Rulers

Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything else along the way. I’m your host, Bryan Broome, and I’m joined today by Greg Uttinger, as usual.

Today we’ll be discussing civil government, the character of leaders, what the requirements of leaders should be in their character, and how justice and the fear of God even apply to the civil realm. Greg, why don’t you start us off?

A few administrations back there was a question as to whether or not the character of the president of the United States really mattered as long as he was efficient, had a program and a vision and could get things accomplished. The fact that sexual shenanigans might be going on at the White House was poo-poo’d as irrelevant to the job description.

Not everyone bought into this, but a lot of people did. A lot of people said, “Well, we’ve got a problem. So he does stuff when we’re not looking, but does that really make him a bad president?” and we’ve had this kind of perspective in the United States for a long time. As far back as Tom Jefferson, and probably further if you look between the cracks, there’s been the attitude that we should not inquire after people’s private character, particularly their religious beliefs.

Tom Jefferson was very incensed that people kept asking about his religious faith and his doctrinal positions, largely because he had none, but even before that Adams and Washington didn’t come out in the open and tell us exactly what their creedal position was. These things were considered inappropriate for the public domain. Private character may forge the man, but his public decisions were not of the same cloth. You could trust the man’s character but didn’t inquire after his religion. Now you can’t inquire after anything because character doesn’t matter, just his managerial ability, I guess you would say.

David on his death bed had a different opinion of this. This is from 2 Samuel 23 –

Now these be the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob and the sweet psalmist of Israe, said, The Spirit of the LORD spake by me and his word was in my tongue.

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.

Although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure, for this is all my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow.

David – and more to the point, God – said that rulers ought to be just. Just means righteous. Righteous means right according to God’s moral standard revealed in scripture, of which the voice of conscience and the public acknowledgement of certain moral principles are at best a faint echo, but sometimes a little better than nothing.

The emphasis here is upon divine inspiration. “His word was in my tongue.” We’re talking about verbal inspiration. “The spirit of the Lord spake by me,” and one of the things he said to this king was, “He that rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.”

That’s not how we look at things as Americans. We expect our presidents at certain points to pull up the name of God and make some reference to the Bible. The references used to be a whole lot stronger. As far back as the 50s American presidents were still saying some pretty firm things that made it sound like, “You might actually be a Christian because you understand there’s a connection between theology and morality.”

Within the last 30-40 years we’ve gotten less and less of that. When the Twin Towers are bombed we all say “God bless America,” but aside from that, just a brief acknowledgment that there’s a God of some sort, never to be defined and certainly never to be defined by creed, that’s what we’ve got and that’s not God’s position.

Part of that has to do I think as well with the lessening spiritual and religious consciousness of the country being very explicitly Christian, as it’s developed in a more explicitly pluralistic way. That has changed because you don’t get elected if you don’t appeal to the electors.

Right, which means you have to have some kind of little bit of religiousness or spirituality about you, but if you get too explicit you’re going to lose votes. Even when we had a Mormon running for office a couple elections back he downplayed that, and wisely so from his point of view as a potential candidate. He didn’t come right out and say, “You know, one key to my position is that someday I’m going to be a god ruling over a planet and filling it with my spiritual children.” That would have sunk it right there because most Christians don’t even understand what Mormons believe, let alone the general public.

Let alone a lot of Mormons.

That too. Ironically, a lot of Christians were looking at that man as possibly our last best hope because family values, right? We want character.

Something of what we’re talking about I guess tonight is the connection between public actions, policies, laws made and such – the public character of a man and the private character of a man and the heart condition that produces that character.

For probably the length of America’s existence we’ve had a hard time particularly with that last one. It’s enough to be a good man, to be a moral man, to be a stable man, to be a great statesman, a man of high character, of high ideals. But if you start inquiring too closely, “What do you mean high ideals? Whose ideals would those be exactly?” and family values? Well, the Mormons have some interesting family values, particularly before they settled in Utah.

