Protest & Riots

“Do not rejoice and gloat when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles, or the Lord will see your gloating and be displeased, and turn His anger away from your enemy. Do not get upset because of evildoers, or be envious of the wicked, for there will be no future for the evil man; the lamp of the wicked will be put out. My son, fear the Lord and the king; and do not associate with those who are given to change (of allegiance, and are revolutionary), for their tragedy will rise suddenly, and who knows the punishment that both will bring on the rebellious.” Proverbs 24:17-22

Yesterday in Washington, after a speech by the still current president, a group of his supporters succeeded in breaking into the Capitol building. The congress was meeting and had to evacuate during the chaos. Four people died – one woman because she was shot by police. Many pundits, from the right and left, were quick to cast blame upon the president. It’s been called an attempted coup and other similar things, all sinister. What should Christians think?

To start, the clear commandment governing our lives is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. How can we apply this to protests, riots and politics in general? Well, first, we should be jealous for the liberty of all. We know that we want to be free and secure, so we must learn to understand that as a two-way street. It’s intellectually inconsistent for any Christian, saved from the bondage of sin, and now able to see the glory of the true Lordship of Christ, to be ambivalent about matters of tyranny and/or anarchy. The only biblically and logically consistent political system is the one that promises rule of law for all – that is, a civil magistrate that recognizes God’s ultimacy and their derivative responsibility to punish crime. Tyranny is when the state, in any form, attempts to bring heaven to earth without the gospel; anarchy is when the private sinner demands ultimate autonomy. Mankind, in sin, is always swinging wildly, precariously, back and forth from these two extremes.

So, to love our neighbor we must see that Biblical truth demands a state that stays in its lane, so to speak. The Marxist principle (that the state has an innate power or derives moral authority from the people somehow, someway, to perfect society) is idolatrous as its primary goal is heaven on earth through the state. Socialist schemes are the latest Tower of Babel. In every socialist scheme, the state plays God. It wants the sweetness of paradise without the cross. This is why Marxist revolutions always sweep in through bloodshed and end in bankruptcy and tyranny. Mankind cannot, nor ever will, make straight what sin has made crooked.

On the other hand is the principle of anarchy, which is self-law and rule of the mob. This also is a profound rejection of God’s authority and we saw it play out right away when Cain killed Abel. Mankind will have no real peace until he lays down his sword against God. Our attempts to rule ourselves according to our own shifting and illogical standards have always resulted in terror and bloodshed.

It’s upon this foundation that we should evaluate the events of yesterday.

So, now that we love our neighbor in truth and understand the context of politics, not speaking in an ethical vacuum about Republicans and Democrats, but about God’s moral law and the true nature of government, we can evaluate what’s happening. The events happened yesterday not by chance but by a long, sad decline into tyranny and anarchy. This isn’t about Donald Trump. He was not the author of yesterday’s chaos nor its answer.

America’s rebellious insistence on Marxist principles of government and biblical ignorance have led us here. Let’s look at them briefly.

Starting in March of 2020, governments far and wide used emergency orders to literally put millions of citizens under house arrest. This was done because of a flu. For the first time in America history the well were quarantined along with the sick. Constitutional rights were abandoned at a breathtaking rate. Freedom to assemble? Gone. Freedom to worship? Only in a way the state approved so, in effect, gone. Due process? Emergency executive orders eviscerated them. Equal protection? Big corporations could stay open but all others were deemed, by executive fiat, “unessential”.

Yes, under the pretense of keeping Americans safe from a virus, constitutional rights were wiped away by an avalanche of executive orders. Worse still, anyone who complained was not given a benefit of the doubt but told that they didn’t care if people died. This type of argumentation was certainly not loving one’s neighbor. Loving one’s neighbor means that we never attack them by arbitrarily assigning a sinister motive to their argument. Loving our neighbor must mean that we assume the best of their motives, not the worst. This simple truth, if applied by all, would eradicate all the poison and vitriol of modern politics.

On top of this, due to the massive hysteria over the virus, voting laws were changed. Anyone who was worried that having the USPS guarantee the security of a presidential election was, yet again, called the most vile things rather than given a fair hearing. These changes, unprecedented and bizarre, were never openly debated nor voted upon by the people’s representatives. Once again, they were issued through executive or judicial fiats. This is an extremely important point to note: none of these things, all highly objectionable to the constitution, were done with public debate or legislative vote.

That’s called tyranny. And it was accepted because people were scared.

It is completely unloving to wish for, support, and advocate for the obliteration of your neighbor’s rights and yet we saw that on a massive scale this past year. Over 300,000 small businesses are gone. Suicides and drug overdoses have skyrocketed. And to pay for all of this economic foolishness, the government has simply printed money – exploding the national debt to nearly $30 trillion.

Amidst all of this, during these unloving and unconstitutional lockdowns, while people were being deprived of their rights to assemble, worship and make a living, protests and riots broke out over the death of George Floyd in May. Suddenly tens of thousands of people were in the streets together and, oddly, public health officials, after demanding those lockdowns on the premise of extreme and historic danger to public health, did an about-face and supported the protests. Catch that? The whole premise of the lockdowns, the reason for killing all those businesses, and ruining so many lives, was that the virus was uniquely deadly. Ah, but only if you own a business or want to go to a concert, dinner or a sporting event. Apparently, 2020 brought the first and only virus in history that wasn’t deadly if you were protesting for something it approved. This type of rank hypocrisy destroyed the narrative that it was all about science. This was a very dangerous thing to do as it eviscerated confidence in public officials. Suddenly, millions of Americans were distrustful and bitter.

