception is unique in that it is the only way a human can spontaneously come into existence. Another difference is that the unborn baby is incapable of giving consent unlike the friend in the above scenario. However, it doesn’t follow that it is ok to abort the baby. People who are incapable of giving consent because they are unconscious, mentally retarded, or in a vegetative state do not automatically lose their rights. Instead, those who own the custodial rights make the decisions on their behalf. Finally, this analogy does not take into account the fact that most abortions involve deliberately killing the fetus before expelling it from the womb. Bludgeoning your friend to death and tossing him overboard would clearly be unconscionable.
More generally, when an individual is placed into a potentially dangerous predicament as a consequence of another person’s actions, there exists an obligation to see that the victim has his bodily integrity protected. This obligation is not to be confused with a positive obligation resulting from a governmental decree of a positive right. Clearly, a doctor minding his own business and a random sick stranger is not analogous to the above scenario. Rather, this obligation stems from the gray area between self-defense and restitution. In the course of a given transgression, the window for self-defense closes and the one for restitution opens. This is in accordance with the Bible, where a burglar at night whose intentions are not clear may be killed, but using force against him the next day when there is light is considered vengeance (Exodus 22:2-3). On the one hand, the victim can use proportional force to protect himself because the event is ongoing. On the other hand, the responsible individual can begin the process of restitution by ensuring that the victim is not physically hurt.
Theoretical arguments aside, I think the best answer on this issue comes from looking at the big picture. First, Christians must acknowledge that widespread acceptance of abortion is a direct consequence of secularization. Therefore, any solution to abortion requires an abatement of secularization. The government is not an evangelizer. Second, when 150 million Americans think abortion is a-ok, getting government coercion on your side isn’t going to magically make abortion disappear. Third, abortion is used as a tool to control the masses, especially the religious right. Republicans harness “value voters” by dangling a federal abortion ban carrot in exchange for federal warmongering, welfarism, police statism, and other expansions of the federal leviathan. Christians looking at this issue on purely moral grounds should avoid entangling themselves in the political baggage with its associated moral hazards. Fourth, there are tremendous opportunities to reduce the number of abortions by working through churches and pro-life organizations. Voluntary goodwill goes a lot further in changing a pregnant woman’s mind than a shallow, impersonal threat through the government.
In conclusion, the mother has an obligation to see her pregnancy through to the finish. Once the baby is born, the mother can publicly relinquish her custodial rights to the child, allowing another individual to homestead those rights and provide for the baby. As long as the mother does not abandon the baby in a dangerous situation like in a dumpster, then from a legalistic standpoint, she hasn’t done anything wrong. As for her Godly imperative to be a loving mother (Proverbs 31:25-30), she will have to answer to God.
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Evolution
Libertarianism is only a political philosophy and not a worldview. It says nothing on the origin of man, period. The reason I have decided to include the topic in this series is because of the ongoing controversy about teaching non-evolutionary origins in public school classrooms. Funny enough, this time Christians find themselves at the end of the government’s sword, paradoxically, the very same government they believe can create Godly people through force. The solution to the problem is to abolish public education and allow parents to decide how their children will be educated.
The Nature of the State
With our Biblical political theory laid out, I feel most Christians could benefit greatly from a purely Biblical analysis and unraveling of the nature of the state. We find our first clue in 1 Samuel 8 where we learn that coercive earthly governments arise out of rebellion against God. The nation of Israel up until that point was under Mosaic Law with no government. Dispute resolution was carried out according to the God’s Law by private parties. The most similar modern theory to this system is known as anarcho-capitalism. People eventually rejected this system, citing unfair judges, but their real motivation was to be like the other nations and have a king. According to the Scripture, they were actually committing idolatry because they were replacing God with another god. God then warns them of the terrible evil that will follow, but they insist and God delivers what they want- one brutal regime after another. One key thing to take away from this historical lesson is that God gives people the government they want but doesn’t necessarily endorse it. He ultimately appoints all rulers (Romans 13:1), but we’ll soon learn that Satan himself can do so as well.