What are we talking about here, and do we dare get explicit, or are we deliberately fogging things up and vagueing things up so that it sounds like we’re all on the same page, but if you start asking too many questions we begin to find out we’re not nearly on the same page? Who your God is actually determines what you consider good character, not only privately but publicly.

I think there’s an aspect too where the morals that you express, you can look at them and say, “These are good morals,” and the Christian knows why they’re good morals. They’re good morals because they reflect the moral character of God who set them up, who created the universe in such a way that this is how things function. But you get there not salvifically but to an extent by looking at how the world works and recognizing that.

For people who are in it for things like power and authority, they would be stupid not to take account of how the world works and basically say, “Oh, well, if I can mimic this I can get a voting block that will support me because I’ll be supporting the universe as these people have recognized it to be.”

To a certain extent that can be, in the short term at the very least, even in the mid-term – and I don’t mean that as an election pun but the middle-length term – it can be beneficial to the nation, but it is certainly not one that can be, I think, lasting because eventually the purpose behind it, the things that sneak out at the seams start to undermine the very benefits that they have noticed and start to deprive the nation itself of the moral character that it had.

Something that comes to mind along those lines is the case of Ahab in the Old Testament. God sends Elijah to him and says, “You’re dead. Enough of this nonsense. I’m through with you,” and Ahab, rather than throwing a temper tantrum, humbles himself. He puts on sackcloth. He goes softly, we’re told. He submits to the outward forms of repentance.

Now, from what follows it’s pretty clear he hasn’t repented. He has not done away with his idolatries. He hasn’t changed his political policies particularly. But in terms of how he presents himself to those about him, to the public eye, he has taken this rebuke to heart, so it seems. God, who knows all things, looks at him and looks at Elijah and says, “See how he’s going softly? Because of that I’m not going to do all this nasty stuff in his generation. I’m going to do it to his son.”

Now, God didn’t promise how long or soon that would be. It turns out it wasn’t very long, but it was nevertheless a temporary blessing, an act of patience, an outward grace on God’s part to not make him go through the humiliations of a palace coup or military defeat or horrible disease or any such thing. He did die in battle. He died very quickly. He actually died rather valiantly.

Now, what he met on the other side when he had to stand before God is something completely different, but God wasn’t deceived as to the man’s integrity or what he really believed. He knew that Ahab was not a fearer of God, but he honored the external submission to his order.

I think that’s something we can trace carefully throughout scripture. We should not pursue honesty because it’s the best policy, but rather because God is holy and true and transparent to himself.

As it happens, honesty is the best policy.

It actually is, but to pursue it as a policy because it’s a policy, because it may bear politically or economically/financially good fruit is not the fear of God, and yet God tends to honor people who behave honestly. People respect and trust their judgement or buy their product. When people even outwardly give some kind of heed to God’s law and order, God to some measure will honor that in return.

Is it saving? Absolutely not, and there can be the lull of, “Oh look, I have a happy family. I’m at peace. The nation’s at peace. We’re getting wealthy. God must really love us!” No, and yet it’s a thing. It is a real thing.

To have in office men who do not lie, for whatever reason, is better than men who lie as a matter of policy all the time. Men who are faithful to their wives are better leaders than those who cheat and visit prostitutes all the time, and we can go down the list. Those who externally conform to God’s law do make better leaders than those who don’t. And yet what David says is not merely, “It’s great if you are outwardly righteous and just,” although there’s truth in that, but he says those who rule over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.

That’s a heart attitude, and ideally the public leader that godly people should want is someone who is in fact godly, someone who loves the Lord and fears God, in the sense of being afraid of displeasing him, fearful as one stands in awe of something that is great power and who messing with might cause great disaster.

John [Kill? Gill? 13:21] in his commentary on this speaks of this fear as filial fear, a reverential affection, a devotion. The truly just man serves and honors God from the heart because God ought to be honored because he is God, because he is the Creator, and because he is the just man’s Savior. He has made him indeed truly just and righteous through the blood of Christ, through the gospel. This is the Bible’s point.

