Chastening or Judgment?
Our present societal condition appears part of God’s judgment or chastening on a sinful and rebellious people. Abortion, is the most egregious, yet it is but symptomatic of the entire humanistic mess our society has become. We Christians by our lack of wise and skillful participation created the demons we now see. Sinners do what sinners do—and the ugly result becomes increasingly apparent.
The Tech Giants—Regulation?
Rather than regulation, better and more constitutional and Biblical ways exist to inhibit the bad conduct of the tech giants and mainstream media. No where does one see God establish government regulation in Scriptures. Actually, undoing the regulatory oversight that gave tech their special privilege (as the government gave labor unions) is a part of the solution.
Social media now enjoys legal protection as platforms or clearing houses. However, inasmuch as censorship of ideas they oppose is clearly common, they are not mere platforms of public discourse, but content providers with a narrow religious and political view. That is their right. But they do not have a right to insulation from lawsuit if they are not a true public platform, but rather publishers. Therefore, legally establishing social media providers as content providers will make them more subject to honest judicial scrutiny.
But let’s take a step back…
Politics, Or?
Whether we win elections (God’s mercy to give us time before great chastening) or lose (under the crunch), the next step toward national reclamation against the giants is to repent and rebuild the foundations.
We cannot depend on politics, but on God and His grassroots movement of the Holy Spirit on His people. We must educate the church back to its societal responsibility and leadership, and the Biblical relational and economic government skills, character, and courage of faith necessary to restore the Republic. We must overcome a hundred years of anti-Christian and mind-numbing propaganda the church has subjected itself to in the name of free education. The late Bobbie Ames’ Nordskog Publishing book Land That I Love is brilliant on this subject. My own NPI book Thy Will Be Done represents an introduction to the subject of building a just and free society as a fundamental part of the Great Commission, and true and expansive evangelism.
The Bible says the Law is for the lawless. This is the key to applied faith Theonomy—living God’s Word in all its parts, by faith. In a self-governing society based in general liberty, you don’t license or regulate legitimate human activity of all kinds beforehand. The difference is telling people what you must do versus telling them what they may not do (Thou shalt not…)
Regulation
The problem fundamentally reduces to conviction of one’s presuppositions, Biblical or human? There is a way that seems right to a man, but the way thereof ends in death (Proverbs 14:12).
Regulation makes would-be gods of mere men, usurping the place of God in establishing governing law over men. Consider how we license drivers or gun owners. The government presumes to license ordinary and purposeful human activity. Why? Licensing merely gives civil government an easy way to control people and get money out of them. Regulation assumes we are all criminals, and so forces everyone into certain conduct and habits before anyone has a chance to act. This is the diametric opposite of liberty.
Consider how we have made the family a vassal of the state through marriage licensing—conceding government fundamental authority over the family and God’s children. The Biblical solution is a voluntary covenant with public witness of its conditions, put into public record as we do with real estate deeds. Then, if something goes wrong in a manner not remediable by family or church, the state properly becomes involved to establish particular justice—especially exacting restitution from the guilty according to damage done, and protecting the innocent.
Ironically, the idea of regulation—the civil government directly involving itself in the market place—leads directly to self-interest on the part of those who ought to be disinterested. Regulation skews the marketplace, favoring one business over another. Regulation has led to government spending tax money against us and against God’s interests—e.g. public radio, national endowment for the arts, state schools, owning General Motors (in partnership with the Canadian government), and Planned Parenthood. Arguably, a direct opposition exists between government control of the marketplace, providing goods or services that only the marketplace should provide, and justice through civil government in free society. A fundamental reason against regulation and government market involvement is that they cannot but undermine objective justice—the one function government legitimately possesses. The two are not compatible. Either socialism and its serfdom, or liberty and justice will dominate.
A Just Solution
A major part of the solution would be to replace regulation with a comprehensive and just judiciary. Judicial remedies—libel and slander—are a part of the answer. But judicial remedies depend on a supporting civil structure, the historic one, which we now mostly lack. At least half the present judiciary is Leftist, allowing outcome-shoppers simply to find the right venue, as they have to go after Donald Trump on obscure supposed crimes, and as they continue to do. We have allowed the Left to undermine critical republican structures such as representative caucuses rather than direct primaries, state-elected Senate, hard currency, and Tenth Amendment restrictions on centralized government to name a few. “To the Law and to the Testimony! To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).
An Active Christian Citizenship and Stewardship Better than Regulation
Scripture shows that God established self-government in Israel under Moses and later under the judges, until Israel begged for a king to be like other nations (Deuteronomy One; 17:14; 1 Samuel 8:5). Self-government is God’s norm.
