Congressional Issues 2010
SOCIETY
The Politics of Salvation

Obama's Politics of Collective Redemption

On November 4, 2008, millions of Americans did not vote for "the President of the United States," that is, the Executive Officer created by Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
Instead, they voted for a Messiah.
This webpage is not about churches and preachers who sell "salvation" when you die.
It's about totalitarian dictators and tyrants who offer you their salvation -- and if you don't accept it, then you must die.

Who is America's Savior? In the Bible, the Hebrew word for "salvation" means "health," "welfare," "victory over enemies," "prosperity," etc. In the Bible, "salvation" usually does not mean "going to heaven when I die." In our day it is the State, not the Church, that promises Biblical "salvation." Instead of "salvation," churches promise escape, a religious narcotic. It is The State that promises Biblical Salvation. But The State uses the methods of violence -- extortion, slavery, confiscation, murder, imprisonment -- to bring salvation. Those who worship the State as their Messiah are willing to initiate force or threaten violence against the innocent in order to obtain salvation for themselves. The age of huge, centralized, messianic mega-states is the age of mega-death. Only when we trust God for salvation will there be "peace on earth, goodwill toward men." In every election our real choice is between the Iron Fist of Government or the Invisible Hand of Divine Providence.

Holistic Salvation

One of the greatest myths of the 20th century is that God intends only to snatch a few individuals from the global dictatorship of "The New World Order," taking them off to heaven while all of culture goes to hell. The modern "gospel" is that I get to go to heaven; ME, ME, ME, the big Numero Uno; I get to go to heaven while the nations around me collapse.

"Salvation" -- that is, "going to heaven when you die" -- is a major theme of the television preachers. There are over 1,000 chapters in the Bible; pick one of those chapters and you're likely to find more verses related to "governments" in that one chapter than there are verses in the entire Bible which expressly reveal what happens when you die. Most of the chapters in the Bible are about evil politicians. There are whole books of the Bible on this subject (1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings), and the Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Micah, etc.) are mostly denunciations of evil kings and the judgment they are bringing down on their nation. The opposite of "judgment" in this context is "salvation."

The "war on terror" and the October Bailout both promise what the Bible describes as "salvation": security, safety, and economic well-being.

There are more promises in the Bible about the salvation of entire nations than there is about the salvation of one single selfish individual. God is more concerned than we are about the Salvation of a culture, of an entire society (which is composed of many individuals, the sum of which is in some ways greater than the parts).

Salvation: A Definition

Strong's Dictionary has the following entry for the Hebrew word commonly translated "salvation":

3444. yeshuw'ah, yesh-oo'-aw; fem. pass. part. of H3467; something saved, i.e. (abstr.) deliverance; hence aid, victory, prosperity:--deliverance, health, help (-ing), salvation, save, saving (health), welfare.

These words are physical and this-worldly. The Biblical word for "salvation" means much more than going to heaven when you die. It has to do with this present world.

The "Welfare State" and the "Warfare State" = a "Salvation State"

• Some pundits and commentators have said we live in a "welfare state."

A major part of government budgets consist of redistribution of wealth to the "needy" to aid them and ensure their welfare. You can see that this is a promise of "salvation" in the Biblical sense.

• Others have said we live in a "warfare state."

A huge part of our budget goes to the military so they can deliver us from our enemies, and give us victory. This too is part of the Biblical meaning of "salvation." "National Security" is part of "salvation."

• Both are correct. We live in a "welfare-warfare state."

And if Hillarycare (Hillary Clinton's proposal for nationalized health care) is passed as "Obamacare," some will say we live in a "healthcare state."

All are true. We don't just live in a "welfare state," or a "warfare state,"

We live in a "Salvation State."

We are under a State that promises everything that God promises in His Covenant. And we believe the promises of the State more than we believe God's promises. We look to the state for salvation in the Biblical sense of the word, relegating God to a completely neo-platonic sense of the word "salvation" (a spirit floating in heaven when I die). We think we're going to heaven after living a truly and comprehensively idolatrous life on earth.

