Dr Greg Bahnsen - Hot Potatoes: Welfare and Warfare: Should the Government Do It All? (Part 1)

I consider what I'm going to be bringing to your attention tonight in our second lecture and then on Thursday evening in those two lectures, Lord willing, you might just consider it an oven mitt. An oven mitt? Why? Well, because we have these hot potato issues. And what I'd like to show you is that if you have a consistent Christian world and life view, if you let the Bible inform your approach to all areas of life in our society where these potatoes are being tossed all around and people don't know what to do with them, and they cause so much contention that we as Christians really have an oven mitt by which you can have that potato thrown at you and you can catch it and say, I got an answer for this. I've got an answer for this. Not because I'm smart, not because I'm better, not because I'm somehow more righteous than others or have more insight, but I have an answer because the one who knows everything and created everything and controls everything has given me the inside scoop on these things. Now, sometimes the answer that God gives, however, is not congenial to the opinions in our culture. And you need to be aware of that, that when we get done with these hot potato issues over these two evenings, the Lord gives us together. Even if I have been completely faithful and even if I completely persuade you that God's word answers these issues in a particular way, you have to realize that there's still going to be hot potato issues. They're going to be hot potato issues because people don't like to hear many times what the Word of God has to say. Now, you can take that for granted when it comes to how we as Christians would answer social problems in the midst of a world that doesn't pervasively submit to the Lord Jesus Christ or honor his word. But sadly, I have to tell you tonight that the answers I'm going to offer you tonight about these social issues and on Thursday will also be controversial among Christians because there's a real failure among God's people to be students of the Scripture, secondly, to be systematic in their understanding about what the Scripture teaches, and thirdly, to be faithful and to bite the bullet, whatever it takes to apply what they have learned systematically to the issues of our day. And so these are hot potato issues. I'm going to give you an oven mitt, but they're going to continue to be hot issues even when we get done. Even if I've done my job as faithfully as I hope that I do in my first lecture this evening, I'm quite concerned about the fact that the state, if it is not governed in a Christian way, will inevitably become. We see this in history, and I think you can see this in philosophical principle, the state inevitably becomes a false messiah. You see, it's really not a matter of whether people will have a messiah or not. It's really a question of who the Messiah will be. From my standpoint as a Christian, I believe that mankind's problems, just as my individual problems, stem from rebellion against God. That we live unto ourselves. We're unloving with respect to our neighbors and certainly unloving with respect to God. And in that lifestyle mode we have innumerable problems that arise among us. Sin, you see, has corrupted the human race and has brought us, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, all temporal miseries. Everything that's wrong in this world in one way or another stems back to our attitude toward God, which is a sinful one, and correspondingly then, our unloving attitude toward our neighbor. And that's why we have problems in this world now. The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world first and foremost to die on the cross to pay the penalty for the sin of his people. They've given me not enough time to tell you everything I have to say, and so I cannot repeat these points over and over and over again. So don't miss this, that Dr. Bonson is teaching you that the most important thing about the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ is that he's provided the atoning sacrifice for sin that we need if we're going to be right with God. I'm not here tonight to try to draw your attention away from that. I'm not here to try to say we ought to pay more attention to politics and society than we do to the issues of atonement and salvation. I'm here tonight to say, however, that if we who have been saved by the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ are going to be light in this world in salt, in a decaying earth. And it's necessary that we take his messianic and redemptive work past our individual salvation, which in one sense could be looked at as a little bit selfish, if that's all we ever look at, really. And we need to take that saving work of Christ to others as well. Others need to be saved even as we do. But I have something more to say. It's not just that we need salvation. Our neighbors need salvation. But you see, our society needs salvation as well because we're living like hell. Frankly, things are not working out well now, if the Lord Jesus Christ came to deal with the problem of sin, then as a Christian, I believe that what he has brought us is not just salvation from this wicked, hellish world so we can go to heaven one day. That will happen. Praise God, that will happen. But I believe he's also brought us the principles for living by which we can ameliorate many of the problems that we see around us that stem from sin. Isaac Watts put it very well when he wrote in that famous hymn, he came to make his blessings flow far as the curse found. And so if the curse of sin has touched our society, has touched our economic realm, if it has touched our political realm, the way we educate our family life on and on and on, if sin has touched it, then Jesus and His work and His Word have something relevant to do with