In Luke 4:5-7, Satan tempts Jesus with power over all the earthly governments but only if he would worship him. We know the offer was good because Christ was genuinely tempted. Had the offer been hollow, Christ would have called him out on his lie like he did to others throughout his ministry. The Book of Revelation teaches of an Antichrist who will lead a one-world government in the End Times. Satan supplies this man with the greatest thing he can give, coercive power over the entire world. Indeed, Jesus, no less than three times, calls Satan the prince of this world (John 12:31, John 14:30, John 16:11).
To recap: we have earthly governments born out of rebellion against God whose control of is granted by Satan who is the ruler of this world. This power will ultimately manifest itself in the End Times under a one-world government lead by the Antichrist who will commit unspeakable acts of evil. There is but one conclusion to reach. The earthly governments are, without a doubt, Satanic to their core. At this point, in order to understand the nature of the state, one simply has to understand the nature of Satan. Fortunately for us, God doesn’t expect us to innately know the nature of an invisible and powerful fallen angel so he clues us in. Satan was created as the highest ranking angel (Ezekiel 28:12-15) whose pride and arrogance led to his fall (Isaiah 14:13-14). He is a murderer and liar (John 8:44), accuser (Revelation 12:10), and our adversary (1 Peter 5:8). Perhaps it would be wise to follow the example of Gideon, who when offered power during the time of the Judges, simply said, "I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The LORD will rule over you" (Judges 8:23).
In light of all this, I’ve put together seven guidelines for how I feel Christians should approach matters of government:
1. Whenever the government makes any claim, assume it is entirely a lie until you or someone you trust has independently verified which parts, if any, are true.
2. Understand that governments, because of their nature, overwhelmingly attract the worst of people.
3. Just as Satan deceives you into believing he has your best interests at heart, so does the government while in reality they are really only looking out for themselves (John 11:47-48).
4. Blind service to, confidence of, hope in, and trust in government to meet your needs is foolish and arguably idolatrous (Jeremiah 17:5-8, Matthew 4:10, Psalms 118:8-9, Psalms 146:3).
5. Understand that governments seek to become the sole center of authority which necessarily requires Godly institutions like the church and family to be destroyed.
6. Remember that obedience to God is driven by love, whereas obedience to the state is driven by fear.
7. The Bible is more concerned with the function of governments rather than their forms so do not idolize any particular form of government.
What About Romans 13?
Romans 13 is often cited to give blanket justification for any government policy. Our Satanic government is licking its chops and is not going to pass up on the opportunity. The Department of Homeland Security intends to use clergy to preach unequivocal submission to the governing authorities in the event martial law is declared. Their silver bullet is Romans 13. I will reprint the relevant passages here for convenience:
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” (Romans 13:1-7)
Sadly, many Christians have fallen victim to terrible evil because of an erroneous understanding of a mere seven verses. One indispensible strategy for interpreting scripture is to use a more specific verse to impose limitations on a more general one. This can be done because the entire Bible is the inerrant Word of God so it does not contradict itself. There are two specific verses found elsewhere which will be useful in helping us understand the above. They are Acts 5:29, “Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men” and Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money”.
The first verse states we are to submit to the governing authorities. Submission is a voluntary act where one ceases resistance to another’s will. Wives are also given the same command to submit to their husbands in order to avoid power struggles within the home (Ephesians 5:22-23). Submission is not obedience as described in Acts 5:29 where one believes the authority in question is authoritative. It is also not service as described in Matthew 6:24 because if you love God, then you cannot love the government too. Furthermore, we know the earthly governments are Satanic so God would contradict himself by asking us to serve and obey Satan. Verse two clarifies the authorities in question in verse one.
Verses three and four revolve entirely around the good vs. evil dichotomy. What is good and what is evil? This series has already expounded a political theory based on what is good according to the Bible. Today’s government bears no resemblance to a government based on libertarian theory. Verse four is the only verse in the entire Bible that explicitly assigns a function to a legitimate government. According to the Bible, the only thing governments should do is punish wrongdoers, period. Clearly though, our government does much more than this. Verse five gives a reason for why we should submit to a governing authority. God does not want Christians who commit crimes and subsequently resist giving the victim his due with a justification like “God will ultimately hold me accountable so there is no point for holding me accountable in this world”.