In a society that first adopted self-government as the fundamental principle of civil community, people would as a matter of course teach their own children driving and gun safety, and the skills needed to make use of their tools. Flagrant violators would receive appropriate and pointed punishment to dissuade others. So, expel evil from your midst as Ron Gleason quotes Scripture in his Nordskog Publishing title Death Penalty on Trial. We don’t do this in general anymore, because we have grown lazy and dependent on government to do everything for us.
In early America, according to D ’Tocqueville, there was almost no regulation, what he called Administration, but much judiciary, what he called Government. One powerful element of self-government is self-regulation via professional or industry associations. How might our founders have handled radio airwaves if they had our technology?
I speculate that first, apart from civil government altogether, those who first provided radio services, not government, would have met together to agree how to divvy up the spectrum, limit broadcasting power to protect markets, etc. If there were renegades who took advantage of their liberty, common law and existing public and private nuisance laws providing for when neighbors might presume upon one another, then those hurt by the presumption would prevail. The injured would take the violator to court at the appropriate level. Adequately severe penalties would dissuade too many others from trying to take advantage.
I possess a Kindle book called The Privatization of Roads and Highways, by Walter Block, published by the Mises Institute. Block suggests numbers of ways roads could be conveniently privatized based on experience and speculation. He also comments that he is only one mind trying to figure out the deal. He asks us to imagine how many other great solutions might emerge with thousands of brilliant, competing minds working on the problem of providing private solutions. I frequently observe to my pro-regulation, liberty-skeptical friends that a key to effacing tyrannous regulation is imagination applied toward better solutions.
Interestingly, the airlines did a pretty good job of self-policing under deregulation, though industry insiders predicted chaos and disaster. Of course, it could be better. But better depends on general self-government by a Holy Spirit enabled people. Again, a fundamental part of the solution is a godly citizenry.
No liberty long exists, as our founders understood, without a godly people to administer it. Liberty under Law encourages personal responsibility via a stake in success, and a real consequence for dereliction. Such laborious activity as above is the price of free institutions. Instead we have taken the easy road, relieving ourselves of responsibility, resulting in bureaucrats gleefully filling the vacuum we left, and the resulting tyranny we are now beginning to feel in full force.
To promote the idea of limiting what media may say by regulation is to diminish the First Amendment (Isaiah 8:20; Acts 4:19-20). Rather, the solution once more is a lively and active citizenry on guard against clear abuse—pornography, slander and libel, and free speech as an excuse for mayhem, case by case, with a willingness to sacrifice time and money to take perpetrators legally to task, as a few have started to do regarding slander and libel against them by the mainstream media. They abuse us because they get away with it.
In general, we Christians have not become good Biblical and constitutional lawyers (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Neither have we become good at any other strategic protection of a godly civil society. Interestingly, that is what Pat Robertson tried to do with CBN/Regent University and his schools of Law, Education, and Journalism. Remember, Herb Titus who was a central figure to that purpose, lost his position there to the mainstream folks who eventually took over, and, like Trump’s deep-state adversaries, expelled him. We need more Biblically minded and legally astute children of God to push back against such a mainstream.
From the time Rush Limbaugh’s career launched and since, a few conservative media pundits have carried our water for us, but very imperfectly, since many do not make the necessary connection, bridging the proverbial gap, between Biblical theory and sound practice. Humanistic solutions must fail, even conservative ones. How can we expect God to bless our efforts if we do not as a matter of course seek first His mind, and then seek to glorify Him in word and deed by active faith?
Return to Godly Education
Once, the most important structural elements supportive of our Christian republic was an astute normal Christian education that constantly reproduced or corrected Biblical understanding of civil society. It supported all the rest by reproducing Biblical thinking, especially the traditional Constitutional principles—common liberty and justice, local self-government, covenant, relational representation, etc., etc. We lost the nation to the state educational system. It will take a ubiquitous return to Christian education (not administered by the state) to restore it.
Possible?
The remedy seems overwhelming, but by faith doable: The church most wake up, prepare itself in stewardship knowledge, wisdom and skills, and begin again as individuals to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but mostly render to God what is God’s in practice. This has been my position for years, reflected in my own book Thy Will Be Done.
I don’t say we don’t fight politically. Nehemiah gives the model. We build while holding a sword. Thus, yes, we wage the political battle, but do not depend upon it. Rather, building a better alternative, while trusting God alone to bring the increase of good fruit, is key.
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