ameliorating those problems. And so that's where we're going to begin tonight. I'll take for granted, you know, what I've, what I've been saying about Christ being the center of Scripture and His saving work being the most important thing there, and that evangelism is very important. But beyond that, do we as Christians have anything to say to the hot potato issues of our day? And I believe we do. But if you don't follow what Christians have to say on this issue, I maintain you don't end up without a messiah. You end up making something else. Your Messiah, a false messiah and an idol. And in America, preeminently, I would argue that the idol, the false Messiah that competes with the Lord Jesus Christ is in fact the political state. I know that will probably sound strange to people who, when they think of an idol or a false messiah, think of something that people literally bow down to. Now, I don't know many people. There might be a few strange ones out on the periphery, probably in Texas somewhere. There might be some people who bow down to the Capitol building in Washington and make it their God in that outward, visible way. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who have given to the state the prerogatives and functions that the Bible gives to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason why people implicitly do this, whether they bow down or not, the reason why they make the state a false God is because they are unwilling to bow the knee and to profess the name of the true God. Because when we bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ, we call him Lord. And that has significance that many Christians have never thought about. Jesus is Lord. He's not just Savior. In fact, if he's not your Lord, I would argue strongly he's not your Savior. Because, you see, God doesn't say, look, you go ahead and live in your own ungodly fashion, and I'll clean up the mess after you. He says, if you want me to clean up the mess after you, you have to recognize that you haven't lived in a way that's pleasing to me. And you got to turn around. That's why we preach as evangelicals, as fundamentalists, as reformed people. That's why we preach conversion. People have got to turn around. And so they turn from their sinning and by the grace of God, by the power and work of the Spirit, Spirit of God, they try to lead holy lives. Conversion means we accept Christ as Savior and Lord, but if he's Lord, he governs everything in the Lord Jesus Christ. Many churches have never, ever had a sermon from their pulpit say this, but the Bible repeatedly tells us that all kings are supposed to bow before him too. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords, that there is no authority in heaven or on earth that is not his. He claimed that after his resurrection, he said, all exousia in the Greek, all authority, all power is mine in heaven and on earth. Therefore, on that basis make the nations my disciples. The nations are to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. They are to bow the knee, kings and judges of the earth, or to kiss the sun. Psalm 2 says, and if they don't kiss the sun, they will perish in the way. Now, when you will not follow the Christian approach to ameliorating society's problems, when you will not take the Lord Jesus Christ as your Messiah, it turns out you don't just give up on messianic pretensions. You turn somewhere else to find a Savior and in America, to come back to my point where we have turned. If we don't turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, we return to the civil state to be our Savior and our Messiah. Without a clear view of the state's proper functions and limits, a view that's based on the Word of God, without a biblically based understanding of what the state is supposed to do, the Christian cannot develop a godly position regarding rights in society or equality or. Or liberty, loyalty, dissent, the proper balance between security or privacy, between order and freedom within the state. If we as Christians do not study the Bible and ask what it says about social issues, political issues like these, we're not going to come up with anything beneficial or helpful. There must be a way to establish Boundaries for the state's authority. Because if there are no boundaries on the authority of the state, what it may do, then logically we have no principled defense against the growth of the state into what Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, called Leviathan. You all know the name Leviathan from reading the Bible. The illusion was conspicuous in Hobbes case. Leviathan is the monster from the sea. Well, in Revelation 13, as most of you will know, the beast, the monster that comes from the sea, is what we call the beast. Now, I didn't come here to teach eschatology to you tonight. I'll come back and do that sometime. I enjoy that subject. But whatever you may think of the specific identity of the beast as prophesied in Revelation 13, there are principles there that we can all learn. And one of them is a state that takes it upon itself to govern all areas of life, even the economic marketplace is a monster. It's not made after the image of God not following his word, and is not beneficial to any of us. We must learn to mark off within the context of our public moral duties and responsibilities, a delimited realm where the state has authority to enforce civil sanctions against misbehavior. The state must not be looked upon as an agency for punishing any and all misbehavior. There must be boundaries upon what the state may punish, what it must leave alone. You see, not all sins against the law of God are properly to be treated as crimes. And if not all sins are crimes, then the state, the authority of the state must be circumscribed. When it inflicts punishment upon citizens, it must be circumscribed in a way that will be open to public