Verses six and seven discuss material and immaterial support for governing authorities. All governments today are incompatible with libertarian theory and are not worthy of respect or honor. All of them are also supported by taxes. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. A libertarian government is either strictly minarchist, in which case the government is so small it wouldn’t even need to be supported by taxes, or it is anarchist in which case private parties provide security and dispute resolution. Private parties can only generate revenue through voluntary exchange.
Libertarianism is only a political philosophy and not a worldview. It says nothing on the origin of man, period. The reason I have decided to include the topic in this series is because of the ongoing controversy about teaching non-evolutionary origins in public school classrooms. Funny enough, this time Christians find themselves at the end of the government’s sword, paradoxically, the very same government they believe can create Godly people through force. The solution to the problem is to abolish public education and allow parents to decide how their children will be educated.
The Nature of the State
With our Biblical political theory laid out, I feel most Christians could benefit greatly from a purely Biblical analysis and unraveling of the nature of the state. We find our first clue in 1 Samuel 8 where we learn that coercive earthly governments arise out of rebellion against God. The nation of Israel up until that point was under Mosaic Law with no government. Dispute resolution was carried out according to the God’s Law by private parties. The most similar modern theory to this system is known as anarcho-capitalism. People eventually rejected this system, citing unfair judges, but their real motivation was to be like the other nations and have a king. According to the Scripture, they were actually committing idolatry because they were replacing God with another god. God then warns them of the terrible evil that will follow, but they insist and God delivers what they want- one brutal regime after another. One key thing to take away from this historical lesson is that God gives people the government they want but doesn’t necessarily endorse it. He ultimately appoints all rulers (Romans 13:1), but we’ll soon learn that Satan himself can do so as well.
In Luke 4:5-7, Satan tempts Jesus with power over all the earthly governments but only if he would worship him. We know the offer was good because Christ was genuinely tempted. Had the offer been hollow, Christ would have called him out on his lie like he did to others throughout his ministry. The Book of Revelation teaches of an Antichrist who will lead a one-world government in the End Times. Satan supplies this man with the greatest thing he can give, coercive power over the entire world. Indeed, Jesus, no less than three times, calls Satan the prince of this world (John 12:31, John 14:30, John 16:11).
To recap: we have earthly governments born out of rebellion against God whose control of is granted by Satan who is the ruler of this world. This power will ultimately manifest itself in the End Times under a one-world government lead by the Antichrist who will commit unspeakable acts of evil. There is but one conclusion to reach. The earthly governments are, without a doubt, Satanic to their core. At this point, in order to understand the nature of the state, one simply has to understand the nature of Satan. Fortunately for us, God doesn’t expect us to innately know the nature of an invisible and powerful fallen angel so he clues us in. Satan was created as the highest ranking angel (Ezekiel 28:12-15) whose pride and arrogance led to his fall (Isaiah 14:13-14). He is a murderer and liar (John 8:44), accuser (Revelation 12:10), and our adversary (1 Peter 5:8). Perhaps it would be wise to follow the example of Gideon, who when offered power during the time of the Judges, simply said, "I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The LORD will rule over you" (Judges 8:23).
In light of all this, I’ve put together seven guidelines for how I feel Christians should approach matters of government:
1. Whenever the government makes any claim, assume it is entirely a lie until you or someone you trust has independently verified which parts, if any, are true.
2. Understand that governments, because of their nature, overwhelmingly attract the worst of people.
3. Just as Satan deceives you into believing he has your best interests at heart, so does the government while in reality they are really only looking out for themselves (John 11:47-48).
4. Blind service to, confidence of, hope in, and trust in government to meet your needs is foolish and arguably idolatrous (Jeremiah 17:5-8, Matthew 4:10, Psalms 118:8-9, Psalms 146:3).
5. Understand that governments seek to become the sole center of authority which necessarily requires Godly institutions like the church and family to be destroyed.
6. Remember that obedience to God is driven by love, whereas obedience to the state is driven by fear.
7. The Bible is more concerned with the function of governments rather than their forms so do not idolize any particular form of government.
What About Romans 13?
