Government and the Bible: Government is for punishing evil and rewarding good
Read More Looking Up
Read More Upward Glances
In the state of Texas, it is illegal to shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel. Neither are you allowed to sell you own eye. In our state capitol, you may not carry wire cutters in your pocket.
I discovered each of these when I searched for Texas' strangest laws. You can find list upon list of laws for almost every jurisdiction in America that we might call "strange" because governments around the country passed laws that seem to exceed, or at least no longer perform, the proper function of government in comic ways.
Sometimes, those overreaches are less comical. In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked documents that revealed the details about PRISM, a mass surveillance program run by the NSA that collected millions of communications from Internet service users from all over the world, including U.S. citizens.
Such overreaches raise questions about what government's role is should really be. In the middle of arguments over immigration, bathrooms and gender issues, gun control, trade agreements and deficits, same-sex marriage, tax equity, race and health care, what can we look to as a definitive statement on what government is for to guide what government does.
This question is more pressing given our current contentious election cycle. Given the difficult decision between myriad bad choices, it might behoove us to carefully consider our expectations of a leader and of a government.
It should not surprise you that the Bible has something to say about the role of government.
Chapter 13 of Paul's letter to the Romans begins with an exhortation to Christians to submit to "governing authorities" (Romans 13:1). The New Testament repeatedly urges Christians to submit to every level of authority above them. The verses in Romans 13 are special because they not only prescribe a response to government for Christians, but they also describe the purpose for which government exists in the first place.
This passage in Romans 13 makes the audacious claim that God Himself appoints those who come to power. If that's true, God elected Barack Obama to be our president long before the American people did. He also picked Vladimir Putin to lead Russia. And before we consider what it means that God must also have chosen Stalin and Hitler, remember that Nero was the emperor in Rome while Paul was writing to the Romans. He was telling them that God himself chose Nero, the emperor that used the bodies of burning, crucified Christians to light the city streets. But the church never grew as fast as it did under Nero. God has a purpose for the leaders he chooses, and they will suffer his judgment for failing to meet his standard. That's why the worst leaders in history met the most humiliating demises.
The role of government, Romans 13 goes on to claim, is to punish evil and reward good. A leader in government is "God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil" (Romans 13:4). While cases can be made for providing civil defense and a few other functions, the Bible seems very clear that a government's primary role is to encourage and reward citizens who do good and to punish those who do evil.
When I evaluate our own national government by this standard, I find it severely wanting. We spend 59 percent of our national budget on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP and "safety net programs;" we spend 16 percent of the budget on defense and 6 percent on interest for national debt. That means 81 percent of our budget is spent on things not even mentioned in the definitive statement in the New Testament on what a government should be.
As I look at the statistics from the Office of Management and Budget from 2015, my best and most liberal estimate for national spending directly on punishing evil and rewarding good is 8 percent. If what we spend our money on is an indication of our priorities, it would seem that our government is about 8 percent committed to what the Bible says is its primary function.
This does not change our response to the government. We are still called to submit to the governing authorities, but when we get to take part in choosing those authorities, I pray we will choose wisely.