scrutiny. Now, just about anybody can say, oh yeah, I think the state should be limited. And basically that means the president of the United States can do whatever he wants. Limited by what he wants to do. Well, that doesn't do any good. You can say, well, the. The legislature should be limited to whatever they all will agree to do. Well, that isn't very helpful. If you live in a society where the legislature votes to persecute you and tyrannize you and tax you to death. Right. We can only imagine what that would be like. If the state doesn't itself have some boundary conditions, some standard that is publicly recognizable, then the state's going to be a monster. It's going to be a beast. There must be an objective public standard that everybody looks up to, both legislatures and citizens, presidents as well as paupers, whoever it may be, we can say this is what is right and wrong in terms of the state's functioning. If we think that the sphere of sin is to be equated with the sphere of the state's legal prerogative to impose punitive sanctions, we in fact make the state over into God himself. And the state not having godly qualities doesn't end up being a God. It ends up being a beast. God has not authorized the state to scrutinize and judge every social misdeed, nor has God granted the state the responsibility to produce every social virtue. The state is not competent. Nor is the state empowered to judge the private lust of an individual's heart or his selfish use of money in light of his neighbor's needs. According to the Apostle Paul, the special characteristic that marks off the state from other institutions within society is its moral authority to inflict public penalties for disobeying civil statutes. It is an institution, to put it very bluntly, characterized by coercive authority. The state, According to Romans 13, bears the sword. It bears the sword as a terror. It is a terror and an avenger of wrath to evildoers. The family is denied the prerogative to bear the sword. Deuteronomy 21, verses 18 to 21. The church is denied the prerogative to bear the sword. Look at Second Corinthians 10, verses 3 and 4. But the state, on the other hand, is authorized by God and possesses this awesome prerogative to use compulsion in enforcing its dictates. And what kind of compulsion does the state use to enforce its dictates? It may be the threat of death, it may be a monetary fine, it may be imprisonment. And just because the state has been given this awesome authority, it must be carefully and ethically limited in its proper jurisdiction. Here's my thesis for this evening. If the state lacks a moral warrant for imposing a civil penalty upon someone for violating a public statute, its punitive action would in fact be indistinguishable from murder, kidnapping, or theft. What's the difference between a bunch of us getting together as thugs and going out and taking somebody's money, and people who make statutes in a white building somewhere passing a law that your money can be taken? What's the difference? The only conceivable, morally relevant difference is that God has authorized the guys in the white building to do it, and not the thugs who go out tonight to do it on their own. But therefore, if God has not authorized them to do it, then those guys in the white building are no different morally, no different than thugs, Are they? As Augustine put it so many years ago, without justice, what are states but great bands of robbers? If you don't have justice, divinely established justice lying behind what you do, then when you find somebody, you're really just taking their money without authorization. That's theft. When you imprison somebody, you're kidnapping them. And when you execute somebody, to put it bluntly, you're murdering them. And therefore there must be objective limits, legal coercion. There must be a law that is above our civil law, to which appeal can be made to warrant encroaching upon a person's life or a person's liberty or a person's property. And it's that law that is above the law, the law of God which is above the civil law, that gives us a realm of appeal against oppression and against injustice. The objective criterion that must govern the state. I'm arguing as a Christian dedicated to the messianic work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the objective criterion must be the revealed law of God as it prescribes civil penalties for misdeeds. It's God's law that enables us to distinguish consistently and to distinguish on principle between where the state may properly legislate and where it may not interfere. And I'd like to illustrate that point in two ways tonight, talking about welfare and warfare. And what I'm going to try to show you is that because we have departed from the law of God in terms of social issues, we've been stuck with a messianic state in the areas of welfare and a messianic state in the area of warfare as well as. So let's talk about welfare. Should those who are disabled, those who have been unfortunate, those who have been handicapped, those who may have medical problems, should people who are down and out be helped from a Christian standpoint? Now I'm going to trust, especially since I was given a short time to make this point, that you all come in here, know the answer to that question. I don't have to convince you that Christians are supposed to be interested in helping those who are less fortunate than ourselves. You see, if you don't have love in your heart for your brother who is hungry, the Bible says, don't dare say that you love God. So this is a very strong point. It's a very obvious point, I hope. And so I'm going to say from the very outset, welfare should be in our hearts and on our minds. We should be interested in doing the work of helping those who are poor, those who are homeless, those who are fatherless. Those who have children out of wedlock, whatever it may