Dear Friends:
What is government? When this question is asked, most people respond by equating government solely to a centralized civil State. Even our language reflects the confusion: “Government? It’s in Washington,” or “The government will take care of its citizens through its many programs.” Both of these statements reflect a misunderstanding of the true nature of government. They portray the idea that the only governing institution is a political one. Historically, however, the term “government” was always qualified in some way, unlike our present-day definitions.
Our educational system reflects the same confusion. A generation ago, high school classes dealing with state government were given the title “Civics.” The emphasis was on the function of government in civil matters. This is no longer the case. Before World War I, textbooks dealing with national government were qualified with the title “Civil.” An example of this can be seen in a textbook used in 1903: Elements of Civil Government. According to its author, “The family… is a form of government, established for the good of children themselves, and the first government that each of us must obey.”1 The book continues by defining five areas of civil government: “the township or civil district, the village or the city, the county, the State, and the United States.” 2 The term “government” as the older educational definition indicates, is broader than the State. Textbook writers were aware that there were personal (self), family, church, school, and civil governments, each having a legitimate realm of authority. Civil government was seen as only one government among many.
To deny the validity of the many governments and the responsibilities that each has under God, would be to deny the authority that belongs to each of them in the realm of their activity. If we as individuals neglect our personal governing duties, then we can expect the state to assume the role of all other legitimate governments and claim to be the sole government, while labeling all others as counterfeits. Therefore, to see the state as the only governing institution “is destructive of liberty and of life.”3
The concept of the multiplicity of governments was as old as our country, because the principles were extracted from biblical principles. Noah Webster’s definition of government in his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) reflects the biblical concept of the diversity of governmental authority. Webster defined government in this way: “Direction; regulation. ‘These precepts will serve for the government of our conduct.’ Control; restraint. ‘Men are apt to neglect the government of their temper and passions.’”
While Noah Webster defined government in terms of personal self-control, most modern definitions largely limit government to the realm of institutions, especially civil or statist governments. This is made evident by the fact that the definition for civil government is placed first in modern dictionaries. Nowhere are self- and family governments even listed. For example, Webster’s New World Dictionary (1972) defines government as “The exercise of authority over a state, district, organization, institution, etc.”
Noah Webster, in the older definition, even goes on to include family government as part of the complete definition before he deals with the government of an individual civil government at the state or national level. He defines family government as: “The exercise of authority by a parent or householder. ‘Children are often ruined by a neglect of government in parents.’” According to the Bible, it is the duty of parents to govern in the home: “And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). It is not the duty of a civil government to interfere with the affairs of the family. Too often, however, parents neglect their God-given duty to raise their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” When this happens, we can expect the State to take an increasingly dominant role in family affairs. Such a role is to the detriment of the family. The State on many occasions has even claimed ownership of children.
If generations continue to be indoctrinated with the modern definition of “government,” they will neglect their own personal, family, church, and local governing duties. They will believe that these responsibilities are outside their area of authority and jurisdiction. Each generation will become more dependent on the “benevolent” State for care and security. We are beginning to see such a trend. “Today, most Americans have lost their faith in Christ as Savior, and they expect civil government to be their savior. They have no desire for the responsibilities of self-government, and so they say to politicians, ‘Do thou rule over us.’ Instead of Jesus Christ as their good shepherd, they elect politicians to be their shepherds on a program of socialistic security for all.”4
Government begins with the individual and extends outward to include all institutions. Presently, however, most Americans are unaware of the varied nature of government. The civil sphere of government has assumed responsibility to be the government. It is sad that many Americans are thankful that Washington has relieved them from what they believe is the heavy burden of governing themselves, their families, churches, and schools. If the people of the United States do not once again establish self-, family, church, local, state, and national governments and limit them in power and authority, our nation is doomed.
Conde Pallen’s “utopian” novel Crucible Island depicts what happens when the God of the Bible is rejected and the State becomes God. Man looks for a substitute provider so “the individual should have no thought, desire, or object other than the public welfare, of which the State is the creator and the inviolable guardian. As soon as the child is capable of learning, he is taught the Socialist catechism, whose first questions run as follows”:
Q. By whom were you begotten?
A. By the sovereign State.
Q. Why were you begotten?
A. That I might know, love, and serve the Sovereign State always.
Q. What is the sovereign State?
A. The sovereign State is humanity in composite and perfect being.
Q. Why is the State supreme?
A. The State is supreme because it is my Creator and Conserver in which I am and move and have my being and without which I am nothing.