Any degree of morality is better than none, but there is a real serious difference between those who observe the forms of godly morality for reasons other than the fear of God, and those whose true character grows out of a true fear of God, a transformed heart, a born-again nature, and as Christians we need to understand that. We need to not blur the boundary.

We can look and say, “Alright, you’re a Mormon, you’re a Muslim, you’re a Jew, but you take your faith seriously and understand these religious commitments to the degree that you on principle will not lie. Okay, we can work with that. We can honor that. We can respect that, because whether you understand it or not you are mirroring to some degree what the God of the universe demands.”

That’s a good policy. It works better than the other. It’s closer to what God wants, and God will honor and bless it in some measure. However, it’s not the same thing as having a godly man on the throne or in the White House or at #10 Downing Street. As Christians we need to understand that we don’t simply need good men or conservative men or libertarian men or free market men. We need men who love Jesus and who are trusting in his Word.

Random side note. I picked up a book off my desk to look at some older ideas about conspiracy theory. It was written by a Roman Catholic priest and it was dedicated to “all godly men and those who, because they have the remnants of natural law written in their heart, are on our side.”

I kind of understand what you’re doing there, but that’s a huge confusion of categories. You’re basically saying there’s a great evil out there, this horrible evil all-controlling conspiracy, and over against it are Christians and all non-Christians who act like Christians, sort of.

That’s not the line the gospel draws through history. You’re either with Christ or you’re against Christ. You either believe in Christ or you hate Christ. As long as we blur that, conspiracies and secret societies and political corruptions and collusions are going to continue to happen.

The defense is the gospel. The defense is not compromise on some moral externals. It’s not a sort of moral fundamentalism of “let’s create a list of 10 things that all of us good people could agree on, no matter what our religious background may be,” again recognizing that some people’s principles are better than other people’s.

I’m going to throw this at you and let you talk about this and see what you have to say. We were talking about Jordan Peterson, who I know you and Emily both have great respect for. I don’t not have respect for him, I just haven’t read his stuff so you’re the better person to speak here. How would you see him falling into this conversation?

I would define Jordan Peterson, at least as far as his popularity, as the preeminent example of natural law knowledge. Essentially, he has observed the world, and he’s observed it for long enough that he has recognized many of the ways in which God’s universe works, because it’s God’s universe. He doesn’t acknowledge that in Christian terms or even in Judeo-Christian terms, whatever that term means. And just for clarity, I do fall a bit more favorably on the natural law view, but he’s someone who understands how God’s world works.

He’s gotten to this point that he’s at through decades of observation and study and work with other human beings. What is really important to distinguish – as a good Presbyterian I have to distinguish things – is that whatever your beliefs on natural law are, it is not something that is salvific.

What we are currently seeing in the case of Jordan Peterson, which is very sad, is that he remains unconvinced of the Christian faith. He has seen everything – not everything, but you know what I mean – a very large chunk of what the universe is, and it’s screaming at him that God exists, that his laws govern the world.

He did a lecture series, and I don’t know if he finished it or what, but he went through the Bible and talked about it from his perspective, which is thoroughly Jungian, so it’s not a Christian exegesis of the Bible but it still even brings out some very interesting insights that maybe you would not have thought of yourself.

He’s still not there. It’s a case study, to a certain extent, of how faith is still a gift at the end of the day.

But yes, as far as the discussion of private character, public character, just rulers, Jordan Peterson is Canadian so he couldn’t run for president, but in the hypothetical situation where he was running for president against an individual who was a PCUSA minister who recently baptized someone’s dog into the Church, he’d be a better choice because he’s more in tune with how God’s universe works, even if that does not reflect in his eternal state, or at least how his eternal state appears at present. Of course, we are praying for him to see the light, just as we are honestly praying for everyone, including the PCUSA minister who baptized the dog into the Church recently.