be. Christians have got good news, and they have good deeds that follow the good news for people who are in this situation. So I believe in welfare. I do not believe that welfare should be administered by the civil state. Now, it may be at this point you may think, well, you've just stepped out of, you know, the rational zone. You're in the twilight zone now, Dr. Bonson. You must be in another universe. What do you mean the state should not be involved in acts of welfare? Well, let me try to explain. I don't believe that the size of the federal budget is an indicator of Christian compassion. I don't believe the amount of money that is given to acts of welfare of various sorts in this country has anything whatsoever to do with Christian compassion. And as a matter of fact, what the United States government and other governments around the world ordinarily do when it comes to welfare doesn't prove to be compassionate at all. At all. Okay, so I'm taking a very strong position. I'd like to tell you why. Let me begin by pointing out that welfare in God's eyes is not a matter of good intentions. You know, if you come into my church and you're not properly clothed and you're hungry and so forth, and I have the good intentions to say, well, be warm, be filled. What does James say about that kind of faith? It's dead. It's worthless. In fact, you're not going to be saved by God if that's the way you act. Good intentions are not good enough. And at best, I'm not even sure there are good intentions. Now, okay, that may make me look cynical, but even if we grant that there are good intentions on the part of politicians who vote money out of our pockets to take care of people who are poor, good intentions are not good enough. And if you'll think through the issue and if you'll look at the history of the welfare state in this country, it'll be obvious to us that we are not effective in helping people through the welfare programs that we ordinarily associate with compassion. The very things that this very week and previously are being debated in Washington, D.C. about who really cares about school children eating lunches and so forth. There's so much demagoguery in this country, there's no room for rationality anymore. The way people talk in this kind of issue, it's just preposterous. Let's see if we can go a little slower, be a little less emotional and analyze the situation. A professor at Hillsdale College, Michael Bauman has written a few things by way of summary which I find very helpful. I'd like to share with you this evening about this question of the effectiveness of welfare. Let's look at a few quick issues. Minimum wage laws, most everybody would say, well, the state should certainly, you know, force employers to pay a certain amount of livable wage to people who work for them. Bauman points out we have to remember that the lowest paid workers are normally those with the least skill and experience. That is to say, the reason why people are the lowest paid workers is because they're the least desirable. This is not an, you know, I'm not trying to be personal, I'm not trying to be mean, but you all know this. If you work at all, and especially if you hire people to work, some people are more desirable as employees, as others, and there are some who are the least desirable from the standpoint of what you would pay for. When you artificially elevate the wage of that individual, you make it increasingly unlikely that that person will keep a job or get a job for you. See, if the state tells me, I've got to pay you $20 an hour and you're a high school dropout and you have no particular mechanical skills, insight, creativity and so forth, what's the likelihood I'm going to hire you for $20 an hour? The only thing I can get you to do is to sweep the floors in my factory, hypothetically. Well, that isn't worth $20 an hour to me. And so what happens to the person who would be hired at $1.50 an hour, but because the state tells me I must pay 20, I'm giving you an extreme example to illustrate my point. The minimum wage hasn't become $20, has it? Maybe I ought to get out of this line of work. If it has. If the minimum wage were made $20, isn't it obvious to us that this person who's unskilled goes in, says, listen, I'm willing to, to sweep your floors to make some money. You're going to say, I can't hire you. The government will not allow me to do so. And so, in the name of compassion, minimum wage laws always block from the marketplace people who need to get on the lowest rung of the ladder. Moreover, those companies that honor minimum wage laws because they have to up the salary, they obviously have to up what the price they charge the consumer for whatever service or product it is they're making. And therefore what happens is those businesses make it less likely that they're going to succeed in a competitive economy because their prices have been artificially raised. You see, if you want to see effective compassion, you need to look at McDonald's. It's not a state program, praise God. It's not a state program. Because if it were, it would be a mess. Every state program that I know of is. I don't know any. When people were talking, you know, a couple years ago about whether the state should be involved in health care, I found the most effective way to refute the whole idea is just to ask people, would you like health care run the way the post office is going, Whenever the state touches something that God hasn't given it permission to touch, it messes it up. It's the opposite of the Midas touch. You know, Midas from the old story. Touch things, they turn to gold. When the state touches things, they turn to crap. The state is not able to manage things, praise God for McDonald's. Why is that? Not because I particularly like it. I don't. I'll go. But what a great, you know, model, ideal model of compassion. You know why? Because it is able to take