The State: Not the Ultimate Arbiter

As we head into fall, please join us in praying for and supporting Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty and its efforts to contend for the freedom to proclaim the faith. Your prayers and donations help ensure that Lutherans remain free to proclaim biblical truth without government coercion or cultural intimidation.

Now, you might say that Christians, as Christians, can live in a free-market economy or under Socialist rule. And you can also say that an American Christian need not be Republican. But to such pious thoughts, we must add a word of realism. Wherever Socialism is practiced, Christianity wanes. Is there a liberal senator who is pro-life, who does not wave the rainbow flag?

Perhaps this is most obvious in places like Mao's China and Stalin's Russia. And yet, we see the horrors of the Canadian north where Christian talk is labeled hate speech. We see it in Finland, where Paivi Rasanen has been put on endless trial simply for writing the truth about sexuality. I'm not sure what people mean when they decry Christian nationalism, but I do know that Ireland has become a much darker place since it laid aside its Christian heritage. And it was an awfully good thing when Christian nations once held off the Muslim hordes. For the common good, I'm glad there are such groups as "Atheists for Life." Where the natural law is embraced, good things happen.

But secularism is a jealous god, and the Marcuse Marxists were never about tolerance or a free and open public square. What's plain to see is that you can't beat something with nothing, and for a long time we've been told by the Left that America is essentially a nothing, that the values of our Declaration and Constitution were born out of nothing but perhaps the Age of Reason.

In fact, it has been said by someone prominent among us that the right to life is, in fact, no right at all, but simply an enlightenment. After all, we are all poor, miserable sinners, worthy of nothing. How wrong-headed this is!

Life is valued, because as a people we claim to be created by God, made in His image. Our constitutional government is predicated upon the idea that the state is not the ultimate arbiter and that our highest allegiance does not belong to governing authorities, but first to God, and then, in the created order, family. As such, Christianity is no friend of Marxism, including the cultural Marxism that has swept our nation.

And so, Christian do engage in politics, and we do so vigorously, not because we think that politics is our top priority, but because we wish to hold dear things that are more sacred. And it was such thought that animated the American founding, and it is why Marxists of every stripe see genuine Christianity not as a societal good, but as the enemy of the state that they wish to be all in all.

 

The Rev. Dr. Peter Scaer is chairman and professor of Exegetical Theology and director of the M.A. program at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind.

 

Be Informed
Bethany Mandel, co-author of Stolen Youth and writer at TheMomWars.substack.com, discusses  her recent article in the New York Post titled, “The left is a cult—and parents can fight it, with Supreme Court’s blessing.”

 

Be Equipped
Click here for the latest update involving the U.S. Department of Justice and mail-order abortion pills. Thomas Jipping of Advancing American Freedom explains where things currently stand.

 

Be Encouraged
“This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road.”—Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 32, p. 24

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