Which would (and should) lead to more of the nonviolent civil disobedience, by neighbors, friends, the community, and the nation as a whole.
The idea though, is that it's not impossible to convince one person that they're wrong and shouldn't disobey the law, and, as Bob puts it in the political defense of the constitution:
· Monarchy is the purest form of government. A single point of accountability often rightly motivates.
· Even an evil King knows that history will hold him personally responsible for his government’s actions.
· Corrupt institutions virtually never revive. Corrupt kings can repent, or at the very least, die.
· Individuals often repent, bureaucracies rarely even express sorrow.
· Men under an evil King need change only one heart; those in a democracy can never change millions.
· Many monarchs steal, murder, and commit adultery, yet historically they have not legalized these crimes.
· A criminal king harms his nation far less than democracies by which the masses will legalize crime. |
Now you're arguing that a monarchy is better than a democracy. That's a different argument than whether a monarchy is the only form of government God approves of.
Further, the democracy that you currently live in has produced the greatest nation the world has ever seen by almost any metric you want to name apart from criminal justice. The form of government this nation started with produced the most freedom, the most prosperity, the highest standard of living and the longest life span mankind has ever experienced in the history of history. There are billions of people all over the world who have never stepped foot in this country but nevertheless no longer live in slavery, poverty, famine and squalor as a direct result of the United States of America.
No matter where you live in this world, if you have ever used electricity, used a telephone, heard recorded music, listened to a radio, watched a television, own anything made of plastic, visited a modern medical facility, driven a motor vehicle, have air conditioning, taken a vitamin pill or pain killer (or a million other beneficial drugs of all types), if you're a woman and own more than one dress, if you own more than one pair of shoes or if you own any shoes at all that actually fit your feet, if you have a watch on your wrist or an ink pen in your pocket, if you've eaten nearly any grain at all other than rice, if you've ever eaten a banana, orange, grapefruit, almond or cauliflower (or any of another several dozen foods that you could name) etc, etc, etc you almost certainly have the United States of America to thank for it and more specifically the first 100 years of this countries history in particular (i.e. the government and society given to this nation by it's founders).
There is no example of a single monarchy of any sort, type or description that has produced anything remotely like the United States of America. Indeed, there isn't any example of any form of government anywhere that has ever even come close to what this nation has been in the past nor is there any that compare even to this very day.
Actually, I think I may have originally overstated my position, and agree that God is ok with other forms of government, so long as those do not violate His principles.
Precisely.
To rephrase my position, "A constitutional monarchy is the only government which is actively endorsed (perhaps a better word could be used here) by God," seeing as it's the only form of government that He codified in the Mosaic Law for Israel...
Suffice it to say that, as far as I'm aware, God did not actively approve any other government or form of government besides monarchy. He tells us (through Paul) that we are to obey whatever government we are under, but doesn't specify any particular government, and even says to obey God rather than men, and since God is the King of Kings (a title He took upon Himself), I think it's ok (as a general statement) to say that God only endorsed a monarchy.
He only endorsed a monarchy
for Israel.
To extrapolate further is to say more than the text of scripture can support, in my view.
The above, opposed to "A representative form of government chosen by the people is the only form of government which God actively opposed."
I think that this is over stated as well. It wasn't the form of government that God hated, it was the rebellion that He hated. God put Moses in charge and when the representatives of the people came to complain against Moses, God opened the Earth and sucked them all alive down into Hell. But that wasn't because of their representative form of government. Do you suppose that God would have been alright with it if the people had appointed themselves a king to go before Moses and voice the same objections? Certainly not. It was their failure to follow God's appointed man that got them sucked down into Hell, not the fact that they had elected representatives to do the talking for them.
But I do think that any government that upholds God's principles of government is one God can get behind, though, I'm not entirely sure there are any other than monarchies and patriarchies...
Well, I doubt that any form of government could do a lot better than we have done, really. Sure there's a list a mile long of terrible things this country has done but no more so and, in fact, likely far less, than most any other government you can name in the whole history of the world and I likewise doubt than any government will ever do as well until Jesus Himself is ruling as King over the world.
If anything, to defend my position a bit, the Judges of Israel could still be considered part of the system proposed by Jethro, which if I'm not mistaken, God (and Bob in his proposed constitution) incorporated into the kingdom...
Well, that's sort of beside the point, right? The point is that it wasn't a monarchy and it was, at the very least, endorsed by God, if not outright ordained by Him.
I'm reminded of Abraham rescuing Lot from a neighboring city-state, how Abraham was effectively the head of his "nation" (if it could be called that). God seemed to like that idea of one person being the head of the household (with nations being like households), and I guess it could be argued that that's where God decided to use a monarchy for His nation.
