Home >> Questions >> 200 Answers >>Christians and Government
|
||||
Home >> Questions >> 200 Answers >>Christians and Government
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
Eng Rus Ukr | |
||
| Christians and Government |  |
||||||||
<< Back
Answers
|
 |
CHRISTIANS AND GOVERNMENT 
1. What Is The Purpose of Government? Government was instituted by God to bring His laws to people and to carry out His will and purposes. In the Old Testament, government maintained the place of worship, provided judges to decide civil cases between the people, restrained and punished lawbreakers, and mobiled the nation for action against external enemies.The first government was a theocracy, where God dealt directly with the people. When God was in charge of things, no other government was necessary. He worked through the family, clan, or tribe. The father or patriarch acted as the agent of God for the rest of the family. During the period of the judges the people became rebellious, and clear direction from God was lacking. Both religious and civil life became confused, and "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 17:6, 21:25). At the close of the period of the judges, God raised up Samuel, who was both a prophet and a judge. At that time, the formal religious life of the country was under the direction of the high priest. During Samuel's administration, the people asked for a king, and God gave them a monarchy which rose to its height during the reign of David and his son Solomon (see I Samuel 8:4-5, 19-20, I Kings 9:3-5, 10:23). When the perfect government is established during the Millennium, Jesus Christ will combine in Himself the offices of prophet, priest, and king. This will be a perfect theocracy, made possible because the perfect law of God will be universally accepted by all mankind, and "the earth shall be full of knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). Perfect government comes from God and is controlled by God. Short of that, the next best government is a limited democracy in which the people acknowledge rights given by God but voluntarily grant government limited power to do those things the people cannot do individually. Contrast these forms of government with Communism, which maintains that the dictatorship of the proletariat is supreme and an essential evolution of history; that God does not exist; and that citizens have only those privileges granted by the state.
2. What Duty Do I Owe The Government, We owe the payment of taxes for the necessary services government renders to us. We owe a law-abiding and honest type of personal life (see Romans 13:1-7). Especially, we owe government informed, active citizenship. We do not owe the government the allegiance we owe God. To God we owe our worship and our loyalty. We must remember that government exists only as long as God gives it the ability and the power. When any civil government steps outside the mandate authorized by God Almighty, then that government does not have any further claim over its citizens. When the apostles came before the government of their day, they were commanded not to speak about Jesus. They told the authorities that they could not help speaking of the things they had seen and heard (see Acts 4:18-20). Even though they were threatened with jail, beatings, and other reprisals, they continued to proclaim their faith to the people. The apostles obviously considered the government's power to be at an end when it began to restrict their freedom to worship God and to proclaim their faith in Jesus. In the United States, we believe that our government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. We believe that God has given certain inalienable rights, vested in humanity itself. The people give their support to the government so it can do such things as build roads, highways, and harbors; train armies; establish courts of law and maintain currency; establish uniform standards; and do other things that individuals cannot do for themselves. In our society, Caesar is all the people. When we are told to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, that means we ourselves should be responsible for government. Therefore, we owe the obligation of serving in public office, of being informed citizens, of voting, and of being active in politics at all levels. That is part of the duty we render to Caesar. We give God the spiritual allegiance that is His. We give Him our tithes, our offerings, our love, our worship, and our testimony in praise. To the government we give good citizenship, knowledge of the affairs of the day, and taxes that are due. We also give the government our services as political figures, as statesmen, as public servants in every level of government. Some might ask: "But what are rights under a dictatorship or a Communist government?" People have the same rights everywhere. Every man should have the right to his own personal life, his property, his freedom of movement, and his freedom of conscience. But there are some governments, such as those controlled by the Communists, that do not give those rights to the people. There is a totally different mindset in the Communist world. That does not change the order that God established. Those under Communist domination must sometimes disobey the government. They must continue to speak and testify to their faith in God, even though this is very costly. Many of them go to prison. Many are tortured and beaten and deprived. When they get out of prison, they go right back to testifying and preaching again. We in America do not have any idea what those people have to go through in order to practice their faith in God. Still, we must recognize that the apostle Paul was living under tyrannical Roman emperors when he wrote, in the book of Romans, that Christians are supposed to pay taxes to whom taxes are due, and that the civil government is not supposed to be a terror to those who do well, but to evildoers (see Romans 13:1-7). He also said Christians are supposed to pray for those in authority over them, so that they might live a quiet and godly life. This is so that the Word of God might go forth freely to the end that all should come to the knowledge of the truth (see I Timothy 2:1-4). This kind of praying even should be done for bad rulers and governments.
