Up/Down

It is telling that, according to Scripture, the very first of the Ten Commandments specifically addresses the idea of replacing God with another object of worship and admiration. God apparently knows us pretty well, in presenting us first with a command that should sound like a no-brainer, if you believe in a God. We tend to think of worship as some overt display of homage to someone or something. However, reality can be and usually is quite a bit more subtle. Which is why the commandment should be a no-brainer, but it is not.

I would expect it would be easy for the average Christian to compile a list of things that would qualify as replacements for God, as false gods. Money, power, and sex probably top most of these lists. All three are venerated by our culture as the be-all and end-all of human life and experience. It only takes one viewing of the film The Island by Michael Bay to get a taste of this dynamic in regards to sex. Or look through any men's magazine for a dozen articles on the value and uses of power. And it takes little brain power to notice the monuments to money that rise up around us in various forms (the World Trade Center comes to mind, albeit not currently standing).

What goes unmentioned here, however, are the more subtle things. The one I am interested in here is an old idea which presents itself in new guise every century or so. It began with the Pharoa, a ruler venerated not so subtly as a god, and goes all the way through modern politics, in the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For both Pharoa and for Marx, the violation of the first commandment was not in their veneration of an outside object or person. No, it was the arrogation of divine power and glory to themselves.

This shows itself quite readily in our own current Congress and president, who both believe implicitly that they have the knowledge and wisdom to fix all things, but have the arrogance to believe that the mere passage of a law actually physically changes the people and things they govern. This was the idea in a nutshell behind the minimum wage requirement in the United States. Whether it costed anybody anything or not, ended up hurting anybody or not, the government one day decided that by legislative fiat it would correct the problem of low income, in effect proclaiming, "Let there be higher wages." And there were higher wages, of a sort, at least on paper. Or another great example is the health care overhaul. It didn't matter that much of the bill was overweight with bad regulation, ridiculous requirements, weird loopholes and severe cost hikes. The government said, "Let there be universal healthcare." And there was a healthcare law. And the government saw that it was good. The rest of the nation was not so sure.

Is the dynamic clear here? This attitude in effect breaks the first of those ten commandments twice over. The first breach is the people in government daring to think that they knows what is best for millions of people in the same way God knows what is best for all mankind. But in a way the more egregious error lies in the implementation of the fix for the problem: waving the magic wand of the god-government in the form of legislation. Never mind if the legislation is ridiculous, unenforceable, or just plain dumb. It is has been deemed the best way and therefore it passes and is implemented.

It is intriguing, that the farther we stray from the natural law of our Creator in our country's legislation, the more laughable our nation's laws become and the less enforceable they grow. The more our legislation tries to govern from the top down, the more it will conflict with the bottom up rules written on our hearts. This in turn leads to the governmental necessity of using unreasonable force to ensure a law is followed, and tyranny quickly follows. I find a quote from the author and talk show host Jason Lewis pertinent here: to paraphrase, he says that anarchy is oftentimes not a lack of the rule of law, but the rule of too many laws.

To presume such power is a grave injustice both to oneself and to the rest of society. Under the guise of compassion and fairness, God's role in any part of societal activity is elminated because government has become the prime mover. Government is not setting up political power as a god to worship; government is setting up itself as a god. It assumes the power to accomplish its agenda exists as a condition of it being God already.

In my humble opinion, that is a terrifying thought.