On the Imposition of Liberty

Introduction

What is the relationship between virtue and liberty? Not only is it an important question, it is also a vexed question. Not surprisingly, a good deal of confusion surrounds it. Some of the confusion is honest confusion, and some of it is not so honest. But either way, it is still confusion.

A related item, and equally confused, is the question of whether or not the preservation of individual liberty is the prime directive when it comes to the exercise of political power. The libertarian (and the liberal) would both say yes. The historic conservative would say no—but not because liberty is not to be protected, but rather because it is not the only good to be protected. There are national goods besides individual liberty, and let me count the ways.

Securing the blessings of liberty for us and for our children really is one of the basic functions of a righteous government. But it is not the only one. Other objectives are in the mix, as they should be. In fact, unless you have the establishment of justice, domestic tranquility, and the like, you are not going to be able to secure the blessings of liberty for anybody.

Liberty Grows Organically

Civic liberty grows, naturally and organically, when the gospel comes to a people and a large number of them are freed from their sins. There are no short cuts—liberty simply cannot be imposed on a tribe of spiritual dunces. No matter how good your intentions are, it simply will not take. The people must be self-governed before they can have a government over them which rests upon, and therefore respects, their liberty.

But what if we gave the Dufflepuds a copy of our Constitution, a boatload of advisors from the State Department, and unlimited beaucoup bucks in foreign aid? Plus an occasional visit from the Marine Corps to get things back on track? That should do the trick, right? The future of all such grand nation-building ventures seemed bright . . . until sad experience taught us that the State Department must have been hiring quite a few Dufflepuds themselves.

So, with reference to my oxymoronic title, genuine liberty cannot be simply imposed. It is grace, and a mark of God’s kindness, and it is a grace that grows like an oak tree, not like cheatgrass.

Deserving Freedom?

The notion that all people deserve civic freedom is simply civic Pelagianism. When the children of Israel were led captive off to Babylon, they were getting what they deserved. They did not deserve liberty, but rather the opposite—they had sinned their way into a strange land.

In a similar way, if God were to judge our nation severely, there would be no injustice in it. If He applied the lash of enslavement to us because of our bloodlust and our sexual deviance, would we be able to say that we wanted our liberties back because we deserved them? Not at all. But it does not follow from this that whoever did the enslaving was deserving of their liberty—God can use vile Assyria to enslave Israel, and in the same breath say, “Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger” (Is. 10:5).

But let there be no mistake—I do want to work for limited government regardless, but not because corrupt men don’t deserve to be slaves. Apart from the grace of God, we all deserve to be slaves. I want limited government because no man deserves to be a master. And whether men are slaves or masters, if they are still slaves to sin, they are going to abuse whatever liberties they do have. And abusing your liberties is just another name for losing them.

And so when God, by His grace, sets a people free from their sins (which sins were the foundation stones of every form of slavery), He is setting in motion the liberating machinery of grace. The first thing to move when this happens is that God gives the people a spirit of repentance.

While there are many heartening signs that have come together in the last few years, there are a few heartening signs that are still missing. Among the discontented—and they are right to be discontented—there is still too much anger, bitterness, malice, and rage that is directed at others, and not enough repentance. Repentance is the awareness, given by God, that we have dragged all of this down upon our own heads. We are not where we need to be yet. For some the blame is aimed at swampy congressmen, for some it is the tech lords, for some it is the Jews, for some it is Big Eva, and so on. “You see, Lord, the problem turns out to be everybody else.” There is a difference between the true prophetic voice and right-wing rage farming.

But make no mistake. There really are bad actors out there, and the growing oppression is real. And once repentance has happened, we will be in a far better position to deal with the Midianites or the Amalekites as they ought to be dealt with. But there is an intermediate step. Look past the threat that Assyria poses, and look at the fact that they are held in the hand of the Lord, as the rod of His anger.

So it begins with the grace of repentance, and then comes the grace of faith. When that takes root and grows, the results are marked and visible. The fruit of such grace is virtue, and liberty grows in the soil of virtue—because virtue grows in and by the grace of God. But if you try to make liberty the soil, as we have done, you will find that the soil is indeed rich. And absent virtue the farmhands will be still sleeping off their bender, and the Canadian thistle is chest high by this point.

The Use of Power

Some of the best sections in Virtuous Liberty are by David Bahnsen, as he critiques those who complain that the free market has let us down. This is relevant to the discussion of “decisive leadership,” as it relates to the promotion of the common good. It is one thing to call for decisive and courageous leadership, but it makes all the difference in the world what the decisive leader is being asked to do.

If, in his defense of the common man, he sets price controls on milk and bread, then that will end just as badly for him as it has done for everybody else in the history of the world. That is just a convoluted way of taking milk and bread away from the people. But if he uses his bully pulpit and executive authority to make drag queen story hours unthinkable again, the only liberties that are impinged would be the lusts of groomers, pervs, and the mentally ill.