3. Should A Christian Pay Taxes? There is no question that Christians should pay taxes. However, in a country such as America, when there is waste of mammoth proportions, and when money is being used for programs that are abhorrent to Christians, the Christian should do everything he can to bring about change and reform. He must help to curtail the excessive spending of government, the growth of government, the profligate nature of government; and he must protest the improper use of his money.The Bible does tell us to pay taxes to whom taxes are due and as good citizens we must pay our taxes (see Romans 13:7). We cannot cheat. There is a significant difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Tax evasion is an illegal activity in which an individual fails to declare certain income or overstates certain deductions. Tax avoidance is the use of legal methods to minimize the amount of taxes to be paid. The Christian is free to take advantage of all the legal deductions he can find, the greatest of which is legal permission to deduct from taxable income up to 50 percent of adjusted gross income if that 50 percent is given to Christian or charitable causes.
4. Should A Christian Be Involved In In both ancient and modern times, governments have been taken over by selfish, dictatorial people who have used police power to oppress the innocent. Christians never have a God-given duty to serve oppressors. A corrupt government cannot be in alliance with God. On the international scene, given the sin of mankind, there must be armed forces. Unless there are strong, righteous nations to restrain the adventurism of a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Mao Tse-tung, then all freedoms of all people everywhere will be compromised. There will be nothing but conformity to the will of the dictator, and many innocent people will be killed as that dictator takes power. So it is necessary for the family of nations to raise up an international police force to restrain evil. There are those who, because of sincere religious beliefs, feel that they could never kill another human being, even in war. Society must accommodate the views of such people. During World War II, for instance, conscientious objectors were given the job of fighting forest fires in the Pacific Northwest by parachuting into remote areas. They performed a very useful duty in a dangerous, quasi-military environment. However, they were doing what they considered to be good for mankind instead of evil. I must reiterate that when Jesus Christ establishes His reign on earth, there will be no more war and killing. The Bible says that men will not even study war anymore (see Isaiah 2:4, Micah 4:3). The great military establishment that has been built up at such an incredible price is going to be dismantled. We should all work toward this end, but it will never happen until Satan is bound and all men acknowledge God's reign in their lives. But in the present time, with aggressors such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Vietnam, and other bellicose powers that are anxious to subjugate their neighbors, Christians cannot sit idly by and say, "Well, we don't believe in war. We will disarm and let those people take over the world." Doing so would be foolish and unbiblical.