I’d like to pursue the next section, because with all due respect to our libertarian friends – and again yes, we have libertarian leanings here undoubtedly; we don’t trust the State any further than we can throw it, generally, and God’s law hems it in on all sides – yet David does say this, speaking of the just man who rules in the fear of God –

He shall be as the light of the morning when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.

It’s metaphorical and poetic, but the idea is that a godly ruler can accomplish much good. The libertarian approach, and to some regards also the Lutheran approach, is if we acknowledge civil government at all, we acknowledge it more or less as God’s hangman or the policeman or the jailkeeper, the guy who’s there with the stick to knock down people who are obviously lawbreakers, who are criminals, who are a threat to society, and there’s a great deal of truth in that.

But David goes beyond that to say that kings – and he’s talking in terms of monarchy, and we don’t have a monarchy, or we don’t call it a monarchy but when the president starts giving executive orders with the force of law it’s questionable – but the idea that a political leader, a civil leader, a magistrate, a king even can be a force for good is something we’ve kind of lost, possibly because it’s been a while since we’ve had a really clear example.

Calvin Coolidge.

Okay, yes. There are a few here and there, even in American history. You usually recognize them among American presidents because nothing bad or good happened during their administration. They backed off and stayed out of the way and let the country do its thing and only got involved when there was some kind of crisis. The presidents who were constantly having programs that fixed and changed everything usually were the problem.

But going back in British history, I’ll skip over a lot of people that you could argue for and go first to Edward VI and then to Alfred. Edward VI as a young man made numerous liturgical and religious changes within his kingdom. You could argue that a king shouldn’t be doing that. Well, at that point kings did, so to simply say, “I refuse to be involved” would itself be an act of being involved.

He is the one who sponsored the prayer book, what would eventually become the 39 articles. There were 42 at the time. And he reintroduced or made legal again evangelical preaching in England. This had a profound effect on the character of the nation. England and the United Kingdom would be in a very different place today if Edward hadn’t been there.

Going back further to Alfred the Great, there’s a reason he’s the only king who gets the title of Great. He fought back the Vikings by coming up with some very original military and naval strategy. He solidified the economy by introducing solid silver coinage that everybody wanted, including people on the continent. He introduced education first of all to nobles, to the point of saying, “You will either learn to read, or if you want to plead that you’re too old and too unable, then you have to hire and pay some guy to walk around you reading books out loud to you all day.”

He introduced [palace? 24:39] schools. He began a translation program and he was one of the translators who started turning every book that they could find that Christendom valued at that time into Anglo-Saxon. Some of it existed in Latin, but no one read Latin anymore, so into the language of the people, including of course the Bible, so that set a pattern for translating the Bible into English, although it’s an English we can’t read anymore.

That’s just the surface of the stuff he did, and he did this as a young man who was beset by some horrible illnesses that wracked him with pain on a constant basis, with enemies all around him, nobles that at least on one occasion seemed to have stabbed him in the back and helped with his exile, and yet his faith was always in God.

As you read what he wrote, it is clear that this is not, “I’m a great guy and I’m going to do great things.” It’s that, “God has called me and he’s called England to our roots, to our Christian heritage, to the covenant our fathers made with the God of Israel. We have to be faithful. We don’t have an option here. It doesn’t matter what it costs me.” What follows in British history owes a lot to this young man, who grew up to be an older man.

Kings and rulers and presidents, both in their official capacity and in their personal lives, can do great good. They have the public eye. They have a voice that reaches the public ear. They generally are fairly well-off. At least they’re probably not working three side jobs, and McDonald’s at that, to keep things going, so they have some time on their hands.

They know people. They have contacts. Even if you don’t write anything in your constitution that says they can do X, Y, and Z, they can still do A, B, and C because of all those advantages. And if they have a godly character, then that can be a tremendous advantage to this generation and to those that follow.

That’s sort of what David is saying here – like a light in the morning, like the tender grass springing up after the dew. They can be dew and rain and sunlight to a culture, but it takes some commitment and it takes a little going beyond playing by the political rules, and giving your heart to God.