people who are unskilled, who have no future, who maybe no responsibility in their lives, and give them a start down the road to success. That's how you help the poor. Not with a hand out, with a hand up. You help the poor by showing them how to be responsible, and you enable them to get into the market, even at the lowest rung, and then do something with their lives. Housing laws are often looked at as an example of welfare. People are not going to be able to live if they can't afford a place that they're going to rent. And so you've got to put rent controls on people. You mustn't forget, as Michael Bauman points out, that the purchase price for a renter is always the selling price for a landlord. You tell a landlord that he has to keep his rents at a certain level, which he feels is unjust and will not profit him, will not make it worth his while to manage that property. You know what he does? He sells it. He sells it to somebody who's going to turn it into a condominium. Now watch what happens in the free market when you do this. Those apartments, which would have been more costly without rent controls, are no longer available, and therefore there's fewer apartments on the market. So that makes it harder for people to find a place to live. We achieve the very opposite of what we have set out to do. So Then people come along not having learned their lesson about involvement in the free market at the first level. They say, okay, well then we'll have laws that make it wrong for a person to sell his apartment to somebody who will make a condominium out of it. Say, see, we need more laws to correct the bad laws we already have made. And you know what happens then? Landlords tear down their apartments and build parking lots of that will not be regulated. And why not? You must. I mean, you watch the tv, which is about as mindless as social commentary as you can find. You watch the TV and people who do that are always portrayed as, you know, black hearted, terrible people. But stop and think about it. Why should I have to subsidize somebody else's living? If I own this property, I want to make it profitable for my children, for my family, and even if I'm being greedy for me, but why should I have to live for you or for anybody else? So if the state comes in and makes it unprofitable for me to have an apartment building, then I'm going to find something else to do with the property. And what happens then is that you have less places to live and the cost of an apartment eventually has to go up or the availability becomes even less and therefore the poor suffer. In the name of helping the poor, we've been hurting the poor people. Think thirdly about welfare laws. You might think that it's just an obvious act of Christian compassion, that if a young lady has a child out of wedlock and there's no male breadwinner around, the state's got to step in and provide food and clothing and shelter. Well, I think it would be good if somebody stepped in and did that. But I don't believe the state should do so. And I think even when the church and families step in and do so, they'd better do it very wisely. Because if you don't, then you have the same situation that we've created in the state today. And that is we have in fact encouraged, we've encouraged that kind of lifestyle that produces children out of wedlock. What happens is the young woman no longer has the disincentive to consider the consequences of her sexual licentiousness. And on top of this, you're not going to believe this. It's just so contrary to common sense and all decency. But the state usually tells a woman if she has one child out of wedlock, she cannot have support for the next child she has out of wedlock unless it's by another. Man, if it's by the same man, then it's assumed that there's some kind of family arrangement and then he has to take responsibility. Can you imagine that? So the state actually subsidizes and encourages, without thinking it's doing so, encourages licentious, libertine living. And what does the state say to young men who get their girlfriends pregnant and then walk away from the situation? What the state is basically saying is, if you're irresponsible, we're going to step in and take care of it. There was a day, not that everybody lived up to it, to be sure, but there certainly was a day not that long ago, maybe some of you in this room can remember, where the general social pressure was that if a young man got a woman pregnant, whether he married her or not, he'd take care of her and the child. Well, why do that now when Uncle Sam will do it for you? And so you see, welfare that provides for women that are in need in that way proves to be counterproductive. It actually subsidizes immoral living in Sweden, which subsidizes unwed mothers even more generously than we do. Dr. Bauman points out, in Sweden you have the highest rate of illegitimacy in the world. Now, is that an accident? Of course, whatever you subsidize, you're going to get more, making it impossible for them to really learn the skills of thrift, industry, responsibility by which they could eventually get out of their poverty. And so I maintain that the size of the federal budget is by no means an indicator of Christian compassion. But I want to say even more than that, because we have Christians like Ronald Sider who have told us that it in fact is biblical, that the state would be involved in matters of welfare. Let me quote something that he had to say in a well known book from a few years ago. Ronald Sider says Yahweh wills institutionalized structures rather than mere charity, which systematically and regularly reduce the gap between the rich and the poor. He forthrightly says, what we need is a change in public policy. We need to, and I quote, call on the government to legislate. And continuing the text we have examined, he says, clearly show that God wills justice, not mere