While certainly legitimate street protesters are out there, the organized mainstream are rioters, bent on destruction. The evidence is overwhelming. Many are, as I was back in my own pagan days, stirred up by the agitating of the political moment after having been prepared for it by my schooling.
I liken the riotous character we see on the streets to the first son Cain. Adam and Eve had no idea how to deal with the new sin nature in a child. Cain grew up without parenting because his parents didn’t know how to parent. He grew up a slave to his sinful passions. He grew up to be a selfish and entitled child, ready to erupt when he didn’t get his way. In his sinful tantrum, he murdered his brother. This is the spirit of the organized Antifa and BLM, and much of the street rioting we see. Clearly the Biblical model, the Biblical lens, is true because God is faithful to His Word.
As we recognize the gross sinfulness of mankind, we wonder how any good at all can come among us. Yet, good did come, and to a greater degree in no other nation than our own USA. As immigrants, we were the fledgling first multi-people nation. It was based in Biblical thinking, however flawed (Romans 9:25-26). God dealt sovereignly with the great sin of African slavery with the Civil War, when two-thirds of a million mostly young Americans died. He continues to make Providential restitution regarding race. This battle is mostly won and we would almost take it for granted except for the opportunistic political people continuing to demagogue the issue, stirring up the downtrodden as pawns. God also now deals with our second great outrage of national sin—abortion. History has produced two strands. One sees, by His grace, improvement on God’s original blessing of liberty, justice, peace, prosperity, and generosity on one hand. And one intending to destroy the blessing on the other. These strands have grown up together and presently have divided us. The important thing is to know what the Bible says about nations, civil government, the rule of law, liberty, the importance of private property and the family. Most important is focusing on God and seeking His kingdom first. The Ten Commandments summarize these and represent our foundation in Law, with Christ and His Holy Spirit enabling our ability to keep His Law by faith. Ultimately, we look to His Providential grace by faith.
We must therefore not focus on the sinners in political parties or on the streets, but rather on our own repentance and action, and then look up.
Many of the African race today understand they are no victims unless they make themselves victims. Consequently, many have risen from their disadvantaged roots to become amazingly wise and accomplished, and great dads. Such active and faithful folks will soon overtake the historically privileged, who tend to lose character and faith in their complacent comfort and ease.
One of my mentors R J Rushdoony spent his early ministry on a Native American Reservation in Eastern Nevada. He persisted for many years with little visible progress. A tribal elder summarized their condition and observed the threat to all. He said that his people were completely demoralized by the reservation system where they had no personal responsibility (and sin nature ruled), where the government took care of them. He warned Dr. Rushdoony that the West had recently escaped the Reservation in WWII. But the West had better remain vigilant, because the Left are determined to put everyone on the Reservation.
If we encourage victimhood, we encourage two things. Slavery requires people willing to be slaves on the ground of relieving them of the need for responsible faith. It also requires a slavish tyrant, who fears death and sinfully and fruitlessly uses others as a hedge against it. Thus, we encourage the downtrodden to continue in slavish character, blaming others and allowing manipulation by the would-be tyrant. This is the ongoing history of the world apart from the intervention of the God of the Bible.
Slaves tend to become slavish, as Ancient Israel in Egypt. God gave Israel the solution—learn faith and character for God’s ways. Heed them and become a grass-roots, self-governing people of freedom and justice and prosperity and generosity. Deny God’s ways and become slaves again. Later, Israel refused to walk by faith, demanding centralized government and kings like the pagan nations. Eventually God dispersed them, looking toward the future time of their reconciliation.
Godly people accept the trouble of personal responsibility in the short term, including accepting martyrdom if necessary. They trust God for His protection against our many enemies. He is always faithful, as we saw in the American War for Independence. As with a farmer’s crop, only the Lord can bring the increase, which is why we must not be revolutionaries like our adversaries.
By the way, this is not a partisan argument. Our elected representatives are overwhelmingly self-serving. Republicans are mostly useless. But there is no moral equality between the parties either. The party of slavery and Jim Crow, are now the revolutionary party. The materialist philosopher Hegel observed the ancient concept of bringing a new order out of revolutionary chaos. This is the Buddhist’s New Age. The French Revolution and Marxism adopted the tactic. Democrat representatives are exactly like the street rioters—petulant self-serving brats who will get their way at any cost, including national destruction—where, with other Marxists, the ends justify the means.
I am with Trump, though always testing. Many close to him claim his redemption in Christ, as Dr. Dobson. Ralph Drollinger’s Capitol Ministries gives bi-weekly Bible studies to the White House Cabinet! For whatever reason, the president is more and actively pro-life than any president since Reagan. Before the pandemic, his policies released the economy to benefit mostly the low income including every minority to the greatest extent in history. He is no savior. But God appears to use his toughness in the way He used Jephthah in Judges 11, or Judge Jehu, another fallible fellow. It isn’t about Trump. For Trump’s wiser supporters, it is whether we will become the USSR in the near future, or God’s people will arise and serve in the public sphere again. Like King David, the people in his own house are against him. Again, elitist, authoritarian governments always produce a small, elite ruling class, with a vast peasantry, as the American Left has already much accomplished. African-Americans will not escape the Leftist serfdom. Without exaggeration, the current political battle appears life or death.
The good news is that God is sovereign and will not see His people destroyed. He will intervene in some way. Jesus gave us the formula for a degraded time. Render to Caesar. Render to God. Make limited submission to Caesar, while working tirelessly to make Caesar irrelevant. Paul added, that God will be ready to punish all disobedience when our obedience is fulfilled (2 Corinthians 10:6). He also said that in Romans 8 that the creation groans waiting to be delivered from its futility, which will happen when the sons of God are revealed, that is, when Christians generally stop hiding and exert their responsibility in the restrained way that God requires, to move against the gates of hell once more. Thus, the signers of the Declaration left us an example: We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor—willing sacrifices—to secure godly rights to their posterity—us. May we do likewise.
Amen!