Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. This is both a binding and loosing Christian principle. It binds you to honour God in whatever you do, but it gives you a lot of freedom about where to do it.
Parliament needs people who will walk in there and live and work for the glory of God, above all else. I am not politically inclined myself, but there is something to be said about this, and the kind of people the government needs.
So here is the talk I gave at a recent political conference:
“No council or magistrate should have
it in their power to stop the public business of a city.”
We’ll come back to this.
The
government needs you to be involved in the political process in some way. It
needs bold, unashamed Christians to step up and make their voice heard in the
political sphere, and today, I am going to explain one of the key reasons why.
The bible
tells you and I that we should to aspire to the quiet life, 1 Thessalonians 4:11, “…aspire
to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as
we instructed you.” This should be our goal. This should be our
aspiration. To leave other people alone, taking care of our own business, as
much as we can.
After he
stepped down from the Presidency George Washington famously retired to his
farm, removing himself from public life. A nation with true liberty requires a
population who as much as possible want to leave other people alone, take care
of their own business, not seek to dominate the affairs of others, work
with their own hands, and leave others to do the same.
But there
are two things we must note about this, 1) its an aspiration. It is something
we should aspire to, not something we are commanded to always do, or told will
always work out. 2) This world is often not happy to leave you alone. The last
couple of years has proven this conclusively. That is not because the people of
this world are bold, it is not because they are all inherently evil in every
way, some of course are, but not all. A lot of people are not happy to leave
you alone because they are afraid. They live in fear, they live in terror, and
those who are driven by fear, fear of death, fear of being exposed, fear of all
sorts of things, will seek to control others so they can calm their fears. Some
people control out of a desire for dominance, but many because they live in
fear.
I started by
reading you something Niccolo Machiavelli said. Let’s look at it again: “No
council or magistrate should have it in their power to stop the public business
of a city.”
You know
where he wrote this, in his book Discourses on Livy, where he reflects
on one of the most famous histories of Rome, finished about a decade before
Jesus was born. This is one of Machiavelli’s most important works, where he is reflecting
on how to create a strong state, and in a strong state, this is what he tells
us is required of its leaders:
“No council
or magistrate should have it in their power to stop the public business of the
city.”
How is that
for remarkable, people in the 15th and 16th centuries
were already writing about how dangerous it is to allow politicians and
bureaucrats to have the power to shut down a city? If only we had political
leaders in this country who were so bold. Machiavelli goes on to explain why;
“When Quintius Cincinnatus and Julius Mentus were Consuls of
Rome, a disagreement arose between them, which caused an interruption of all
the public business of the state. When this came to the knowledge of the
Senate, they advised the creation of a Dictator, who might do what the discord
between the Consuls had prevented them from doing. But the Consuls, disagreeing
upon every other matter, agreed only in this one thing – not to appoint a
Dictator. So that the Senate, having no alternative, had recourse to the
assistance of the Tribunes, who together with the Senate forced the Consuls to
obedience. Whence we should note, in the first instance, the usefulness of the
tribunate, which served not only to restrain the violence of the nobles against
the people, but also against each other; and, secondly, that the institutions
of a city never should place it in the power of a few to interrupt all the
important business of the republic.”
The details
of this discord and disturbance don’t matter. The summary does: two men, with
powerful ambitions, used their power to stop the public business of the republic,
for their own ends. It does not matter what those ends were. It does not matter
how they came to this decision. What matters is that they had the power and what
also matters is the devastating effect shutting down the public business of the
city has on everyone.
Machiavelli’s
reflection is pretty simple: this must not be allowed, this is evil, this is
terrible, no public official should have this power, what’s more, is they
should be made to perform their duty or step down, as he continues;
“For instance, if you give to a council authority to
distribute honors and offices, or devolve upon any magistracy the
administration of the certain business, it is proper to impose upon them either
the necessity of doing it under all circumstances, or to provide that, in case
of their not doing it themselves, it can and shall be done by someone else;
otherwise, the constitution would be defective upon this point, and likely to
involve the state in great dangers, as we have seen would have been the case in
Rome, if they could not have opposed the authority of the Tribunes to the
obstinacy of the Consuls.”
If you are
going to allow any part of your government to run a public service or business
for your society, then accompanying this provision should be another provision
saying that under no circumstances should they shut down this public business.
If they feel they cannot fulfil the duty, then they should step aside and let
someone who is not afraid to run the
office.
Do you think
Machiavelli did not know what a plague was? Of course he did. Plague was a
constant threat in his era, in fact in the 15th century a famous
airborne plague went through his own Republic, Florence.[i]
But he, and wiser men, knew that if you were going to maintain your
civilisation you must have people running it who are not afraid to turn up to
run the office, otherwise you are “likely to involve the state in great
dangers”.
You cannot
allow the government the power to run schools, hospitals, in home care, charities
for the poor, construction services, pothole services, cancer screenings and
more, and then give them the right to shut these down by some declared power.
