This was originally posted in October 2010, but I thought it was particularly relevant with the events of yesterday and the upholding of the individual mandate in the ACA. Wherever government grows, the church suffers. The book of Revelation is the story of governmental-approved persecution and killing of Christians. However, that is not the most scary part of government growth. The most scary part is the fact that when government grows, grace dies.
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I have noticed a disturbing trend in Western society in the last forty
years. Europe, once the hotbed of Christianity, has been thoroughly
secularized with church attendance hovering around a whopping 8-9% in
most places. Although America has yet to reach these low numbers, the
trend is definitely going that way.
Whenever the church decreases, government increases. There is not a nation in the world where a strong church and a large government exist- in fact they cannot coexist. Government only grows when it takes on issues that only the Gospel was intended to take on.
Why should anyone other than a minister care about this? Well, one thing that I have noticed is that with the decreasing influence of the church comes a decreasing emphasis on grace. Grace is disappearing from our society as people turn their backs on faith and walk away from the church. However, the problems still remain. People are still concerned about divorce, violence, crime, homelessness, etc. There still exists a desire for some kind of morality- people still hate being lied to, cheated on, cut off in traffic, treated unfairly, etc. So what is the answer?
When grace leaves a society, the only thing left is legislation. If people cannot deal with evil by grace, they have to deal with it by making more and more rules to govern an increasingly corrupt and rebellious society. As Christianity has left the continent of Europe, government there has grown by leaps and bounds. We see socialist states in the western part, and for a good part of the last century, communist states in the eastern part. Government has grown and taken over more and more of life as the power of the Christian faith, and the power of grace, has subsided.
The same is true in America. If American society does not embrace the grace found in the Gospel of Jesus, we too will see an increasingly alarming turn towards more and more legislation, as the world tries to deal with the problem of morality and evil in the only way it knows how to handle it. More rules. More guidelines. More laws. More government programs to create a fair society- one that can only be created through God's kingdom. America needs to wake up and see that as grace disappears from society, rules and regulations increase. As faith in Christ disappears, and the love and morality that goes with it disappears, we will see more and more governmental regulation and oversight.
The answer isn't smaller government. The answer is grace. That's what this world needs. But if the United States doesn't wake up and realize its need for grace, it will find itself under increasing government control. I prefer grace.
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Whenever the church decreases, government increases. There is not a nation in the world where a strong church and a large government exist- in fact they cannot coexist. Government only grows when it takes on issues that only the Gospel was intended to take on.
Why should anyone other than a minister care about this? Well, one thing that I have noticed is that with the decreasing influence of the church comes a decreasing emphasis on grace. Grace is disappearing from our society as people turn their backs on faith and walk away from the church. However, the problems still remain. People are still concerned about divorce, violence, crime, homelessness, etc. There still exists a desire for some kind of morality- people still hate being lied to, cheated on, cut off in traffic, treated unfairly, etc. So what is the answer?
When grace leaves a society, the only thing left is legislation. If people cannot deal with evil by grace, they have to deal with it by making more and more rules to govern an increasingly corrupt and rebellious society. As Christianity has left the continent of Europe, government there has grown by leaps and bounds. We see socialist states in the western part, and for a good part of the last century, communist states in the eastern part. Government has grown and taken over more and more of life as the power of the Christian faith, and the power of grace, has subsided.
The same is true in America. If American society does not embrace the grace found in the Gospel of Jesus, we too will see an increasingly alarming turn towards more and more legislation, as the world tries to deal with the problem of morality and evil in the only way it knows how to handle it. More rules. More guidelines. More laws. More government programs to create a fair society- one that can only be created through God's kingdom. America needs to wake up and see that as grace disappears from society, rules and regulations increase. As faith in Christ disappears, and the love and morality that goes with it disappears, we will see more and more governmental regulation and oversight.
The answer isn't smaller government. The answer is grace. That's what this world needs. But if the United States doesn't wake up and realize its need for grace, it will find itself under increasing government control. I prefer grace.
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