charity. God wills prosperity with justice. But that does not mean that wealthy persons who make Christmas baskets and give to relief have satisfied God's demand. God wills justice for the poor. And justice, as we have seen, means things like the jubilee and the sabbatical remission of debts. It means economic structures that check the emergence of the extremes of wealth and poverty. It means massive economic sharing among God's people. Prosperity without that kind of biblical concern for justice unambiguously signifies disobedience. Well, you can hardly put it plainer. Here's a man who says it is sinful if the state does not legislate to take care of matters of welfare. And I would say very simply in response to Dr. Sider, that by calling upon the state to enforce economic provisions which compel people to show preference for the poor in their use of money, Dr. Sider is no longer talking about love that is practiced from the heart, self sacrificially. He's no longer talking about grace and self sacrifice. He's actually, in the name of justice, distorted what grace and Christian love are all about. The biblical concept of justice is not the one that we hear when people say justice demands charity. No, you see, charity is charity because it's not a matter of justice, it's a matter of love. Freely given, graciously provided help. Moreover, the sort of thing that Dr. Seider is talking about, which shows preference to the poor in the policies of the state, the state taxes people, but not everybody enjoys tax. I mean some kind of relief economically. It taxes people for the sake of this poor portion of society called the poor. And yet God's word openly forbids showing that kind of respect to people in judgment. Proverbs 24:23 and Proverbs 28:21 tell us that God abominates that when respect is shown to persons, According to the Bible, justice, which is the domain of the state, is supposed to be blind. It's not to take account of a person's racial status, or social status, or economic status. God's word explicitly forbids showing preference to the rich or to the poor. Listen to Exodus 23:3. Neither shall you favor a poor man in his cause. God's normative view of justice precludes the preferential policies that are advocated by Ronald Sider and others in the name of justice. Leviticus 19:15, you shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor defer to the great, but you shall judge your neighbor fairly. Now, the only cogent way to escape this refutation is to argue that God himself in his revealed word, demands, as a matter of justice, preferential economic policies to be enforced by the state. But you see, the one thing that you will not find in the Bible, even by a misguided appeal to the jubilee laws and so forth, is any provision that the state enforce economic welfare and if God has not authorized the state to enforce economic welfare, then what do we have to make of the enforcement of economic welfare? Remember the logic earlier in the lecture. That's a matter of theft, isn't it? Now don't get me wrong. If God says that's what the state is to do, then all Christians should say, God's will be done. That's fine. But if it's not God's will, then the state is using compulsion to accomplish something God has not authorized it to do. So the greatest difficulty that I have with Dr. Economic proposals for helping the poor is that it in fact requires the state to act and operate beyond its proper limits. If God has not given the state the duty to take care of the poor and to punish people for failure to pay their taxes or whatever to cooperate in that way, then the state is acting on its own authority. And that's no different than you and I getting together tonight and saying, let's go roll some rich people to give to some poor people because we have good intentions. Now I want to observe that evangelicals of both politically conservative and politically liberal varieties have transgressed the principle that I'm trying to teach you in tonight's lecture. They've transgressed the principle that God's law determines the limits of the state's authority. Those with conservative leanings have tended to promote ethically commendable goals, such as the restriction on the spread of communism in the world. But they've done it by less than ethical means, calling upon the state to exercise its power of compulsion when there is no biblical warrant that can be cogently adduced for it. Likewise, those who are evangelicals of more liberal leaning have tended to promote ethically commendable goals, like for food and medical care for the poor, but by less than ethical means, calling upon the state to exercise its power of compulsion where there can be no biblical warrant deduced for it. And so, no matter how ethically good these various projects may be, restricting communism or feeding the poor, no matter how ethically good they are as ends. The question is what is the God given means to achieve them? Attempting to get the civil authorities to enforce those ends without the warrant of God's word, is to capitulate to the principle of Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, who said what counts as justice is simply what's in the interest of the stronger. What we call justice will simply be what the majority party says, or what the king says, or the Parliament. Whoever has the power says justice is not a matter of personal opinion. It's not a matter of intentions. Justice is a matter of what God says is right and what is wrong when it comes to compelling the behavior of our neighbors. That state which overextends its authority to promote or enforce whatever aims it wishes, even if the aims are commendable ones, it's a state that's abused its power, which was delegated to it from God. That's why God in Deuteronomy 17 explicitly forbids kings to swerve to the right or to the left of the well defined path of his law. How can we forget the