When it comes to market forces, in short, the problem with a “strongman” is that he isn’t strong. The integralist who wants government to shape us into the kind of people who stare off into the future middle distance—as seen in Soviet agricultural propaganda posters—is wanting something that never actually happens in real life. What I want is the kind of strongman who puts an end to all the programs that are grooming us into vice, and one who takes a chainsaw to regulatory agencies—thus allowing the common man to get back to work again. What I want is a strong man who is strong enough to knock it off.

Now if—as I suspect—a Catholic integralist and I are likely to vote the same way this coming November, this simply makes us co-belligerents. It does not mean we are playing the same long game. And the fact that we have both had it with secularism does not mean we are playing the same long game either. There is more than one way to be exasperated by the shimmering evanescence that is secularism.

When our version of Christian Nationalism says we need to be willing to use political power for good, this is true, and good, and fully appropriate. But everything rides on which goods we want to bring about by the use of this power. Political power can only be used to bring about civic good, and cannot be used to create the fruit of the Spirit, for example. Political power can be a friend to virtue, but it cannot be the source of virtue. It can recognize virtue, and praise it (Rom. 13: 3), and should praise, it, but it cannot generate it. What the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering (Rom. 8:3). The law is powerless when it comes to giving virtue. It is not powerless when it comes to protecting virtue that has been given by Another.

So I will tell you what the law can do. It can close down abortion clinics. It can stop sponsoring state lotteries—a tax on poor people who are bad at math. It can order the cessation of drag queen story hours at public libraries. It can interfere with the cancerous proliferation of pornography. And to put forward a little idea of mine, it can stop arresting people for praying outside abortion clinics. That should be within their reach, even in our current state.

But when a magistrate does anything so admirable as one of these things, it is an instance of public virtue. Imagine a magistrate who closed down abortion clinics, and he did so because “God told Moses on Mt. Sinai that we weren’t allowed to kill babies.” This statement is true, and it was made in public, and it was virtuous. It is an exhibition of public virtue. It may or may not have been the fruit of that individual politician’s private virtue, but unless a large number of people in that society had been growing in grace, it is a statement that could never have been made.

Back when the Christian consensus in America was strong, it was possible for public liberty to ride on the strength of private virtue. But that was only for a short time. We have two Americas now, and to use Van Til’s phrase, we have a growing epistemological self-consciousness on both sides of that divide. If we want to defend public liberty still (as I most certainly do), we will need to name the one who is the source of it all. He is the true strong man. He did conquer death, after all.

Rough Magic

The longer we persist in the superstitious lunacy of believing that an insolent and blasphemous people can continue to enjoy their civic liberties, the harder the adjustment will be when some form of authoritarian government comes in with a hard reckoning.

Now it is quite true that I would prefer some forms to other forms. I would prefer Napoleon to Robespierre, Franco to Mao, the Pharaoh who knew Joseph to the Pharaoh who didn’t, and so on. And to make the same point in another way, I would rather be captured by the lenient pirates than by the harsh and bitter pirates. But it should not be concluded that I in any way approve of piracy in any of its forms. I approve of no piracy at all, and yes, I would still rather be captured by the lenient pirates.

So I do not approve of “strong man” authoritarian rule. I simply observe that if a people behave in morally idiotic ways for long enough, that is exactly what they are going to get—whether I like it or not.

Much More

On this topic, there is always much more to be said, but it should always come back to the gospel of the kingdom. Christ died and rose, and He liberates men and women from their private chains, their private vices, their private lusts. Christ forgives sinners.

Having done this, Christ teaches these forgiven sinners—through the work of His Spirit—that Caesar is to be honored as a deacon of God, and never as a sovereign lord. Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. What has God’s image on it—you, your wife, and your children—should be rendered to Him, and never to the state. Get your kids out of the government schools, for starters. Stop snacking on Caesar’s dainties in your late night porn sessions. Stop blaming the Jews for the griminess of your little Anglo heart.

When God grants reformation and revival, the people will cry out to the Lord. They will be enabled to do this on the basis of the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ died so that a diseased America could die. He was buried so that our sorry corpse could be buried. He rose so that newness of life could be offered to a people who didn’t deserve a bit of it. He ascended on high so that we might stop pretending to be exceptional.

This sort of corporate repentance can and does happen. It happened various times in the Old Testament, it happened in Judea in the ministry of John the Baptist, and it has happened numerous times in the history of the Christian church. If it does not happen now, in our time, then we are nothing more than burnt toast.

America, you have not obeyed His voice. That is the source of all our troubles. And if there is one thing American Christians should stop doing, it is praying that God would somehow save us from behind the scenes. Maybe we could obtain salvation without naming the Savior. Maybe we can be delivered and still keep our delusions.

Maybe He will save us from drowning while allowing us to remain on the bottom of the lake.