A Flourishing Society’s Building Blocks

Transcript:

Hello! This is Pastor Don Willeman of Christ Redeemer Church. Welcome to The Kingdom Perspective!

According to the Bible government authority is not a necessary evil. It was established by God to facilitate a safe, functioning, and flourishing society. However, just because government is good and necessary does not make it the most basic and important social institution. There are some things that are more foundational to human flourishing than governmental authority.

Biblically speaking, the home (i.e., marriage and family—the husband-wife and parent-child relationship), the church (i.e., obligation to worship and obey God in communion with fellow believers), and the neighborhood (i.e., our responsibility to love our neighbor) all have higher importance than government.

Without the flourishing of the mediating institutions of home, church and neighborhood, we are left with sheer governmental force. When homes and neighborhoods are in chaos, governmental coercion becomes the sole ground of social cohesion, and this is not good. Rather, God intended love and trust nurtured in the home, church, and neighborhood to be building blocks to a free and flourishing society.

A government that does not respect and support these institutions, or worse seeks to destroy them, is a government sowing seeds of social disintegration or totalitarianism. And a people that does not pursue the good ordering of these basic building blocks in their own lives is asking for tyranny. The Law of the God, not the law of the state, must always be primary.

Something to think about from The Kingdom Perspective.

“One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.’”

~ Matthew 22:35-40 (NASB95)

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.’ Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’”

~Genesis 2:15-18 (NASB95)

“To discipline a child produces wisdom,

but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child.

When the wicked are in authority, sin flourishes,

but the godly will live to see their downfall.

Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind

and will make your heart glad.

When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild.

But whoever obeys the law is joyful.”

~ Proverbs 29:15-18 (NLT)