memorable words of our Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:21 where he says there is a defining limit upon the thing, things which belong to Caesar. When Caesar demands of his subjects more than what is his, what Paul calls his due in Romans 13:7, then Caesar's government inevitably acts as a throne of wickedness, framing mischief by a law. Psalm 94:20 and the Bible says categorically Isaiah 10:1, Woe to those who enact evil statutes. The state exceeds its limit and becomes that beast rather than the God ordained servant that Paul calls it. The state can't do the job, it can't live up to being God. And so the false Messiah is always a failed Messiah as well. And briefly, as we come to the end of this lecture, I want to illustrate that with respect to warfare as well, this is a very sad, sometimes very emotional matter. But we have to understand that when the state decides, even for ethically good aims, to involve itself in warfare that is not authorized by God, it always fails to be the Messiah. And we suffer. We suffer in money, which is bad enough, I suppose. We suffer in terms of our property, but we suffer in blood. States in the 20th century have come to be interventionist states that engage in crusades. I call them crusades because they're warfare for allegedly good causes. To make the world safe for democracy, the war to end all wars, to rescue the oppressed, to protect the world against nuclear proliferation, to protect the world against the dictators. And you fill in the blank. We've had a series of them over the last 25 years. Now the question I have though is do nations, let's use the United States as our example. Do nations have moral responsibility for what happens in foreign regimes? It's a very simple question. Do states, do nations have moral responsibility, even in the name of justice, for what happens in foreign regimes? Now, if it does have that right, as a Christian, you know the easiest way to prove the point? In fact, the only way to prove the point that's relevant. Go to the Bible and show that. And where in the Bible has God authorized nations to intervene in the affairs of other nations? But there is one place I can think of right off top of my head. That's where God commanded holy war for Old Testament Israel when it conquered the land. And sadly, I've actually heard Christians not understanding how deplorable this reasoning is. I've actually heard Christians use that as moral warrant and background for the United States engaging in intervention in other countries. But the United States is not Old Testament Israel. The United States is not the specially called people of God. The United States is not a geopolitical kingdom that God has called his own special kingdom. And even if it were blasphemous to say that it is, but even if it were, God, nowhere in His Word has authorized the United States to intervene in the way that he authorized Israel to do. I mean, to get rid of this argument, I usually tell people, you can show me that God has revealed. We're supposed to do that. Who can argue with God? Of course. But if you can't show me, then you have presumed to speak for the Almighty without His authorization. Let's not be prissy about this tonight. Do you know what happens in warfare? Do you understand bloodshed? Do you understand maiming? Do you understand death? Do you understand families torn apart, children without their fathers anymore? Do you understand the suffering that this brings? If you think that can be authorized without a word from God, then you really are arrogant. Now where has God authorized us to engage in warfare? I believe he has authorized it. Make it very clear, because some of you may be nervous. Oh, we got one of those peaceniks up here. Now I'm not at all. I believe in war. I'm not happy about it, but I believe there's a place for it morally. And it's called self defense. We have every right to protect ourselves against aggression. We have no right to try to make the world a great place for democracy or cheap oil or anything else. God has not authorized the United States of America to play world policeman. Messianic pretensions must be avoided by states because as I said earlier in my lecture, good intentions are not sufficient to make an action morally right. I want you to notice something. In Proverbs 26:17, God warns against meddling in the quarrels of others. Indeed, in Proverbs 11:15 and Proverbs 17:18, God warns us against becoming a surety for another, I.e. somebody who will pay the debt of another backing up the commitments of another person. God warns us against doing that. God has not authorized us as a nation to take care of the moral misdeeds of other nations or other dictators and so forth, and has warned against meddling. The issue here, to put it very simply, because our time is going to run out, is one of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction. When God gives authority to someone to govern in some way the life or lives of other people, he is granted jurisdiction. And that jurisdiction is always circumscribed. Always circumscribed. God gives jurisdiction in circumscribed areas of lawful authority. Quick example. I do my best to raise my children to glorify God and to obey Him. And that means that I discipline my children. Of course, they're grown now, and I don't do as much of that. Or at least the discipline is not in the same form. But I do my best to govern my household. God's given me these children as a charge from him, and I try to do my best to make them godly. I live in a neighborhood where not all parents do things the way I do things. Worse, I live in a neighborhood where in some households, parents are not even trying to achieve the same goals that I'm trying to achieve. And sometimes, well, all the time. And those families that don't try to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. You have family