Perhaps but I rather think that God had a monarchy in mind long before that. Perhaps before creation itself even. It is clear that God has always had it in mind for His Son to be THE King.
I'm curious as to which other types of government there are that would follow the Biblical principles of government as outlined by Bob...
Do you know of any? As I said above, the only ones I can think of are monarchies and patriarchies...
Well, nearly any type that isn't predicated on theft. It isn't the form of government that is the issue, per se, so much as it is the laws that government institutes and enforces.
Any form of socialism, fascism, communism,
crony capitalism, etc are all predicated on the Robin Hood principle where the government steals from the producers (i.e. the rich) and gives to the consumers (i.e. the poor). They steal the life blood from the dog and feed it to the flea and despise, ridicule, castigate and deride the dog for scratching. All such governments, which the United States has largely been turned into, are fundamentally unjust because taking by force that which you did not produce is theft, regardless of the motive.
As I said in my previous post, we get our rights from God and government was instituted by God to protect those rights. As such, the proper roles of government are all aimed at that goal. Providing for the common defense protects the rights of citizens from foreign attack whether militarily, financially or otherwise. Criminal and civil law enforcement protects the rights of citizens from another citizen or group of citizens and the courts protect the rights of the accused and settles disputes between parties. These are the three basic roles that government is intended to fulfill and any government that does so is a good government, whether they have a king or not.
Now, if you notice, there is no overt mention of a legislative branch of government there, just an executive and judicial but that doesn't mean that there can't be a legislative branch necessarily. There could be one that was responsible for regulatory type laws that defined the rules by which society worked. By that I don't mean a body that could legislate things like the legalization of left or murder but a branch of government that was in charge of things like the rules of commerce where they might make it illegal for a company to arbitrarily print as many shares of stock as they wanted to so as to artificially manipulate the price of their stock (or a gazillion other types of fraud) or define the specific rules that determine how court rooms must run their cases or a million other variables. Of course such details would get defined with or without a legislature. If nothing else, the executive branch could issue such regulations and the judicial branch would handle such things via case law. The point is that the specific form of government isn't the primary issue but rather the laws that the government institutes and enforces.
I'm gonna have to disagree with you here.
This is something Bob points out as being a bad idea (and which God explicitly prohibited Israel from doing).
Bob explains why in his Biblical apologetic for the constitution:
• Treaties: Biblical Apologetic [Constitution Political]
America shall not enter into a foreign treaty. Why not?
God prohibited Israel from making "a covenant with the inhabitants of the land... lest it be a snare." Ex. 34
Israel's treaty prohibition applied explicitly only to nations to be displaced within the Promised Land. Israel's incidental treaty ban, by extension, can become a wise, general prohibition on treaties.
External agreements supersede internal agreements, whether within ourselves, a family, a group, or a nation.
By definition, treaties supersede national law, putting the entire nation under prevailing external agreements.
God expected Israel to abide by their treaties even though He had commanded them not to enter into such!
The current U.S. Constitution reflects the biblical principle of the precedence of international agreement.
"all Treaties... shall be the supreme Law of the Land..." U.S. Constitution Article VI
Biblical arguments against making new laws validate a treaty ban because treaties actually create new law. [C] |
Well, once again, we are not Israel.
That may sound like a pat answer but I think it's important. God was doing something very specific and unique with Israel and put in place various laws that were specifically intended to keep Israel quite separated from the nations around her.
As for the point about making new law, I would say that the government does not have carte blanch to create any treaty it might desire to make. Remember that the proper role of government is to protect the rights of its citizens and any treaty the government makes must achieve that goal or it is not valid. A country that cannot make trade agreement and who does not have the supernatural protection of God Himself, (i.e. any nation other than ancient Israel) would be left at the mercy of any rogue power that either wanted to manipulate its currency or sponsor piracy (or other forms of terrorism) and charge confiscatory tariffs or any number of other things that one nation might do to another in order to gain an unfair advantage. There simply must be some provision that allows a government to respond to and if possible prevent various forms of foreign hostility other than just shear military force. That is, of course, unless you have God supernaturally intervening on your behalf, as was the case for ancient Israel.
I think Bob states it better in the Opening of the Constitution.
There is no doubt that pretty nearly anything Bob states is stated better than most anything I could state, no matter the topic.
I'm not Bob, so don't feel too weird. Haha
How refreshing and fun is it to find a topic where the two people involved have a disagreement but neither of them are stupid, conceded, condescending, self-stultifying or otherwise a waste of the other's time.
I'm totally loving this! Even if I am probably totally wrong!
