His Kingdom

Secular Government - The view from the Bible

It is the Christian's duty to influence government, even if only with prayer. When we want to encourage government in a certain direction, we must first ask the questions: "What is government?" and "What is its mission?". Until we have answered these, we will be tossed to and fro upon the waves of media hype and election posturing.

Romans chapter 13 has few verses on the topic, but true to biblical style, there is very much wisdom to be found. Common sense acknowledges and respects the clarity and simplicity of the Apostle Paul's viewpoint. Romans 13 illustrates the design of secular government.

In this section, we venture into the history of government action as recorded in the Bible. Here, we find that there truly is nothing new under the sun. What has been done before, will be done again. The material is provided to the reader to help him understand political discussions of today. The tricks, deceit and the like can be spotted if one pays attention.

Fraud, just and unjust war, coup d'état, murder, intrigue, abuse of power and even socialism are all there for study.

The Apostle Paul made the blanket statement that government holds the power of violence. In God's eyes, the violence is to be used against evil-doers. The Devil, according to his nature, wants the government to punish good-doers and reward evil-doers. Violence in itself is not evil. The question is whether the violence is used to punish wrong-doers, or good-doers.

In these writings the reader will often find the phrase aggressive violence, and defensive violence. Aggressive violence is to be understood as violence employed to enforce an exchange of wealth, i.e. to steal. Alternatively, defensive violence is made use of to defend against aggressive violence.

So government policy can be viewed as being either aggressively, or defensively violent. This is the decisive factor in determining if a policy as good or evil.