Under the influence of "neo-platonism," modern Christians have reduced "salvation" to a completely other-worldly, non-physical status. All the blessings of Biblical salvation are ignored. This has had two disastrous effects.

1. Christians are "so heavenly-minded they are of no earthly good."
   • We have industrial park rent-a-churches instead of cathedrals designed to last a millennium.
   • Missionaries "save souls" but do not transform culture. (Today's multiculturalists condemn missionaries of the past for their "colonialism": eliminating cannibalism, suttee, human sacrifice, thuggism, witch-doctor dictatorships and other "indigenous" religious practices.)
   • Our culture slides into the abyss. Sexually-transmitted diseases skyrocket among 13 year-olds. The "Bible belt" has higher rates of divorce than among atheists. Shattered lives, broken hearts, scandalized unbelievers. "Pie in the sky by and by" means hell on earth (compare Matthew 6:10).
2. Secular Humanists attempt to create salvation through the State.
   • Hillary's Socialist Medicine Health Care plan (compare Exodus 15:26).
   • Millions of innocents murdered by NATO and the Military Industrial Complex; no demonstrable gains in "national security."
   • Attempts by the Federal Reserve Board to create prosperity result in oppression of the poor, and redistribution of power and wealth to a Secular Humanist elite.
   • Welfare state enslaves minorities, dumbs-down majorities, creates hard hearts and resentment.

At the bottom of this page are a few examples of how the Bible speaks of "salvation."

Two Themes: Archism and Secularism

"Archism"	Secularism
Jesus said the kings of the Gentiles love to be "archists," but Christ's disciples are to reject this in favor of being servants (Mark 10:42-45).	Jesus said we are to love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul and strength -- the diametrical opposite of "secular."
The shift from a traditional family-centered society to a politically-centered society is a shift from service to archism.	And in our day, the shift is from a society "under God" to a secular society, from a society that publicly and officially acknowledges its duty to God, to a secular society that refuses to acknowledge that duty publicly and officially, refuses to endorse the most fundamental "self-evident truths."

The political society in which we live is based on both archism and secularism.

• Archism: It teaches us that when our goals are frustrated, and people don't do what we think they should do, we are allowed to "vote" for others to take vengeance against them, or use force and threats of violence to coerce them into doing what we think they should do. "Archism" is the biggest government lie in all of history.
• Secularism: It also teaches us that God and religion are "private" matters, and God's Commandments should not be brought into any discussion about the "public" policies of the polis, including the basic question of whether our lives should be dominated by archism or by service.

When ancient Israel decided to emulate the pagan nations around them, making the shift from a family-centered society to a political society, God told them that this represented a rejection of God's government and law, and with all such violations, would come the curses of the covenant. The curses specifically detailed by Samuel to the people included taxation to the tune of 10% (1 Samuel 8).

America's Founding Fathers took up arms against a government that taxed only 3-5%. Today government takes fully half of everything we earn. Then when we try to spend the money that wasn't withheld from our paychecks, we find that the wealth that is left to us by all levels of government is then taxed again, as corporations and manufacturers pass on accumulated "anti-business" taxes to consumers.

• As much as half of the price of gasoline at the pump is made up of taxes by various levels of government.
• How would you like to purchase a new $23,000 Ford Taurus for only $12,650? That's the price you would pay if the government didn't tax every product you buy at every stage of its production, reports Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).
• The amount of taxes you pay for every product you buy runs from 30% to 70%.

In other words, the government not only takes half "your" money before you spend it, it takes half again when you exchange "your" money for the goods and services you want.

But the Bible says to pay your taxes, so that's not the complaint of this essay, and joining the "tax protest" movement is not advocated. Taxes are a symptom, as 1 Samuel 8 makes plain. The important point to be made with regard to the fact that government takes 75% of everything we earn, is that the government then uses that money to regulate our lives and transform our culture, turning us from Christ to the principles of archism and secularism. It may be safe to say that 75% of our day is dictated by the government. Where we live, where we work, what we do for a living, what products we consume, and many other questions are determined directly and indirectly by government regulation. Whereas homeschoolers know that only 3-4 hours a day are needed for "schooling," most students in government-run schools have a much larger percentage of their waking hours governed by state schools. After-school hours are not dictated by family businesses, but by government's child-labor laws and minimum wage laws, which keep young men and women unemployed and lacking in entrepreneurial skills and experience. Fear of lawsuits also dictate actions by private citizens who are to one degree or another tied to public institutions. Mention of religion or even permitting the free exercise of religion can be deemed an "unconstitutional" "endorsement" of religion, and invite expensive litigation from the ACLU and other anti-Christian forces.

