Regardless of our personal experience with God, our nation’s civil government reflects the god we follow nationally. This “final
authority”-source of the nation is its “god!”. Does its civil government align itself with the biblical model? Nations have only two broad categories of government as possibilities, as we have discussed previously on this blog—THEOCRACY and PLURALISM. A nation that is a theocracy has a single “god” or authority source, while a pluralistic one can have any number of gods or sources of authority.
“Theocracy” is a dirty word in America, because the only examples we have observed first hand are Islamic theocracies. This includes Iran and the budding, potential theocracies growing in Europe and in our own country, a la New York City and Dearborn, Michigan. These examples are not even slightly attractive to the vast majority of American-born citizens. On the other hand, an obvious, easily-understandable EXAMPLE OF PLURALISM is very attractive to us—the USA!.
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the delegates had these same two choices before them as to the form of government the emerging, new nation would adopt. Both models had been on full display for the delegates to observe. among the American colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony model, led by John Winthrop in its early years, represented the theocratic model, while Rhode Island, self-consciously founded by Roger Williams as a pluralistic colony, represented pluralism. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia the Rhode Island model carried the day, and the Great American Experiment in pluralistic government was born!
I believe that the problems that have arisen and continue to arise in our American, pluralistic system, do so due to one, inviolate truth: THERE CAN BE NO RELIGIOUS NEUTRALITY IN CIVIL GOVERNMENT! Jesus said “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Matthew 12:30), and that is true of nations as well as individuals.
In actuality, every nation has a god today just as did all of the nation-states that made up Canaan as Abraham entered it 4000 years ago, even though we don’t call them “gods” today. We are created to worship God, and worship we will, either the true Jehovah God or some other god we have erected to take His place. We can do no other!
The question is only, WHICH GOD WILL WE, AS A NATION, officially and legally, choose to worship. In every country of the world, there will always be a battle for supremacy between the God of the Bible and the god of all other religions, Satan himself. Who will be “god” and rule over this nation? This battle is a delaying, guerrilla action fought by Satan, who was defeated definitively at the cross. However, he will continue to fight until God finishes using him to accomplish His inscrutable will on the earth!
So, who is our actual god, officially and legally, in the United States? The pluralists are fooling themselves if they think our nation is religiously neutral.
The first line of the Constitution lays out our current god very clearly and distinctly: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The framers appealed to “We the people,” CORPORATE MAN HIMSELF, as our nation’s final authority! Satan’s temptation, directed at Adam and Eve in the Garden, was repeated in 1787 at Philadelphia: “You will be as God, knowing good and evil,” and WE BIT AGAIN!
Remember, a nation’s god is the one whose laws are followed. In the USA, we make our own laws, with no necessity to corporately, as a nation, consider God’s law in the Bible whatsoever, proudly determining for ourselves what is right and wrong. So, constitutionally, we are our own gods! That religion is called Secular Humanism, and that became our de jure (legal) national religion in 1787. Now, 250 years later, it is gradually becoming our de facto (experiential) national religion as well!
All governments, be they monarchies, oligarchies, dictatorships, democracies or republics, are battlefields between competing “gods”—the God of Christianity and the god of all other religions, Satan himself—whose conflict with man on the earth constitutes human history. Some form of a civil government will be with us as long as sin remains, until Jesus returns.
However, until He does, God has given us, as His people, the task of progressively taking back this piece of real estate called earth from Satan, who was defeated at the cross by Jesus. One of the institutions God has ordained for the job is civil government.
As you can see, the question “Who is our nation’s god?” is absolutely foundational if America is to remain America. Our current prosperity is a result of the fading, residual. de facto theocracy of colonial America. So, the current answer to the above question is “Nationally, we are our own gods (secular humanism is our national religion).“ Next week, I want to look at how awakened families and churches can realistically adjust our Constitution, and then our civil government, to make it the powerful weapon God gave us to help bring the rule of Jesus to our fallen world!