problems, don't you? And often hellions for children. Now, I want to know, since God has made me a parent, do I have the authority to go next door and spank my neighbor's children? Does anybody here think that follows? God's given me authority. I have jurisdiction over my home. So why can't I have jurisdiction over all homes? Why can't I come into your home tonight and do a little investigation and clean up where I think you're not doing things right. Well, I'll tell you, you wouldn't like me at all if I did that. And you'd know that it's not just a matter of being discourteous. It's immoral because God hasn't made me the head of your house. So you understand jurisdiction. Another example. I'm a member of a conservative Presbyterian denomination. Some people don't think Presbyterians can be conservative, but there are a few of us around. And our denomination is committed to the word of God and to a historic confession of faith and so forth. And we believe in disciplining people. I'll just take an example. Disciplining a sexual Immorality from which there's no repentance. Okay? Now, in our denomination, we believe in doing that. So if some pastor or some member were living in sin, sexual sin, and didn't repent of it, we'd eventually have to do what the Bible says and put them out, excommunicate them. Does that mean that my denomination has the right to excommunicate sexual sin in any church, anywhere at all on earth? Not at all. I sometimes think we wish we could, but we know we are not supposed to. God hasn't given us jurisdiction in all churches. That's what I'm getting at when I speak of jurisdiction. This principle of the home, this principle of the church, applies to the state as well. The state has not been authorized by God to use its police powers, its sword, anywhere else but in that state itself. The fact that you're a ruler, some nation, doesn't mean that you have jurisdiction in all nations. And that is just as true for the United States, which I love. I'm a patriot. I'll tell you straight out, I think we're the greatest nation on earth. I think for that very reason, we'll be judged the more severely by not living up to God's standards. And we are not living up to God's standards when we think we are the world policeman in Somalia, when it comes to Iraq or any other place on the face of the earth where we do not have jurisdiction. Now, immediately somebody will say, now wait a minute, Dr. Vaughnson, if my neighbor were doing something terrible, say he was beating up his wife or killing his children, you know, make it as bad as you want. Are you saying that I, as a neighbor, would have no right to intervene to try to help that poor person that's being beat up? No, I'm not saying that at all. I think you do have a moral. You not only have the moral permission, you have the moral obligation to help a neighbor who's being attacked. And the reason why people use this analogy and don't realize the fallacy of their thinking is because they don't see the difference between my choosing to involve myself in helping a neighbor that's being beat up and my choosing, as the President of the United States or a member of Congress, whatever it may be, to have other people involved in what may be a deadly venture. If I wish to use my money and maybe even spill my blood in helping a person that's being afflicted, I have every right to do that. But God does not give me any right to commit you to it. And when we're talking about warfare, we must remember the people who send the soldiers to war don't go to war. Even if they did, it wouldn't be right to compel the others. But my point is, when Washington sends my sons to battle, they're not asking my sons, would you freely like to pay your way over there and be a mercenary to help these poor people? Washington's saying, you all will pay for the possible death of my children. And I'm saying that's ungodly. And it's ungodly because the issue when it comes to the state is whether it's it has the authority from the Almighty to take a person's life, to take a person's money, to take a person's freedom. That's the principle I've been teaching you tonight. If we as Christians will not apply this biblical principle to the state, what we will end up with is a beast. Regardless of your views on prophecy in Revelation 13, what we will have as a state that presumes to govern anything and everything without God, say so. The state is an agency of coercion. And for that very reason the coercion of the state must be limited by God. It is immoral and I dare say foolish for any nation to try and play God by acting as an international policeman or as the savior of the downtrodden nations and to use its might, the sword that's been assigned it from God, to accomplish those ends. If God in his wisdom has not morally authorized the use of violence in helping another nation, the civil magistrate may not usurp the authority to do so, coercing his citizens to carry out what he has no legitimate right to do. And when he tries to do it, when we try to do it as a nation, we become a false messiah. And so in tonight's lecture, the first point that I wanted to make as a hot potato issue is that Christians have an oven mitt when it comes to the welfare debate that's about us and the warfare debates that are often among us. And the way in which we handle that hot potato is by going to the Scripture and pointing out that governments only have authority to coerce as far as God gives them that authority. And secondly, God has not given them that authority when it comes to welfare and when it comes to warfare outside of our own boundaries, outside of our own self defense. Now, when we come back in our next lecture, I'm going to add another principle of Christian jurisprudence and sociopolitical justice. And we'll be talking about who has rights to do what they wish to do. And is there such a thing as a right to be a homosexual?