Now, in saying these things, David is not himself becoming a Statist. He knew better than anybody else that kings have their problems, because he was a king and he had committed murder and adultery while in office. In fact, to some degree, he used not only his office but his role as messiah to seduce Bathsheba, so he does say, “Although my house be not so with God.”

The commentators when they come to this verse 5 are divided as to the proper translation, and the question is the first clause and the last clause – “although my house be not so with God” and at the end “although he make it not to grow.” The question is are these statements or conditionals, or are they questions?

A number of commentators, even some really good ones, went for, “This is actually an assertion. ‘Is not my house so with God? For he has made a covenant with me.’” Wait, David knew better than to think that God’s covenant with him was based upon his own character or the character of his kids. I think there you have to have it as a statement. “Although my house be not so with God.”

“Yes, this is what a just king should be. I failed,” and when the man after God’s own heart, one of the greatest kings in the history of the world can say, “I failed,” we need to take that seriously. And then he turns to the promise of God’s covenant.

The thing at the end I think we can leave possibly as a question. “Although will he not make it to grow?” and at the heart of that is, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, for this is all my salvation and all my desire.”

Dispensationalism, particularly the old-school [inaudible 28:51] version, tended to turn the covenant with David into a political arrangement whereby Israel would rule the world through her Messiah. It was all about some land. It was all about an earthly throne. It was all about political rule and externals and all of that. But when David wants to talk about salvation he points to this covenant.

It’s everlasting. It’s not just for a millennium or for some limited time here on earth. It is sure and he says it is “all my salvation,” so he understands that the covenant that God has made with him is a covenant of grace. It is a matter of God’s sovereign mercy, no human merit here, and that its goal is his salvation and the salvation of the world.

There are echoes of this whole thing in Psalm 72. I’m going to read just a few verses here and there because this is what David ultimately is looking at. Yes, good human rulers? Great. There aren’t many, and most of them will fail, but – speaking of Messiah –

He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations.

He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.

They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings shall fall down before him. All nations shall serve him.

For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence: and precious shall their blood be in his sight.

So the ultimate king is very much a king who is not going to be merely a necessary evil. He is the end and purpose of God’s necessary good. We need a king.

Remember the child’s catechism? “Why do you need Jesus as a king?” “Because I am weak.” You could say so much more, but that’s not a bad starting point. We need someone to save and protect us, to defend us against our own sins, the world of flesh and the devil, and someone to lead us on to glory, someone to protect us, rule over us, and guide us.

So we need to get away from the idea that kings in and of themselves, or political rulers or magistrates in and of themselves, are merely an evil we have to put up with, but they can be a force for good because the most important one in the history of eternity is most certainly a good one. He’s the one that political rulers should seek to be like, but a mere outward conformity to a few rules isn’t going to do it. You have to kiss the Son. You have to bow before the Messiah. You have to trust Jesus. You have to believe the gospel.

That was a point I was going to bring up before you said it, which is that if Jesus is king, and the king, and his rule is just and good, that means that the very existence of a king is not something that is wrong with the world. It’s perhaps an accommodation to the fall, and even then I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it, but it’s good. It’s a good thing. We have a good and perfect King coming, but that doesn’t mean that in the meantime every king is going to be the worst and not a good set-up.

Of course, when I say king I don’t just mean people in a monarchy, but presidents and prime ministers and elected senators and things like that. These are people who are able to rule in their respective capacities and in their respective territories in a way that is honoring to God and helpful as well to their citizens.

It's not a foregone conclusion that their very existence is a threat to the safety and security of their citizens, which is one reason I can never ever go into the far, far right corner of the political alignment square towards anarcho-capitalism, because they essentially say there is no king but Christ, and therefore any authority is some kind of imposition on us. It doesn’t work that way.

A memory comes back to me from my college years. I was talking to a young man who was new to the faith and was still learning and trying hard, and I tried to be gracious to him. He knew that there were these bad guys out there in government and such, and he saw that as all evil, but praise God in eternity there will be no kings, no rule, we’ll all be equal.