We can complain about MTV, but how much of our money does MTV take? Could MTV come into existence in a culture that was explicitly Christian and taught the Bible in all its schools? The real influence in our culture is the institution that gets our money. And that influence is of a decidedly secularizing force.

The influence is pervasive. Few people have ever given much thought about how our lives -- and thoughts -- have been shaped by the secular polis. Those who have attempted to change society, to inject an explicitly Christian message into the public square, have run into the obstacles. They've been told by the bureaucrats, "We can't do that. That would be a violation of the separation of church and state." Most people have never tried to make our society more Christian.  Most people have not directly tried to repel the forces of secularism in our society. Most people are completely unaware of who is calling the shots in their lives. Most people walk in line, following the person in front of them. We learn this lesson in the earliest years of government schooling.

We are where we are, who we are, and doing what we do largely because of

• how the government has organized our society,
• how we unconsciously go along with their agenda,
• even how our parents went along with the government's agenda.

The Myth of Salvation

Christian theology has now at most a place in the margins of modern university. Control over research and education became crucial for the state. Many countries have university systems led and  monopolized by the state. Today both science and universities are legitimated by their role in this salvation story. The state theologians are economists and social and natural scientists. They produce the knowledge necessary for our salvation. What they do is thus of national importance. Science as Salvation: George Lakoff and Steven Pinker as Secular Political Theologians | Arne Rasmusson - Academia.edu

"All this talk about politics is missing the point," some will say. "The REAL point of the Bible is our salvation, and you're distracting us from that central issue."

This concept of "salvation" is a dangerous myth, and is part of our idolatrous thinking.

We don't think self-consciously about what God wants us to do and compare and contrast that with what Caesar demands of us. We have been trained to narrow our field of vision to exclude Biblical choices and promises for the entire planet. We serve the State because we believe the State will provide us with health, comfort, victory over enemies -- in short, everything that is contained in the Biblical word for "salvation."

Jesus said we are to love and serve the Lord with all our being, heart, mind, soul, and strength. When He said we are to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," He was not justifying the existence of the secular Salvation-State, but indicting those who did not love and serve the Lord, but worshipped Caesar. The Bible says that being under "tribute" is a curse upon a faithless people (Proverbs 12:24). "Taxation" (tribute) is a curse. The act of taxing is evil. An obedient heart does not blithely accept being under tribute as though the situation were normal. A heart that is faithful will not act as the violent revolutionary to remove a symptom of faithlessness without dealing with the underlying idolatry that offends God, but the faithful heart will seek to discern God's will, motivated in part by the desire to avoid God's curse. The point is not just taxes. The point is that Israel accepted slavery. Slavery was comfortable. Slavery meant their salvation, their health, safety and welfare. They didn't want Jesus rocking the boat. "We have no king but Caesar," they said (John 19:15). They rejected the Messiah in favor of a messianic state.

When the coin was handed to Jesus, He did not yet answer their question, "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" Instead, He asked another question: "Whose is this image and superscription?" (Matt. 22:20; Mark 12:16; Luke 20:24). The answer was, of course, "Caesar's." According to Geldenhuys, in his commentary on Luke, After their acknowledgment that it is Caesar's, the following two facts are vividly brought to light through Jesus' masterly handling of the situation: (1) Coins with Caesar's image and superscription are in use among the Jews. (2) The coins are evidently the property of Caesar, otherwise they would not have borne his image and superscription. From these two facts it thus follows that the Jews had accepted the imperial rule as a practical reality, for it was the generally current view that a ruler's power extended as far as his coins were in use.      The practical reality was thus made clear. These men used the coins of Tiberius which carried a "bust of Tiberius in Olympian nakedness, adorned with the laurel wreath, the sign of divinity." The inscription read, "Emperor Tiberius August Son of the August God," on the one side, and "Pontifex Maximus" or "High Priest" on the other. The symbols also included the emperor's mother, Julia Augusta (Livia) sitting on the throne of the gods, holding the Olympian sceptre in her right hand, and, in her left, the olive branch to signify that "she was the earthly incarnation of the heavenly Pax." The Coins thus had a religious significance. Israel was in a certain sense serving other gods by being subject to Rome and to Roman currency. (From R.J. Rushdoony, "The Tribute Money," The Institutes of Biblical Law, The Craig Press, 1973, p. 718-23.)