Romans 13 is often cited to give blanket justification for any government policy. Our Satanic government is licking its chops and is not going to pass up on the opportunity. The Department of Homeland Security intends to use clergy to preach unequivocal submission to the governing authorities in the event martial law is declared. Their silver bullet is Romans 13. I will reprint the relevant passages here for convenience:
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” (Romans 13:1-7)
Sadly, many Christians have fallen victim to terrible evil because of an erroneous understanding of a mere seven verses. One indispensible strategy for interpreting scripture is to use a more specific verse to impose limitations on a more general one. This can be done because the entire Bible is the inerrant Word of God so it does not contradict itself. There are two specific verses found elsewhere which will be useful in helping us understand the above. They are Acts 5:29, “Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men” and Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money”.
The first verse states we are to submit to the governing authorities. Submission is a voluntary act where one ceases resistance to another’s will. Wives are also given the same command to submit to their husbands in order to avoid power struggles within the home (Ephesians 5:22-23). Submission is not obedience as described in Acts 5:29 where one believes the authority in question is authoritative. It is also not service as described in Matthew 6:24 because if you love God, then you cannot love the government too. Furthermore, we know the earthly governments are Satanic so God would contradict himself by asking us to serve and obey Satan. Verse two clarifies the authorities in question in verse one.
Verses three and four revolve entirely around the good vs. evil dichotomy. What is good and what is evil? This series has already expounded a political theory based on what is good according to the Bible. Today’s government bears no resemblance to a government based on libertarian theory. Verse four is the only verse in the entire Bible that explicitly assigns a function to a legitimate government. According to the Bible, the only thing governments should do is punish wrongdoers, period. Clearly though, our government does much more than this. Verse five gives a reason for why we should submit to a governing authority. God does not want Christians who commit crimes and subsequently resist giving the victim his due with a justification like “God will ultimately hold me accountable so there is no point for holding me accountable in this world”.
Verses six and seven discuss material and immaterial support for governing authorities. All governments today are incompatible with libertarian theory and are not worthy of respect or honor. All of them are also supported by taxes. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. A libertarian government is either strictly minarchist, in which case the government is so small it wouldn’t even need to be supported by taxes, or it is anarchist in which case private parties provide security and dispute resolution. Private parties can only generate revenue through voluntary exchange.
heavenlyboy34
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That is an impressive body of work, Polkash. Well done. 
Apples and oranges, friend; to offer a better analogy, let us imagine that you are a man who has twin children. Now, you, as their father, may exercise coercion over them (preventing them from running away by force if necessary, spanking them, "grounding" them, confiscating their toys, etc.) and be justified, but if one of the children engages in superficially similar behaviors towards the other (hitting his or her sibling, locking them in a room, stealing their toys, etc.), this child is misbehaving. This is because the father has moral authority over his children, but they do not have the same over one another. In a similar fashion, God, as the omniscient author of our reality, has moral authority over mankind, but human beings do not have valid moral authority over other adult human beings; thus, the State, when presuming itself a moral authority and exercising coercion over the populace, is "playing God" and is analogous to the child who bullies his or her sibling.
hotbrownsauce
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Cleon Skousen explains in his book "The 5000 Year Leap" that our Government was based on the Anglo Saxons Government and the Ancient Israelites government and that those had stemmed from God. And plus an argument can be made that stealing is worse than not giving. (Don't bark at a brick wall.)
It is a misconception and maybe a stereotype to suggest that (small l) libertarians or capitalism is all greed and no one gives to the needy or poor. It is shown that income is closer among people, more people have necessities, and more is given in charity in a free and prosperous society.
It is a misconception and maybe a stereotype to suggest that (small l) libertarians or capitalism is all greed and no one gives to the needy or poor. It is shown that income is closer among people, more people have necessities, and more is given in charity in a free and prosperous society.