I said, “No, that’s not exactly what the Bible says.” We’re not told heaven is a democracy. The words are, “Be thou ruler over five cities. Thou shall be ruler over many things.” There will still be responsibilities and areas of authority.

The young man said, “But why? We won’t need it. We won’t sin anymore. We don’t need anyone to tell us what to do when we don’t sin.”

Well, we won’t need civil punishment anymore. That doesn’t mean that civil rulership…

Yeah, leading is not the same thing as having to punish wickedness. Sometimes you just have to know, “What time do we get there? And who’s doing what? And what time do we clock out?” or something simple like, “It’s heaven. Which side of the road are we going to drive on now?”

“It’s heaven. It’s amazing and mystical enough that you can drive on whichever side of the road you want, and it still works.”

Even in eternity there will be a need. There’s still left and right. There’s still a need for direction, leadership, deciding which way we turn and on what color light, or whatever it may be. When we have within ourselves developing that kind of spirit that says basically, “No one gets to tell me what to do, but, well, God,” that’s not the way God has ever set up humanity or society.

No, he’s always worked through mediators, and now we have the great Mediator. But even with Christ in his mediatorial role, now on earth we have church leadership, which hopefully these people are submitting to.

And he still delights to use the language, “You are kings and priests to God.” If kingship was in itself an evil thing, that wouldn’t be a great metaphor.

In the last day will there be kings to cast their crowns at Jesus’ feet, or will there only be anarcho-capitalists throwing their money at Jesus feet? I guess I don’t know.

It’s something less than an honor to not be honored by powerful people. If all you have is everybody is equal, there’s something lacking. There’s something that God has built into the human soul that says some people deserve more respect than others. Some people need to be listened to more than others. Some people need to be followed more than others, and when those people point at the same Lamb of God and say, “We worship him,” that’s honor upon honor and that is the way the Bible presents it.

In the New Jerusalem the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into the city. It doesn’t say, “And you know what will be great? There will be no more kings.” No, they’ll just be in submission to Christ, and that’s the call of Psalm 2. He tells the judges of the earth to kiss the Son.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way.

He just doesn’t say, “You know what? You’re all out of office. I un-elect you. Go away.” He wants them still in office. He just wants them obedient. He does not say, “There should be no men ruling over other men, because the whole idea is terrible and came out of hell.” Rather he says that such men need to be just, they need to be righteous, they need to fear God. When they do, God can use that as a great way of blessing.

Exactly. Also, to I guess kind of transition to a similar but related point, we’ve mentioned the fact that we don’t need to say, “Well, no one on the ballot,” in this case metaphorically, “is just, is righteous. So do we just not vote?”

There are some Christians who do that, or they pick some candidate who cannot possibly win, and of course they come back with, “No, all things are possible with God.” Yes, but. The Pacific Ocean could come and wash away America tomorrow. I don’t think it’s likely. There are certain candidates who are not going to get elected, I’m sorry.

“But if all Christians thought like that, we’d never elect anyone.” Okay, but can we at least get somebody godly up there who has some experience. Maybe let’s start him as a dog catcher, then maybe a city councilman, then a county supervisor, then a state legislator. Let’s work him up the chain to get him some experience.

“But that takes some time! We need someone right now who will turn the world around!”

Yeah, see, that’s the problem.

That is the problem. In most cases when we’re talking America, at the very least, and elections, it comes down to two.

That’s the way the system works.

You’re talking Democrat or Republican. If both of them are evil, there is a temptation – and we’ve seen it in a lot of different elections, not just in the past 20 years – where you basically say, “Well, this guy is on our side so he must be God’s man.” That is really not the way to ever look at someone, unless you have actual reason to presume that.

And even if he is a born-again Christian but young in his faith and hasn’t figured out the political implications yet, it still doesn’t mean he’s going to make a particularly great president. He sometimes can do more evil than good in his enthusiasm.