Q. What is the individual?
A. The individual is only a part of the whole, and made for the whole, and finds his complete and perfect expression in the sovereign State. Individuals are made for cooperation only, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth.5
The central focus of all realms of government is the regenerating work of Jesus Christ. Institutions and civil governments are made up of people who are governed by the condition of their hearts. If the heart is in rebellion against God, we can expect undisciplined and ungovernable people. If the heart has been made new in Christ, we can expect a people who will govern their lives according to the governing principles of Scripture. A.A. Hodge speaks of the essence of the new heart, regeneration, as consisting of “the implantation of a new governing principle of life – from the fact that it is a ‘new birth’ [John 3:3], a ‘new creation’ [II Corinthians 5:17], wrought by the mighty power of God in execution of his eternal purpose of salvation, and that it is as necessary for the most moral and amiable as for the morally abandoned.”6
SOURCES:
1 Alex L. Peterman, Elements of Civil Government (New York: American Book Co., 1903), 18.
2 Peterman, Elements of Civil Government, 18.
3 Rousas J. Rushdoony, Politics of Guilt and Pity, 332.
4 Rushdoony, Law and Liberty, 61.
5 Condé B. Pallen, Crucible Island: A Romance, an Adventure and an Experiment (New York: The Manhattanville Press, 1919), 109–110.
6 Hodge, A Commentary on the Confession of Faith, 238.
Respectfully, Mark
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
A Covenantal View of Sports Mania
Dear Friends:
In January, 2007, David Beckham, an aging European soccer player, signed a contract worth a quarter of a billion dollars to play soccer in the United States. There is something fundamentally at odds with common sense here. In the same month, the University of Alabama, a tax-funded university, agreed to pay a new football coach four million dollars a year, plus bonuses if his team gets into a bowl game. How could this happen?
Odd as it may seem, there is a theological issue here: the doctrine of representation. The biblical doctrine of representation says that every man is represented judicially before God by one of two men: Adam or Christ. Either Adam’s sin is imputed judicially by God to a person or else Christ’s perfect humanity is imputed. There is no third choice. To use the analogy of a race, life on earth is a two-man race. Each of us is represented by one of two runners. Your representative finishes either first or last. So do you. There are no second-place or third-place medals.
Men want to avoid thinking about time and eternity in terms of judicial representation before the throne of God. The stakes in such a race are too high. The doctrine of judicial imputation is too theocentric. It places too much authority in the declarative acts of God. So, men seek to be represented in other ways. The most popular ways are corporate more than individual. Men gain representation by participating in corporate liturgy.
Somebody must represent the public. Politics is a popular means of representation in democratic societies. We have seen more than our fair share of messianic politicians in this humanistic century, each promising the advent of a golden age. But the public’s faith is waning in political salvation. President Jimmy Carter seriously damaged the American democratic religion with his famous pre-election words, “Trust me.” The phrase became a cynical joke once he was in office. Anyone who trusts a politician is setting himself up for a disappointment.
Sports and Representation
The American South had no public schools until after the unfortunate unpleasantness of 1861-65. Today, they are part of the South’s way of life.
It is a well-known fact that if every high school football game in Texas would end in a 0-0 tie for just one year, Christian high schools would fill up the next year. Texans would see this as the judgment of God against public education. But if AIDS were an epidemic in a public high school with a 15-0 football record, there would be no drop in enrollment at least not until the team started losing the following year.
Support for state universities in the South is derived more from the voters’ enthusiasm for winning football teams than from Nobel Prize winners on their faculties. This is reflected in the won-loss records of Southern universities compared with Nobel Prizes granted.
In recent decades, we have seen a new phenomenon: the rise of the professional athlete as a public representative. This has paralleled the waning of faith in politics. “All politics is local,” said the late Tip O’Neill. Spoken as a Boston Irish pol! In fact, the Presidency is the focal point of American politics – “the greased pig of American politics,” as Ambrose Bierce wrote a century ago in his cynical Devil’s Dictionary. But as men have become skeptical of Presidents, they have become skeptical of politics generally. Meanwhile, they have become sports fanatics.
Men cheer for sports teams that they believe in some way represent them. Professional sports teams are seen as representing entire cities, though rarely towns. An urban fan is an emotional participant in the affairs of his local major league team. He sees himself as part of a larger enterprise. If his team wins, he wins in some emotional sense. If his city’s team is the best, someone may notice him, he may think. “We really did well yesterday,” he tells his male companions after a vicarious victorious day on the playing field.
The appearance of the multi-millionaire professional athlete is a very recent phenomenon. It has taken place since the mid-1960’s. In the United States, only major league baseball provided significant income opportunities to athletes prior to World War II, and only to white superstars like Babe Ruth. (When it was pointed out to Ruth by a reporter that he had made more money in 1930 than the President of the United States, he replied: “I had a better year than he did.” He was correct.)
Why professional sports? Why now? Because the United States is suffering from a collapse of covenants. There is no escape in this life or the next from the doctrine of covenantal representation. This representation is both personal and corporate. Deny either aspect of representation, and covenantalism becomes lopsided or even perverse.
Professional football has become the most representative professional sport in the United States. Why? First, because the number of games is limited. Each game counts for more in the outcome of the league’s standings. Second, and more important, because the games are usually played on Sunday. Monday night football is an anomaly: the one national game each week that has no competition from the other teams in the league. Sunday games are an alternative to attending church services. Watching televised professional football on Sunday has become a form of communion. Men get together weekly to celebrate the sport’s sacraments, beer and pizza. They cheer or moan, depending on the outcome of the “big play.”