While I am at heart a Christian, I find it rather proposterous to believe that we are to believe the Bible in its entirity... because the Bible tells me so. All aspects of the Bible should be challenged by our own conscience in the name of love (i.e. holy spirit) rather than because we are instructed to do so by authority. That is like Stalin telling the Russians to believe in Communism because he says so. I urge those who like to believe that the Bible is the absolute Word of God to read Misquoting Jesus for a better understanding of what the Bible is and what it is not. When you look at history, you will find great men like Gandhi who while not a Christian in the sense of evangelicals like to believe in was more Christ-like in his approach to life and humanity than most Christians today. He also knew the Bible and life of Christ better than most Christians today. Anyone that uses the life of Jesus as a weapon to condemn others whether it be with or without the aid of government authority has missed the whole point of Jesus' life and teachings. 'Even the devil can quote scripture.' ~William Shakespeare
That is an impressive body of work, Polkash. Well done.
I agree Polkash... amazing work, thank you! Just curious, have you studied any other religions such as buddhism? You have a strong grasp of consciousness that is derived beyond the level of the 5 senses my friend.
libertarian4321
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Can't be a Christian and a Libertarian?
Why not?
There is nothing anti-Libertarian about enjoying fantasy.
Why not?
There is nothing anti-Libertarian about enjoying fantasy.
cavalier973
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On the Facebook page you linked, Bob asked "How can a sincere Christian be a libertarian?" (I will assume that, though he used a capital "L", that Bob meant small "l" libertarian)
This probably comes from a misunderstanding that Bob has about what libertarianism means. He probably thinks that if one is a libertarian, that one is automatically in support of abortion, gay rights, recreational narcotics use, and other notorious activities. This is, of course nonsense; individual libertarians may be in favor of these activities, or not, but what unifies the libertarian adherents is the idea that the government is not the proper institution for regulating behavior. As a Christian, I believe that most of the moral decay that causes such anxiety is due precisely to expecting the government, and especially the Federal Government, to use violence to bring about a moral society, rather than relying on the institutions directly established by God--the family and the church--to use moral suasion to effect societal morality.
Scripturally speaking, all government is either anti-God or is about to be. Everytime there is an accumulation of government power, God gets annoyed. Take, for instance, the people of Israel's request for a king. During the time of the Judges, it is stated that "every man did what was right in his own eyes, because there was no king in Israel". Remember that, by comparing other Scriptures, that "doing what is right in one's own eyes" is not a commendable activity; usually, it means rejecting God and following Sin. However, when the people of Israel ask for a king, God becomes angry, saying that asking for a king is a rejection of Himself. In other words, an anarchic society where "everyone does what is right in his own eyes" is preferable to God than having a strong central government that can make people behave.
The spread of the Gospel, as well, is an exercise in libertarian action: you share the Gospel; if people reject it, move on to the next town. One doesn't (indeed, can't) impose the Gospel through government violence. And if the Gospel cannot be established by violence, how much less a mere "morally upright society"?
The question Bob should have asked is "How can a sincere Christian NOT be a libertarian?"
This probably comes from a misunderstanding that Bob has about what libertarianism means. He probably thinks that if one is a libertarian, that one is automatically in support of abortion, gay rights, recreational narcotics use, and other notorious activities. This is, of course nonsense; individual libertarians may be in favor of these activities, or not, but what unifies the libertarian adherents is the idea that the government is not the proper institution for regulating behavior. As a Christian, I believe that most of the moral decay that causes such anxiety is due precisely to expecting the government, and especially the Federal Government, to use violence to bring about a moral society, rather than relying on the institutions directly established by God--the family and the church--to use moral suasion to effect societal morality.
Scripturally speaking, all government is either anti-God or is about to be. Everytime there is an accumulation of government power, God gets annoyed. Take, for instance, the people of Israel's request for a king. During the time of the Judges, it is stated that "every man did what was right in his own eyes, because there was no king in Israel". Remember that, by comparing other Scriptures, that "doing what is right in one's own eyes" is not a commendable activity; usually, it means rejecting God and following Sin. However, when the people of Israel ask for a king, God becomes angry, saying that asking for a king is a rejection of Himself. In other words, an anarchic society where "everyone does what is right in his own eyes" is preferable to God than having a strong central government that can make people behave.
The spread of the Gospel, as well, is an exercise in libertarian action: you share the Gospel; if people reject it, move on to the next town. One doesn't (indeed, can't) impose the Gospel through government violence. And if the Gospel cannot be established by violence, how much less a mere "morally upright society"?
The question Bob should have asked is "How can a sincere Christian NOT be a libertarian?"
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