5. Does The Bible Teach Pacifism? The Bible teaches that when Jesus Christ comes back again there will be no more war. Imagine what a wonderful world it could be if the $600 or $700 billion the world spends on arms every year were devoted to peaceful pursuits. We could use that money to build roads, harbors, dams, and bridges, and to irrigate fields, and to provide cultural pleasures and things of beauty for the world, and to alleviate human suffering and need. War is hell. Only madmen would wish it continued.But we live in a time when evil is increasing instead of diminishing, when some men seem to be controlled by selfishness and madness, when some men are bent on the subjugation of other men. As long as such attitudes exist, righteous men must stand against evil. I know there are some Christians who believe that war and their participation in it are morally wrong. While I respect their views and must allow them to follow their consciences, I do not believe the Bible teaches pacifism. The Bible teaches us that we are to lift the yoke of oppression from those who are downtrodden and oppressed. The yoke of oppression is not lifted by prayer alone. Action is necessary. Sometimes we can bring change peacefully, through democratic processes. At other times freedom must be won through the use of military force. I do not know where this world would be if the United States had failed to respond to the challenge of Adolf Hitler during World War II. Fortunately, history records many examples of countries that have come to the rescue of other, weaker nations in times of distress. People should think of what pacifism might mean on a personal level. If your sister, mother, or wife were being attacked by a gang of thugs, you would want someone to come to her aid. If such an attack happened and people just stood and watched, without helping, the indifference would be as bad as the crime itself. As citizens we demand effective protection from attacks against our persons. What is true on an individual scale is also true on an international scale. We should also note that battles have been won by the strength of prayer and praise. Jehoshaphat won a war by sending people to sing and praise the Lord. As they did, the huge army that had assembled against him began to crumble in confusion (see II Chronicles 20:20-23). Nevertheless, Jehoshaphat had the army gathered anyway. The soldiers were there, even though they did not have to use their weapons. When Joshua went to Jericho, he had an army prepared. They did not have to use their weapons because God fought for them (see Joshua 6:15-21). In many instances when Israel went into battle, its soldiers did not have to fight because the enemy fled. But they were ready to fight all the same. God is able to defend a nation without any use of arms. Prayer can be used of God to win wars even today. However, secular nations such as the United States can establish their foreign policy based on the miraculous intervention of God only if their people and policies reflect obedience to His will.
6. What Rights Does The State Have Over The state has a stake in general literacy, so it can establish educational standards, public schools, and truancy laws. In time of war, the state has the right to enlist the young for service in the armed forces. As we have seen, the state has the right to collect taxes in various forms from its citizens to pay for the legitimate costs of government. The problems we face today, however, go much deeper than this. The state is attempting to assert control over the thought life of children. For instance, the federal government published a course called MACOS, "Man, a Course of Study," that attempted to indoctrinate young children into the teachings of humanism. The federal and state governments also have been at the forefront of liberal experimentations with amoral sex education. Humanist values are being taught in the schools through such methods as "values clarification." All of these things constitute an attempt to wean children away from biblical Christianity. Another subtle encroachment of the state into family life deals with the discipline of children. We have a severe problem with child abuse in our country, and the state obviously has a role in protecting children from unfit parents. However, state social welfare agencies have been known to attempt to prohibit Christian parents from disciplining their children in accordance with biblical precepts. But loving discipline is a fundamental part of child-parent relationships. Children need it and parents must give it if they love their children (see Proverbs 13:24, 23:13-14). To characterize normal parenting as "abusive" is itself an abuse of state power. In one instance, a state attempted to take a daughter away from a divorced woman because she made her daughter attend church and forbade the girl to smoke marijuana or attend rock music concerts. A state social worker termed this conduct mental abuse. When things like this happen, the state is exceeding its proper bounds. More and more there is a tendency for humanistic or irreligious educators or social workers to intrude on the relationship between Christian parents and their children, thereby destroying the trust between them. To Christians, children belong to God and have been entrusted to their parents. To Communists and many humanists, there is no God, and children ultimately belong to the state. Christians believe that parents, not the state, must have primary control over children. This is where opposing values come into conflict. Some battles deal with whether the state can force a child to be brought up by a homosexual parent, whether two lesbian women can adopt children, or whether two homosexual men can raise children. Such cases are being taken into court, and judges and sociologists are making decisions which are totally contrary to the Bible. We are going to see more and more of this during the next ten or fifteen years, unless there is a dramatic spiritual revival and a return to biblical values. Unless America repents and regains a proper respect for God's law and God's moral order, the time will come when God will punish us. I think we are suffering now, in the sense that more than one million children run away from home every year. For every two new marriages formed one marriage ends in divorce. A shockingly high rate! One quarter of all American children suffer sexual abuse. Just look at the number of teen-age pregnancies, the millions of young people on alcohol and drugs, and the pervasiveness of violence and juvenile delinquency. Regrettably, as our traditional Christian family values break down, the government will step into the vacuum and will use secular solutions to the problems. These "solutions" will only exacerbate the nation's decline.