We’re told that a man should not be an elder if he’s a novice. Well, what if there’s no one in the church but novices because we’ve just suffered great persecution? What do you do then? The answers are not always easy, and it doesn’t help to pretend they are.

In the original article I wrote for this I said the bottom line is this. When all choices seem morally bad, there’s still a question we can ask. Who is most likely to leave the Church alone? Who’s going to let the Church do her job, for whatever reason – because he doesn’t care, because it’s not his thing, because he got enough votes from that side to be nice to them, or whatever – as opposed to the guy who’s going to come in and try to shut us down and throw us in prison. If that’s all we’ve got, then that’s all we’ve got.

Paul instructed us to pray for those in authority so that we might live quiet peaceable lives in all honesty and godliness before him. When all is said and done, if we can’t get anything else, we can at least try for that one. If we can pray for it, presumably we can vote for it.

We can realize, “God, this is not your guy. He’s not born again. He doesn’t fear you, but compared to the other guy it looks like he’ll probably leave us alone, and that will buy us four more years or eight more years to preach the gospel without being harassed.”

Right now, looking over what’s happened in this country in the last four years, and last two years particularly, sometimes we think, “You know, that would be a good deal, someone who would not try to shut down the churches, let’s say.”

Yes. And I don’t want to let it pass without saying at least this much, that there are Christians who have softer consciences about voting for people. We’re not saying that if you didn’t vote for one of the two that could conceivably win that you are in sin or anything like that, because then I’d be saying that I was in sin this last election and that’s a weird take to walk away from.

I was in sin for a number of elections when I was quite young. I think what we’re saying is there is a danger of a political legalism here, where you draw the categories too tightly. Daniel didn’t get a choice as to whether or not he worked for Nebuchadnezzar. Well, he kind of did. He could have got himself killed if he tried a little harder. Joseph kind of had a choice to work for Pharaoh. He could have refused God’s prophecy and refused to help Egypt, but there was no sense in that.

These people that God drafted into positions of high authority were in time virtually running things and God used them. God honored that, even though the men they worked for were not godly at all, at least in the beginning. They may have been converted along the way. Pharaoh seems to have honored Jacob and received a blessing from him, and of course Nebuchadnezzar eventually was converted, but it took a long while after he had destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and all that.

So there is a danger is saying that unless the guy I’m going to vote for is a card-carrying Presbyterian baptized by sprinkling after a covenantal format, and subscribes to all five points, and verbatim subscription to the Westminster Confession, including the 6-day clause – can’t vote for him, can’t support him, can’t be in his Cabinet.

Yeah, you can. If you haven’t thought through that, maybe this would be a good time to consider.

It’s great you mentioned that because I was just wracking my brain earlier, and I had to Google it and I found it, the name of the branch of the Covenanters that don’t acknowledge the validity of non-covenanted nations. They don’t recognize their authority as legitimate at all. They’re called Cameronians and it’s almost like that.

It’s not quite as intense as that, I think, but is very much that you can’t even serve in a nation, you can’t do anything, those people don’t have legitimate authority over you at all because they’re not covenanted as a nation with God.

I think what our friends misunderstand there – and it’s an interesting thing to accuse Presbyterians of – is they don’t understand the sovereignty of God. If Christ is King and rules the world by covenant, whether we like it or not, we don’t get a vote here. As good paedo-baptists they should get this. You don’t get a vote whether or not you’re in covenant with God. God grabs you, takes you, and tells you his terms, and you submit or you don’t. Jesus owns the world by covenant.

Anyway, that’s a side issue that we’ll come up with many times, particularly in the book of Kings when we start talking a little more about how covenant should affect national life.

I’m sure. I think that’s a good place to cut it then. Greg, thank you so much for joining me to talk about these things. Do you have a recommendation?

It would be nice if I had something terribly applicable, but I’m going to go off into something I’m simply surrounded in right now, which is Shakespeare. People should read Shakespeare but not read. Shakespeare wasn’t written to be read. People should go to plays that are performed by at least halfway competent actors, or watch them on video and immerse themselves in the language and the imagery and the thought form and the hilarity and the craziness that is Shakespeare.