Rushdoony quotes Prof. Stauffer who pointed out a well-known and oft-repeated imperial decree which stated, "There is no name under heaven by which men may be saved than that of Caesar Augustus." The Empire promised salvation, just as God promises salvation: health, welfare, prosperity, security. All nations had to be a part of the Roman Empire. All their gods were admitted to the Parthenon, because there was "freedom of religion."
But Christians had a different idea. The Apostle Peter said, There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved than the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12). And Christians were arrested, jailed, and martyred, while other religions were approved, licensed, and accredited by the State.

"we speak of civilization as a form of salvation" Carroll: Steven Pinker’s Cheesecake For The Mind

Most Christians today would rather have salvation from Caesar than risk everything for Jesus. "If I speak out I might lose my job."

We have re-defined "salvation," giving Caesar lordship over everything in this life, and expecting God to let us go to heaven after a life of idolatry.

Samuel warned the people that if they imitated the nations around them, they would be subjected to a 10% tax. If Samuel could view our society, with 50% overt tax-rates, 50% covert tax rates, and voluntary submission without complaint or protest to a vast array of regulations which completely dominate our lives, he would conclude that we worshipped Caesar.

A Biblical Christian must examine himself to see who is truly lord of his life. The first question he should ask as he reads every verse of the Bible should be "Who is the lord of my life?" "Who am I serving?" "Why do I do the things I do?"

For this reason, a Godly Bible study will always have political implications and seek to answer political questions.

Political Saviors

David Chilton writes about the Book of Revelation (c. AD 66):