7. Can One Be Both Christian And Marxist? There is no way that one can hold simultaneously to philosophies from God and the enemy of God. Marxism, at its base, is an atheistic system that has a view of history based solely on materialism. Marxism is in itself a religion, and it demands the allegiance of people everywhere. The Leninist model of Marxism demands allegiance at the point of a gun and the violent overthrow of legitimate governments.t is ludicrous to think that Christianity can be believed along with a system that calls religion "the opium of the people" and a falsehood. In every instance where Marxists have taken control, they have suppressed the church. They have outlawed the Bible, forbidden the instruction of the young in religious values, and persecuted believers. Communists are always enemies of Christianity. Why the Western governments and many people still cannot see that, after all these years, is a mystery to me. "You cannot serve God and mammon" (see Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13). You cannot serve Christ and Belial, and there is no way a Christian can serve Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.
8. Is Capitalism Right Or Wrong? Although capitalism can be abused and abusive, it is the economic system most conducive to freedom, most in accord with human nature, and most closely related to the Bible. The unfettered laissez-faire concept of Adam Smith led to the free-booting robber barons of the nineteenth century. The story of the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and other monopolistic capitalists, who built up the industrial base of our nation but who did so at the expense of their competitors, is not a pretty one.However, the basis of free enterprise is very biblical. We read in the Old Testament that the millennial time, everyone will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree on his own property (see Micah 4:4). There we have an idealized concept of the private ownership of property. In the early days of our country, the Massachusetts Bay Colony attempted a primitive form of socialism. Land was owned jointly, everyone was to work together, and then the produce was to be divided to each according to his need. This experiment failed miserably. The people began to starve to death because there was not enough incentive to work. It was only after the land was divided into acre plots and given to individual families that the people began to prosper. That was because they were now working for enlightened self-interest and giving to one another out of their increase. God has given each human being a healthy personal self-interest. Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 19:19). This is something we all can relate to. There are few so altruistic that they will give up all they have produced for the good of other people. A person may love others as well as he loves himself, but he will not love them to the exclusion of himself. Communism, on the other hand, demands that everyone work for the state; that everyone be controlled by the state; and that the means of production be in the hands of the state. There should be no profit motive, because Communists say the profit motive is evil. But the profit motive is not evil; it is a creative force. It is based on self-interest, to be sure, but from this has come technology, creativity, the tremendous explosion of the scientific method, and other things that have made our world a better place in which to live. The profit motive has also produced tremendous social initiatives that have provided millions of dollars to help the poor, to care for the sick and needy, and to build hospitals, schools, and charitable institutions. Yes, unbridled capitalism must be restrained, or people will get too much money and too much power and will use it to oppress others. But at the same time, government must allow people the freedom to create, to own property, and to develop the potential God has placed within them. And the Bible contains a solution to the problem of excess accumulation of wealth and power. It is the year of Jubilee (see Leviticus 25:8-17, 27:17-24). Under Old Testament law, every fifty years there was a cancellation of all debts. All the slaves were set free, and those who were in economic bondage also were set free. All the money was redistributed and the means of production was placed back in the hands of the original families. Personal property and city land that had been accumulated could be kept, but wealth resting on debt was canceled. I believe that free enterprise is much closer to the biblical model than any other form of economic system. But wealth contains great spiritual danger. Just as the coercive utopianism of Communist materialism is not of God, neither is a capitalist materialism--based on the amassing of riches of personal gain, with disregard for the afflicted and the needy--right. Just remember that Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13). If money becomes your god, you cannot serve Jesus Christ. Gain is not godliness. A man's life does not consist of the abundance of things he possesses (see Luke 12:15). The rich man was called a "fool" for not being rich toward God (see Luke 12:20). A rich young ruler was told to sell all he had and give it to the poor (see Luke 18:18-23). Jesus told His disciples that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (see Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25). The apostle Paul taught that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil (see I Timothy 6:10). The apostle James pronounced woe upon rich men who oppressed their workers (see James 5:1-4). In short, economic freedom and the private ownership of property are the biblical model. But wealth contains great spiritual danger; and no system based on materialism, in whole or in large part, can claim to be Christian.