We’re producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream right now and it’s fun to watch the very language seep into the pores of the students until it begins coming out and just the oddest ways. I know in our family for years now when we’re trying to get someone to go out the door or continue in their conversation we will say, “Proceed, moon.” This is a line from Much Ado About Nothing.

It helps process the world. Shakespeare was a Christian, as far as we can measure such things. He certainly thought in Christian thought forms. His grand view of the universe, his language, his word choice gives you the ability to categorize things in a new and helpful way that’s a little bit bigger than what you may have picked up in high school or junior college or even your four-year university, more than you will get in the technical manuals and the economic and political language you find in your business emails.

It's even more colorful and extended than some theology, unless of course you read the Psalms and Job a lot, and Isaiah. It’s a useful thing, but for people who’ve never done it, it takes time and you need to find some good versions of the plays, and that’s hard.

We can think of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing, but I can’t recommend everything that he’s done. Mel Gibson’s Hamlet was pretty good.

Was it truly?

Yeah. He stayed pretty close to the original script, just moved a few things around historically, and of course you always drop things because it’s a 3-hour play otherwise, but he played it traditionally. He did a fine job with it.

I’m sure there are other things other people could add, but this is not mere entertainment the way one watches a Netflix original production. This is a way of learning to think about life. As my wife has said so many times, the way you talk about something is how you think about it. When you learn phrases drawn out of Christian thought forms and they become your way of expression, it will change how you perceive what’s going on.

Yes, my daughter is as brilliant as the moon as she steps toward the doorway and proceeds out. There are things to be considered there. Anyway, that’s my thought for today.

Related to that, I would also suggest a humorous – I’ve only actually watched one clip from it, so I recommend the clip at the very least, but there’s a production of Much Ado About Nothing where Benedick and Beatrice are played respectively by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. If you don’t know the second person’s name and are familiar with Dr. Who, that’s Donna Noble, the best Doctor and companion pairing in the new series of Who, in my opinion, and also the universe’s opinion.

The universe having a voice and all.

It does. It is speaking through me.

Actually, there’s a place up here about two hours north of us that does Shakespeare in the park that we’re planning to go witness in person this summer, so that will be fun.

By the way, David Tennant does an excellent Hamlet as well.

Oh, that’s right. I need to watch that. I don’t know where to find it. It’s a matter of where can I find it that won’t mean paying a lot for it.

For my recommendation I’m going to recommend a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference and it falls very, very fall short of the quality of Hamlet, of anything by Shakespeare for that matter, but there’s a BBC series that started in 2008 and that is part of the reason I’m recommending it, because the CG is entertainment in and of itself for how bad it is. It’s a BBC show called Merlin.

Basically the idea behind it was, “What if we followed the path of Merlin and how he influences a young King Arthur, but they’re also young. It’s Merlin and Arthur, but they’re young.” Sometimes you also just have to laugh at the logical leaps and the blindness, because one of the things is Uther Pendragon hates magic and puts sorcerers to death in his kingdom if he finds them, so Merlin has to keep his magic a secret from everyone, including Arthur. Sometimes he will literally do it in front of Arthur, and Arthur will miss it because Arthur is kind of dumb. He’s a jock.

It's Season 1, and Season 1’s are always rough in a variety of ways. We just started Season 2 and I watched this years ago and I know it gets at least enjoyable to watch and not this kind of level that it’s at now, but I can recommend it now for the humor factor. It is really funny to watch.

It’s almost like if you know Mystery Science Theater 3000, you can just make fun of it the whole way through and it’s a grand old time.

Because it’s making fun of things along the way.

It is. Maybe it gets better later, or maybe I’ve completely put rose-colored glasses on the later seasons. Anyway, I’ll recommend Merlin. It’s fun. There is ridiculousness in it and it’s light-hearted fun.

Thank you again for joining me for this, Greg. It was a pleasure talking about it with you.

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