Conclusion
Men have searched for new forms of representation as they have lost faith in the older forms: church, family, and state. Mainline church membership has shrunk since 1965, divorce rates have risen, and voters stay home by the tens of millions on Election Day. They would stay home in greater numbers if the elections were held on Sundays.
If the Presidential election were held on Superbowl Sunday, I wonder how many men would show up. I know this: Women would take over American politics.
Respectfully, Mark
In January, 2007, David Beckham, an aging European soccer player, signed a contract worth a quarter of a billion dollars to play soccer in the United States. There is something fundamentally at odds with common sense here. In the same month, the University of Alabama, a tax-funded university, agreed to pay a new football coach four million dollars a year, plus bonuses if his team gets into a bowl game. How could this happen?
Odd as it may seem, there is a theological issue here: the doctrine of representation. The biblical doctrine of representation says that every man is represented judicially before God by one of two men: Adam or Christ. Either Adam’s sin is imputed judicially by God to a person or else Christ’s perfect humanity is imputed. There is no third choice. To use the analogy of a race, life on earth is a two-man race. Each of us is represented by one of two runners. Your representative finishes either first or last. So do you. There are no second-place or third-place medals.
Men want to avoid thinking about time and eternity in terms of judicial representation before the throne of God. The stakes in such a race are too high. The doctrine of judicial imputation is too theocentric. It places too much authority in the declarative acts of God. So, men seek to be represented in other ways. The most popular ways are corporate more than individual. Men gain representation by participating in corporate liturgy.
Somebody must represent the public. Politics is a popular means of representation in democratic societies. We have seen more than our fair share of messianic politicians in this humanistic century, each promising the advent of a golden age. But the public’s faith is waning in political salvation. President Jimmy Carter seriously damaged the American democratic religion with his famous pre-election words, “Trust me.” The phrase became a cynical joke once he was in office. Anyone who trusts a politician is setting himself up for a disappointment.
Sports and Representation
The American South had no public schools until after the unfortunate unpleasantness of 1861-65. Today, they are part of the South’s way of life.
It is a well-known fact that if every high school football game in Texas would end in a 0-0 tie for just one year, Christian high schools would fill up the next year. Texans would see this as the judgment of God against public education. But if AIDS were an epidemic in a public high school with a 15-0 football record, there would be no drop in enrollment at least not until the team started losing the following year.
Support for state universities in the South is derived more from the voters’ enthusiasm for winning football teams than from Nobel Prize winners on their faculties. This is reflected in the won-loss records of Southern universities compared with Nobel Prizes granted.
In recent decades, we have seen a new phenomenon: the rise of the professional athlete as a public representative. This has paralleled the waning of faith in politics. “All politics is local,” said the late Tip O’Neill. Spoken as a Boston Irish pol! In fact, the Presidency is the focal point of American politics – “the greased pig of American politics,” as Ambrose Bierce wrote a century ago in his cynical Devil’s Dictionary. But as men have become skeptical of Presidents, they have become skeptical of politics generally. Meanwhile, they have become sports fanatics.
Men cheer for sports teams that they believe in some way represent them. Professional sports teams are seen as representing entire cities, though rarely towns. An urban fan is an emotional participant in the affairs of his local major league team. He sees himself as part of a larger enterprise. If his team wins, he wins in some emotional sense. If his city’s team is the best, someone may notice him, he may think. “We really did well yesterday,” he tells his male companions after a vicarious victorious day on the playing field.
The appearance of the multi-millionaire professional athlete is a very recent phenomenon. It has taken place since the mid-1960’s. In the United States, only major league baseball provided significant income opportunities to athletes prior to World War II, and only to white superstars like Babe Ruth. (When it was pointed out to Ruth by a reporter that he had made more money in 1930 than the President of the United States, he replied: “I had a better year than he did.” He was correct.)
Why professional sports? Why now? Because the United States is suffering from a collapse of covenants. There is no escape in this life or the next from the doctrine of covenantal representation. This representation is both personal and corporate. Deny either aspect of representation, and covenantalism becomes lopsided or even perverse.
Professional football has become the most representative professional sport in the United States. Why? First, because the number of games is limited. Each game counts for more in the outcome of the league’s standings. Second, and more important, because the games are usually played on Sunday. Monday night football is an anomaly: the one national game each week that has no competition from the other teams in the league. Sunday games are an alternative to attending church services. Watching televised professional football on Sunday has become a form of communion. Men get together weekly to celebrate the sport’s sacraments, beer and pizza. They cheer or moan, depending on the outcome of the “big play.”
Conclusion
Men have searched for new forms of representation as they have lost faith in the older forms: church, family, and state. Mainline church membership has shrunk since 1965, divorce rates have risen, and voters stay home by the tens of millions on Election Day. They would stay home in greater numbers if the elections were held on Sundays.
If the Presidential election were held on Superbowl Sunday, I wonder how many men would show up. I know this: Women would take over American politics.
Respectfully, Mark
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