Bureaucracy

In recent years, there has been a parallel growth of the idea of human rights and bureaucracy. This common growth has been a closely related fact, so much so that Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner, in The Homeless Mind (1973), speak of “bureaucratically identifiable rights.” There must, they point out, be some bureaucracy to complain to (the humanist version of prayer), and bureaucratic procedures to enforce rights. “Thus there is a progression from the notion of universal human rights to the notion of a necessary universal bureaucracy. The United Nations may be seen as a somewhat ironic anticipation of this cosmological vision of bureaucracy” (p. 115). In brief, humanism’s emphasis on human rights leads to the nightmare world of a totalitarian bureaucracy and George Orwell’s 1984. Why? It is important for us to understand this relationship, because our future depends on it.

There must be, and is, in every system of thought and social order, a sovereign power, a determiner, a central, controlling agency, or else there is no cosmos, unity, or order possible, only chaos and confusion. If that power is the triune God, then, while man can flounder in evil, confusion, and disorder because of his sin, he is still able, on the human level, in history, to assert himself against all other powers. The history of Christendom has often been marred by great evils, but it has been, to a degree unequalled elsewhere, volatile, rich in struggle, contention, and growth. It has resisted stratification and petrifaction. We can disagree strongly with the medieval English rebels, and still must recognize the intensely Christian framework of their revolt, when they opposed the lords of the realm with their battle cry,

When Adam delved, and Eve span, 

Who was then the gentleman?

To defend themselves against tyranny, they had God’s yardstick to apply to all man-made orders. Moreover, even in defeat, they had the assurance of faith that, since God is the Lord of history, in time their cause would triumph. God’s Word and law gave them a court of appeals against man, and a freedom from any total claim by man.

In humanism, man is his own god, and the state exercises the deity as the general will of man. Therefore, human rights require man, i.e., collective man as the state, to assure them. God is omnipotent, and, in time, His purposes shall prevail in history. The state as the new god, in order to assure the triumph of the human rights it proclaims, must gain greater power over man; it must become omnipotent. As a result, in the name of human rights, man is obliterated. The more fully the state and its bureaucracy become man’s champion, as in Marxism, the greater the oppression of man.

In the Christian scheme of things, man’s progress depends on his struggle with sin, in himself and in the world, so that, by the grace of God, he grows in freedom and dominion and his ability to exercise knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. In the humanistic scheme of things, human rights require that a bureaucracy control man for his welfare and “freedom,” so that, as Orwell saw, slavery becomes freedom.

We may therefore rail as much as we choose against the growth of bureaucracy. But it will only continue to grow as long as man remains a humanist. There must be a center to and a governing power in life, and, for humanism, the choice is between anarchism, every man is his own god, and the bureaucratic state. Human rights require the state as god to assure them. As a result, complaints against the inefficiency of the bureaucracy usually lead to the creation of more bureaucracy, because more power must be handed to this new god to make him function. But this is not all. Just as the God of Scripture is all-knowing, so the new god must have a total knowledge of his subjects, and must build up a data bank on all of them. The kind of bureaucracy envisioned by some would require the state to expand more than is humanly possible in order to have the knowledge for full planning power. The future of all bureaucracies headed in that direction is a growing incompetence rather than power.

The Biblical answer is not bureaucracy but God, man under God, stumbling, growing, developing in history, knowing that his essential bill of rights is the word of God. It is not the state but the word of God which has the binding word. The purpose of the stumbling, painful growth which freedom under God makes possible is the development of dominion man. A bureaucracy reduces man to the status of disposable man, something to be used to create the supposedly glorious future. Stalin callously held that it was necessary to scramble some eggs, i.e., liquidate millions, in order to make an omelet, to create the socialist paradise. This is the grim irony of humanism: its doctrine of human rights becomes an instrument for the destruction of man. The more vocal the cry for human rights becomes in our day, the more fearful modern man rightly is, because each legal “gain” in his battle increases the powers of the bureaucracy over him. The bureaucracy grows, but not his freedom, his safety, or his “rights.” Disposable man has no rights. 

This article comes from Chapter 75, Volume 1 of the three-volume book set Faith & Action published by Chalcedon Foundation. 

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