Because if they have the power to do so they will do it, especially if they are
fearful people, and the effects will be devastating: everything from missed
cancer diagnosis’, a fatal error, through to supply chains issues, or roads not
being serviceable and more. Society will fracture in untold ways, and the longer
it goes on, the worse it will get. Now we have inflation pricing people out of
homes and into tents, because of decisions made by fearful men and women during
the last two years. Machiavelli was right.
If they have
the power in one part of the constitution to shut down the entire public
business of the city, then they can undermine the entire constitution because
it is defective on that point…sound familiar? Machiavelli warned us. He actually
warned about this.
So what can
be done?
In the republic of Venice the Grand Council distributed the
honors and the offices; it happened several times that this body, from
discontent or some erroneous suggestions, did not appoint successors to the
magistrates of the city or of the provinces. This caused the greatest possible
disorders, for all of a sudden both the city and its subjects provinces lacked
their legitimate judges; nor could they obtain anything if the majority of the
council was not either satisfied or deceived. And this inconvenience would have
led to the worst consequences for the city, if the prudent citizens had not
provided against it, by availing of the first convenient occasion to make a law
that all the public functionaries in the city and in the provinces should never
vacate their offices until their successors had been elected and were ready to
fill their places. And thus they deprived the Grand Council of the power to
expose the republic to the great dangers by arresting all public business.”[ii]
Only one
thing can be done, good men and good women need to assert their political power
to make sure that the politicians cannot lock the city down again. What solved
this issue and protected the city of Venice from facing worse trouble was “the
prudent citizens” taking the first possible occasion to change the law to
protect their city and their state from ever facing such a danger again.
What did
Rome, what did Venice and what did Florence, the Republic that Machiavelli was
a part of, need to protect their states from being shut down? Prudent citizens.
We cannot
expect the people of this world to be prudent citizens. I have been a pastor
for over 11 years, and I was in Bible College before that, I was involved in apologetics,
street evangelism, online evangelism, discussion boards, and so much more. One
of the most common arguments that I used to hear from both atheists and some
well-meaning Christians is that you don’t need to be a Christian to be good.
You don’t need to believe in God to be good. People said this a lot.
In my
experience, no one says this anymore. You know that they say now? Christians
are wrong about what is good.
In the last
decade people have gone from saying, “You don’t need God to be good”, to “if
you believe in God you are probably evil, especially if you take his word to be
true.” That’s how far our society has changed. That is how far it has fallen in
such a short time.
But a people
disconnected from God, and increasingly so, is a people that can only be given
more and more over to fear and manipulation. That which you fear will control
you, and there are many nefarious forces in the media and in governments who
understand this about humanity. They have even admitted in certain contexts
that is what they did,
“Scientists on a committee that encouraged the use of fear to
control people’s behaviour during the Covid pandemic have admitted its work was
“unethical” and “totalitarian”.
Members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on
Behaviour (SPI-B) expressed regret about the tactics in a new book about the
role of psychology in the Government’s Covid-19 response.”[iii]
That is why
our government needs people like you. People who fear God and God alone. That
which we fear, will control us, which is why Jesus tells us, Matthew 10:28 – “28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear
him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Our government needs
prudent people, people who know that no matter what happens on earth, if they
believe in God they have a reward in heaven, and because of this they are not
afraid to do the right thing. People who at the first opportunity can make sure
laws are passed that forbid the government from having this power again.
It is
arrogant for any one man, or group of men and women, to think they can
micromanage the daily lives of a city, state, or nation. They cannot do it,
they will cause all sorts of unforeseen problems and consequences. But driven
by their fear many people will think they can do it and should do it and are
right to do it. A strong state, a strong government, that can protect liberty, needs
people who are not afraid of the things of this world. It needs people who are
not afraid to stare down tyrants and say: “that is wrong.”
Machiavelli
warned us about how giving politicians the power to shut down the public
business would cause all sorts of dangers for a people and their nation. But we
ignored him…or did we? Maybe the wrong people read this and took his advice the
wrong way. After all, they don’t refer to many powerful people as Machiavellian
for no reason. But how could we ever know this?
What we do
know is this: your government needs you because your nation needs you. And your
nation needs people whose hope is in an eternal reward and therefore do not
fear the powerful of this world.
Consider
this line one more time, “And this inconvenience would have led to the worst consequences
for the city, if the prudent citizens had not provided against it, by availing
of the first convenient occasion to make a law…” ensuring this never happened
again. It’s up to you.
[i] Epidemics
in Renaissance Florence
A S Morrison, J Kirshner, A Molho https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3885766/#:~:text=Epidemics%20and%20mortality%20in%2015th%20and%2016th%20century,girls%20and%20women.%20Major%20epidemics%20%28%22plagues%22%29%20occurred%20repeatedly.
[ii]
Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Castlia House, (pp123-124). All the unnoted quotes are from this same source.
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