9. When Shoud A Christian Disobey Thomas Jefferson believed in the right to revolt against tyranny. He believed that when a government began to be tyrannical, it was the right and even the duty of the citizens to rebel against that government. Our forefathers rebelled primarily because they were being unfairly taxed by a foreign parliament. They felt that taxation without representation was tyranny. The Christian is called to bear with his government wherever possible. Jesus did not call for revolution against Rome, even though it was an oppressive conqueror of Israel. On the other hand, the apostles refused to obey an order not to preach and teach in Jesus' name (see Acts 5:27-29). Whenever the civil government forbids the practice of things that God has commanded us to do, or tells us to do things He has commanded us not to do, then we are on solid ground in disobeying the government and rebelling against it. Several years ago, a group of people was tested concerning how much authority they would accept without question. They were seated at a set of controls behind a glass, while on the otherside of the glass a man was strapped to a machine which administered electrical shocks. A person in a white coat directed these citizens to inflict pain on the subject. They started moving the dials as the man strapped to the machine screamed in pain. The person in the white coat, who was the authority figure, kept telling the people to push the lever higher, and they continued to do so until the subject seemed to be either in a state of collapse or dead. Though the subject gave every evidence of being in excruciating pain, people obeyed orders to hurt him, simply because those orders came from an authority figure. Only a few people resisted orders to inflict pain. The rest of them did whatever they were told to do. It is this kind of blind obedience to government that we all need to fight. However difficult or costly it may be, we all must reserve the right to say no to things that we consider oppressive or immoral.
10. Is Capital Punishment Wrong? Capital punishment is unfortunately a necessary corrective to violent crime.In ancient Israel, there were no prisons. A thief was commanded to pay back four or five times what he had stolen or damaged (see Exodus 22:1). Public whippings were also administered to criminals. In ancient Israel, it was believed that blood shed in murder would defile the land and that shedding the blood of a killer was restitution to the land. Those who were considered incorrigible, who had committed unseemly acts that turned Israel against God or destroyed the fabric of society, had only one alternative--capital punishment (see Leviticus 20). Through capital punishment, society was rid of that offense, and the land was cleansed of evil. In the Ten Commandments there is the prohibition, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13). Righteously administered judicial executions were not considered murder and therefore not prohibited by the Ten Commandments. In fact, the same law that included the Ten Commandments also had clear provision for capital punishment for specific offenses. Capital punishment, if administered surely and swiftly, is a great deterrent to crime. It is no deterrent whatsoever if it is uncertain and continually delayed. But if those who scoff at society, and who constantly prey on innocent victims, were aware that death would be the penalty for their actions, we would see a dramatic drop in our crime rate. Today we place criminals in penitentiaries--places of confinement in which the offender is supposed to become penitent or sorry for his sins. In truth, these places are breeding grounds for crime. In even the best of them, 85 percent of the inmates will be incarcerated again. Society must pay for the anguish suffered by the victims of crime, then pay again each year to hold the criminal in prison, a cost equivalent to an Ivy League college education. The biblical model is far wiser. The perpetrator of lesser crimes was returned to society where he was made to make restitution to his victim. The hard-core, habitual criminal was permanently removed from society through capital punishment. In neither case was society doubly victimized as we are today. |
|||||||
 |
|||||||||
| Questions | |
|||||
| Also look at... | |
|||||||
 |
||||||||
Sections: Music | TV-Video | Literature | Kids | Photo | Questions Rubrics: Home >> Questions >> 200 Answers >> Christians and Government Language: Eng | Rus | Ukr All rights reserved by Charity Association "Emmanuel
© 1999 - 2005 |
||