John addressed the Revelation to the seven important churches in Asia Minor, and from these it received a wide distribution. Asia Minor was significant because the cult of Caesar-worship is dealt with at length in the prophecy—and Asia Minor was a major center of Caesar-worship. "Inscription after inscription testifies to the loyalty of the cities towards the Empire. At Ephesus, at Smyrna, at Pergamum, and indeed throughout the province the Church was confronted by an imperialism which was popular and patriotic, and bore the character of a religion. Nowhere was the Caesar-cult more popular than in Asia" (H.B. Swete, Commentary on Revelation [Kregel, 1977], p. lxxxix). After Julius Caesar died (29 B.C.), a temple honoring him as divus (god) was built in Ephesus. The Caesars who followed him didn't wait for death to provide such honors, and, beginning with Octavian, they asserted their own divinity, displaying their titles of deity in temples and on coins, particularly in the cities of Asia. Octavian changed his name to Augustus, a title of supreme majesty, dignity and reverence. He was called the Son of God, and as the divine-human mediator between heaven and earth he offered sacrifices to the gods. He was widely proclaimed as the Savior of the world, and the inscriptions on his coins were quite frankly messianic - their message declaring, as Ethelbert Stauffer has written, that "salvation is to be found in none other save Augustus, and there is no other name given to men in which they can be saved" (Christ and the Caesars [Westminster, 1955], p. 88). This pose was common to all the Caesars. Caesar was God; Caesar was Savior; Caesar was the only Lord. And they claimed not only the titles but the rights of deity as well. They taxed and confiscated property at will, took citizens' wives (and husbands) for their own pleasure, caused food shortages, exercised the power of life and death over their subjects, and generally attempted to rule every aspect of reality throughout the Empire. The philosophy of the Caesars can be summed up in one phrase which was used increasingly as the age progressed: Caesar is Lord! This was the main issue between Rome and the Christians: Who is Lord? Francis Schaeffer pointed out: "Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They were not killed because they worshiped Jesus…nobody cared who worshiped whom so long as the worshiper did not disrupt the unity of the state, centered in the formal worship of Caesar. The reason the Christians were killed was because they were rebels…they worshiped Jesus as God and they worshiped the infinite-personal God only. The Caesars would not tolerate this worshiping of the one God only. It was counted as treason" (How Should We Then Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture [Revell, 1976], p. 24). For Rome, the goal of any true morality and piety was the subordination of all things to the State; the religious, pious man was the one who recognized, at every point in life, the centrality of Rome. R. J. Rushdoony observes that "the framework for the religious and familial acts of piety was Rome itself, the central and most sacred community. Rome strictly controlled all rights of corporation, assembly, religious meetings, clubs, and street gatherings, and it brooked no possible rivalry to its centrality…. The state alone could organize; short of conspiracy, the citizens could not. On this ground alone, the highly organized Christian Church was an offense and an affront to the state, and an illegal organization readily suspected of conspiracy" (The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy [Thoburn Press, 1978], pp. 92f.). The witness of the apostles and the early Church was nothing less than a declaration of war against the pretensions of the Roman State. John asserted that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God (John 3:16); that He is, in fact, "the true God and eternal life" (1st John 5:20-21). The Apostle Peter declared, shortly after Pentecost: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). "The conflict of Christianity with Rome was thus political from the Roman perspective, although religious from the Christian perspective. The Christians were never asked to worship Rome's pagan gods; they were merely asked to recognize the religious primacy of the state…. The issue, then, was this: should the emperor's law, state law, govern both the state and the church, or were both state and church, emperor and bishop alike, under God's law? Who represented true and ultimate order, God or Rome, eternity or time? The Roman answer was Rome and time, and hence Christianity constituted a treasonable faith and a menace to political order" (Rushdoony, The One and the Many, p. 93). The charge brought by the prosecution in one first-century trial of Christians was that "they are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus" (Acts 17:7). This was the fundamental accusation against all the Christians of the Empire. The captain of police pleaded with the aged Bishop Polycarp to renounce this extreme position: "What harm is there in saying Caesar is Lord?" Polycarp refused, and was burned at the stake. Thousands suffered martyrdom on just this issue. For them, Jesus was not "God" in some upper-story, irrelevant sense; He was the only God, complete sovereign in every area. No aspect of reality could be exempt from His demands. Nothing was neutral. The Church confronted Rome with the inflexible claim of Christ's imperial authority: Jesus is the only-begotten Son; Jesus is God; Jesus is King; Jesus is Savior; Jesus is Lord. Here were two Empires, both attempting absolute world domination; and they were implacably at war. It was necessary for the churches of Asia to recognize this fully, with all its implications. Faith in Jesus Christ requires absolute submission to His Lordship, at every point, with no compromise. The confession of Christ meant conflict with statism, particularly in the provinces where official worship of Caesar was required for the transaction of everyday affairs. Failure to acknowledge the claims of the State would result in economic hardship and ruin, and often imprisonment, torture and death. Some Christians compromised: "Sure, Jesus is God. I worship Him at church and in private devotions. But I can still keep my job and my union status, even though they require me to give technical homage to pagan deities. It's a mere detail: after all, I still believe in Jesus in my heart…." But Christ's Lordship is universal, and the Bible makes no distinction between heart and conduct. Jesus is Lord of all. To acknowledge Him truly as Lord, we must serve Him everywhere. This is the primary message of the Revelation, and that which the Christians in Asia desperately needed to hear. They lived in the very heart of Satan's throne, the seat of Emperor-worship; John wrote to remind them of their true King, of their position with Him as kings and priests, and of the necessity to persevere in terms of His sovereign Word.

National Socialism as Religion

Let's look at some of the occurrences of the word "salvation" and learn more about the mind of God. For best results, read these verses in their context. (If your favorite commentator has a helpful observation on any of the passages below, please email it to us.)

next: Campaign Finance, Corruption and the Oath of Office