And the protests exacted a terrible toll too. A small business owner in Nebraska had his store broken into. He was knocked to the ground. He pleaded. He fired a warning shot. The attack didn’t stop. At last, he fired and killed his tormentor. Initially, the police investigated and didn’t press charges because it was clearly self-defense. But then, due to political pressure, he was indicted.

Already struggling with the damage to his business during the lockdowns and PTSD from his service to America in Iraq, this was too much for him. He killed himself.

Protests continued. Statues were toppled without a vote. Thousands of businesses that had nothing to do with George Floyd, many owned by black people, were broken into, looted, and then burned to the ground. One woman in Minneapolis was sent a bill from the state because they had to clear the debris that used to be her business. They failed to protect her, as was their sacred duty, and then sent her a bill for their failure.

This was anarchy. It wasn’t loving one’s neighbor. It was violence and destruction of property.

And the primary organization behind the protests, Black Lives Matter (BLM), is an avowed Marxist group. How one supposes to defeat racism with an ideology that murdered hundred of millions in the last 100 years is a question no one asked. In our collective sin it simply didn’t dawn on us to suggest that the principles of liberty (rule of law for all) is what we need. This is what Proverbs means when it says not to associate with lawless rebels. Rebels don’t want law, they want revenge and chaos.

The entirety of the issue is in understanding the flip sides of the same coin of sin insofar as it applies to ethics and politics. To love our neighbor is to tell them about Christ, to disciple them, to serve them, and to build them up…to weep when they weep, and rejoice when they rejoice. To love them is not to rule them, for God alone is their ruler. To love your neighbor is to listen to them when they say there is racism and to demand they have the same protection under the law – liberty! – that you do. But it’s also to warn them of the evil of Marxist ideology and how it’s a ploy of Satan as he masquerades as an angel of light. Marxism is a religion of covetousness and vengeance. Real Christians should mourn and cry when anyone’s rights are trampled. And, importantly, we should know and teach the principles of God-given liberty and how it can be protected by law. Love without law is anarchy; law without love is tyranny.

And loving our neighbor is to hear the cry of all those Trump supporters too. They believe their rights have been violated and that the election was stolen. Would they be so aggravated and scared if it wasn’t for the fact that they perceive the government to be a danger to their rights? Don’t they have ample proof of that from this year alone? Yet, they too must be told of the beauty of God’s law and what He says about rebels. They too must be told of the sin of anarchy if they’re carried away by their passions. They too must understand that their candidate (or any politician) isn’t the Lord.

America’s constitution isn’t perfect yet it does quite a good job, a historic one, frankly, of recognizing and protecting the rights all men and women have under God. For this reason, the BLM protesters from this summer should be told, lovingly in the Lord, of the sweetness of liberty and warned off the raging fires of tyranny (Marxism) and anarchy. And for this reason the protesters that stormed the Capitol yesterday must hear the same. If we fight tyranny with anarchy rather than with righteous law we will only succeed in securing a different tyranny with new faces. It’s always cool to be Robespierre until it’s your head in the guillotine for such is the inferno of sin.

This is why no revolution ever succeeded except for the one based on self-defense, which was articulated by the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, our Founders rose up to defeat the ungodly extremes that sin brings us to. Shortly thereafter, France had its own revolution but wasn’t restrained by God’s love and law. It descended into a murderous anarchy and then emerged into the autocracy of Napoleon. No ascendant movement in America today is philosophically and theologically consistent with true liberty’s principles and we must strive to recover them or all will be lost for America. The Founders were sinful men, just as we are, but they were far more wise in that they understood this issue of man’s sin. They intended to form a government that was under God, which is to say, protected free people from the ravages of authoritarianism and nihilism. We must, prayerfully, soberly, and humbly, recover this spirit of ’76 or else this inferno will consume our land.

True, America never succeeded in a genuine “liberty for all” society but it has been the only one to actually try. The principles of equality before the law for everyone and individual rights, protected by a small and limited government is, because it’s biblical, what’s needed to heal our land. These principles are forever besieged by our sinful nature and we must be vigilant to apply them. When they are transgressed, when one group dominates another, the answer is not, and never will be, either of those awful extremes.

So, we make our appeal to all. Turn from your sin, we must tell them. Turn from your self-worship and/or your state-worship. Jesus is the King. But no heaven will be here on earth until He comes, so we must resist these utopian schemes, sold to us by politicians who are false messiahs. For these false prophets cause us to devour ourselves, to trade our precious liberties for tokens, to hate and accuse our neighbor rather than love him, and to turn for trust in God. We don’t worship a particular candidate. We worship God…and we show it because we obey His divine principles of government and ethics. To do otherwise is to be that rebel in Proverbs 24:21 and declare war on Him, for it’s God that’s established the rules of the game, not us.

Donald Trump didn’t cause yesterday’s chaos, nor did Joe Biden cause the riots of the summer. Behind all of it is sin’s great General, Satan. And all who join him in resisting God’s loving law will see that “for disaster from them will rise suddenly, and who knows the ruin that will come from them both?”

To love God is to love liberty and hate tyranny and anarchy. Only when we truly believe and practice this, will we have peace. This past year (and yesterday) is but an appetizer of what awaits us unless we wake up and repent.