Covenant Presbyterian Church

It does not matter in the least who becomes the next President of the United States. There are some very obvious reasons for this. First, the political frenzy associated with next year’s election is purely media driven. Anything driven by mass media is intrinsically meaningless. Mass media is not concerned with educating the populace or generating serious discussion but with making money, advancing its own agenda, and excluding serious thinking and interchange from public discourse. Mass media is government education for adults: maintain control, distract the hoi polloi, and discourage independent thinking. It is fifth-grade dialogue in which image prevails over substance. Second, the candidates, excepting Ron Paul, do not represent significantly different ideological perspectives. Cumulatively, their abysmal voting records, beltway political connections, and statist convictions make them about as interesting and appetizing as a Ryan’s buffet. Third, whoever wins the election will not run the country. For well over a century, the real movers and shakers have been non-elected bureaucrats, lobbyists, and corporate financial interests. The façade of elections is maintained to convince the rank and file that the United States remains the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are nothing of the sort; we are a corporation daily bought and sold to the highest bidder. Fourth, the candidates’ images and views undergo a daily face lift in order to convince their daily audience that they are "middle of the road." There is not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Come January 2009, it will be business as usual in Washington.

There are some things about this Presidential election that do matter. One is the insight it provides into our national consciousness. There is one principle to which every party and most citizens is committed. Government is the answer. Whether the specific position is less government, more government, or better government, the answer is still "government." We are a nation of government-educated and government-dependent slaves. Our government-protected freedom now consists primarily in the ability to spend more than we earn, enjoy access to abortion on demand, find uncensored pornography on the internet, and expect government provision in old age. Some freedom. Where freedom counts - freedom from oppressive regulation and excessive taxation, freedom not to pay for government programs one does not support, and freedom to expect accountable, responsive, and limited government - we do not have it. This is not to say that we are the worst nation on the face of the earth. It is simply a recognition that our definition of freedom has changed.
This is because our self-understanding has changed. Lay the blame where you will, the fact remains that our current convictions and sentiments radically differ from the values, religious convictions, and ideologies of our founding and colonial fathers and citizens. Having abandoned their self-consciously espoused faith in God and commitment to live as free men under his law, we can live neither peaceably nor comfortably in the house they built. Our new décor of professional politicians, a planned economy, government-mandated tolerance of group decadence, and individual autonomy clashes with their edifice of a nation built upon self-governed, religious, and armed citizens, extremely limited government, and strong, working families. At some deep level, I think we sense that the "grand experiment" has failed. Patriotism, education, and money will not restore it. Look and listen carefully to our leading Presidential candidates. Perhaps George Washington would have given them a trial as field hands or household servants, but it is deeply embarrassing to think that one of them will be the leading citizen of the city named after him. Deeply embarrassing.

I would like to have liberty-loving and truth embracing leaders again. This leads to a consideration of the second reason this Presidential election matters. Have you ever asked, "From where did men like that originate, and, where are they now?" They were the fruits, and not even the best fruits, of two centuries of religious revival. We now call it the Reformation, and it was truly the most important work of Jesus Christ in the world since the days of his apostles. As a result of the Reformation, truth was no longer considered to be the plaything of papal proclamation and royal prerogative. Truth existed beyond and above them. Truth could judge them. Truth is in the Bible. Truth is worth a martyr’s death. They saw a fruit of truth that had eluded them for centuries: liberty. When men recognize that truth comes from God and that he has given us his truth in the Bible, they no longer fear men or tolerate tyrants. They will resist the truth-snatchers. They are willing to accept deprivation in order to have and live the untarnished truth. They would never think of giving their children over to educational factories that inoculate their children against truth. They do not engage in group think, listen to the pundits, or trust the experts. They trust truth and those who speak it clearly.

The early Americans we now revere suckled upon truth. They did not get everything right, and they were not always consistent. They understood, however, that life and liberty come from God, that government must be severely restricted or it will choke out and persecute truth, and that government has no business deciding religious questions or establishing a national church. They trusted in a strong pulpit to address and resolve internal differences among Christians and to maintain the knowledge of Scripture that keeps the fires of spiritual and political liberty blazing. They expected strong families and churches to train knowledgeable, freedom-loving, and productive citizens that would have the intellectual understanding and moral rectitude to resist tyranny and build upon their foundation. Most did not envision secularism, that the cry of "No King but Christ" would ever cease ringing from the churches, or that generations of professional politicians would gradually replace the supremacy of God with the supremacy of man, the worship of God with the worship of money, and the love of liberty with the love of security. They did not, in short, envision our modern nation. They would have repudiated it.

I suppose we could simply view next year’s election as an opportunity to choose the lesser of several evils. We might hope against hope that the most conservative candidate will emerge as a knight in shining armor. We might sell what is left of our soul by sleeping with the enemy in order to beat a despised candidate. Or, we could passively accept the status quo. I suggest a different alternative. Hezekiah comes to mind.

With the mighty Assyrian army approaching Judah’s borders and the coffers already depleted from an earlier bribe to keep the Assyrians at bay, Hezekiah’s counselors were urging him to seek help from Egypt. Hezekiah considered his options. He took the threatening death-letter from the Assyrian envoy into the temple. He spread it before the Lord. He humbled himself and asked the Lord to intervene. That night, the Angel of the Lord destroyed the Assyrian army.

Hezekiah realized something that we have forgotten. The contest in which we are engaged is not between armies, political parties and ideologies, or socio-economic classes. It is between light and darkness, God and Satan, the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The contest in the west is a religious war between those who hate God, Scripture, and liberty and those who recognize and submit to the God of truth and liberty. Hezekiah’s choice is now our choice. Who rules: man or God? What will be the standard: secularism or Scripture? Who is King: the state or Christ? Will we pray for the Lord Jesus Christ to strike the earth with the rod of his mouth? Will we pray for him to rule over all things for the sake of the church? Will we speak the truth, defend the truth, and sacrifice for the truth regardless of the consequences? Will we love our neighbor as ourselves? If the church would but do these things, she would be doing what Hezekiah, a type of Christ, did. He committed himself to the Judge of all the earth. He believed the promise of God. He asked God to do what he said he would do: defend his church. If God did this in Hezekiah’s day, how much more will he do it in ours? He loves his Son and has committed all things into his hand. What we lack, what the church lacks, is faith in his promise and commitment to the reign of the Son of God. Recover this, and we will eventually have liberty and godly men to lead us. They will be forged upon the anvil and in the furnace of truth. Refuse this course, endorse perceived lesser evils, settle for business as usual, and the abyss will deepen. The Lord will not share his glory with another. He will defend his church. Who will look to him? This is our critical choice - not who will be our next President but who will stand for the truth of the King of kings?