Biblical Government
Appropriately for the Jubilee I've been reading a recent book by Joe Boot 'Ruler of Kings - towards a Christian vision of Government'. It draws out the biblical text as well as reviewing historical approaches to government from the Papal system to Calvin to Statism (where we are now!).
He describes the concept of Sphere Sovereignty as arising most naturally from the Bible - where God gives responsibility to Church, State, Family and Individuals, and all works well when those boundaries of responsibility to God are respected. The church does not seek to control the 'governing authorities' as a theocracy - though Christians may be involved as individuals, and views expressed. Likewise the State does not impose on the Church what it should believe or do (as with many of the progressive edicts). The State should not rule over the family, eg in the way children are indoctrinated in key areas and parents frozen out. Individual freedom of conscience and of speech are protected (no one cancelled or prosecuted for 'non-crime hate incidents'), and obviously lots more.
This is helpful stuff and much of it is enshrined in British Constitutional and Common Law, if only those entrusted to uphold it, do so! Always so helpful to be reminded to pray for them.
Restored to the Kingdom
A brilliant article in Quillette describes how a woman with a difficult childhood found her way from Progressive indoctrination into the Kingdom of God: https://quillette.com/2020/12/07/my-white-privilege-didnt-save-me-but-g…
"One night, I collapsed on the floor, crying and in such physical pain that I could barely move. I picked up a Bible and read a passage from 2 Corinthians 5—Awaiting the New Body—that left me completely undone.
Not long after, I walked into a suburban Baptist church, full of strange, unfashionably dressed, conservative Christians. I was a Marxist, a feminist, foul-mouthed, a chain-smoker, and desperate. The love I received in that place is the reason that I will defend the rights of fundamentalist Christians to my dying breath. They were the kindest people I’d ever known. They loved me, on principle, and in doing so saved my life.
People who advocate for a world without religion have no idea what it is like to find the relief that I found at that time. My purpose here is not to describe my “Amazing Grace” moment, but to explain why I have no patience for militant atheists. In the face of my evangelical Christianity, progressives (mostly men) have called me every unholy thing imaginable"
She later quotes the passage:
For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked.
I guess this was a revelation that the situations of our life are not hopeless, that Someone loves us and will restore us to the way we were created to be. A profound realisation of God.
... 16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!...
The whole article is worth reading as an insight into what is being taught to our future civil administrators, how it is so far from what God would desire, and why we are called to oppose it.
As we struggle with the wayward world we have to allow our hearts and minds to see through the 'worldly point of view' and re-trust the Ruler of Kings, through apparent success and failure.
