Stop Democracy Planting; Start Church Planting

It's already been a couple of weeks since Ehud posted the quote from Francis A. Schaeffer, and I have not stopped pondering over the awful blunder we are doing over there in Iraq. Then again, I've never been in agreement with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly because the larger context of history would cast so much doubt over who started what and why.

Personal opinion sidenote: From the libertarian (political, not theological) standpoint, our government is far from being within the bounds of the Constitution. Its hands are dirty enough to leave the fingerprints of its horrible execution of political power, yet most Americans are stymied into thinking that this is OK. Its arm is long enough to stretch overseas and play with a hornets nest, then have the audacity to blame the hornets for stinging back, then declare war against the hornets in order to defend the rest of us from the stings, all the while obtaining powers far beyond what the Constitution would allow and using such powers to enter into the private lives of those being "defended". Frankly, I'm offended by such intrusion, and I'm additionally offended by the masses who are OK with this. What an awful mess! And to think that I'm getting poorer and poorer by the incredible amount of dross being printed up in order to pay for such an ill-conceived and badly executed bug extermination. But hey! That's just my opinion. Feel the sting, baby.

Anyway, however one justifies this war, for us to try and establish a democracy without establishing Christianity first is only going to lead to disaster. Woops! Too late.

Lee Duigon, in an article at the Chalcedon website, wrote about Polybius, a Roman pagan general and historian, and how he describes the downfall of Rome's republic:

When the state “achieves supremacy and uncontested sovereignty,” Polybius wrote, and order and prosperity, and life becomes more luxurious, then “rivalry for office … will become fiercer than it should.”

With no foreign power able to threaten Rome, and domestic political problems solved insofar as was humanly possible, the quest for public office and preeminence would become an end in itself. This “craving for office,” plus the intense humiliation felt by the losers — the Roman equivalent of each party trying to impeach the other party’s winners — plus the ostentation and extravagance seen everywhere, “will usher in a period of general deterioration,” said Polybius.

The “principal authors of this change will be the masses, who … will believe that they have a grievance against the greed of other members of society” — fueled by the “class warfare rhetoric” of competing political candidates — and “are made conceited by the flattery of those who aspire to office,” Polybius said.

To win elections, candidates would have to vie with one another in offering bigger and better favors to the electorate: new entitlements, to use today’s term. And the masses, “roused to fury … constantly swayed by passion,” will no longer obey their leaders, but will demand more favors.

At that point, Polybius said, “the constitution will change its name to the one which sounds the most imposing of all, that of freedom and democracy, but its nature to that which is the worst of all, that is the rule of the mob.”

Sounds awfully a lot like America today.

But, we're not talking about us. We're talking about Iraq. Rome did not follow after God, but after multiple gods. Having read some of the mythological stories of the Greek and Roman gods, they didn't follow anyone worth following. The "gods" were just as human as the Romans were: full of sin. In the unregenerate state while following unregenerate models, is it a wonder that the Roman republic deteriorated into the mess that we are now seeing on the birthpang scale, and the mess that it is now in the Middle East?

(I'm not downplaying the role Christianity during the first century here. The challenge of the King of Kings versus the Roman civil magistrates would only serve to compound the destruction of Rome.)

"Regeneration, not revolution" is a phrase that is attributed to R.J. Rushdoony. Simple, yet so true. What is needed in Iraq, and in every other country devoid of Christ, is regeneration, not the forced imposition of a democracy. Without regeneration, no form of government will give the kind of freedom we are so blessed here in America, as fading as it is. With regeneration, a dictatorship, oligarchy or democracy would hold to a standard higher than their own. Which government would you prefer to live under? A dictatorship where God's Law is enforced or a democracy where the mob rules under Allah?

And so, rather than continue in the war in Iraq, we ought to send church planters, not carpet bombers. Can this be done? I doubt it in the short term. Already, because of the invasion, Iraqi Christians have had to flee their homes. How ironic that the Christian country, USA, would force (passively) Christian Iraqis out of home.

However, in the long run, as a postmil kind of guy, I do believe that Christians will be able to go there eventually without feeling the great emotional stress of being killed by your neighbor. Let us pray that this much sooner than later.

In Christ,

Victor