This post contains an affiliate link. If you make a purchase through this link, I may receive compensation at no additional cost to you.
This article was written entirely by Lauren Scott with no use of artificial intelligence. Thank you for supporting my work.

Freedom is hard won but easily lost. When you begin to lose your freedom, you’ll hardly notice. The compromise that leads to bondage is effective only because you’re convinced that you’re getting something you want. The temptation to trade freedom for pleasure, security, influence, or purchasing power is only tempting and effective because it’s predicated on convincing you that you’re getting a good deal.

No Neutral Ground

The enemy of our souls uses the same tactics in both spiritual and political arenas. And who’s to say they are altogether separate domains anyway? They are two battlegrounds of the same spiritual war.

Spiritual beings, after all, aren’t subject to the separation of church and state, however well we imagine we’re applying that principle to humans.

The nature of man and the nature of temptation are present in every human institution. This is unavoidable. And Satan doesn’t take a break just because a person steps into a public office or a public school.

I shudder to think that he rather ramps up his activity in places that prohibit the things of God. Sweeping clean of spirituality just invites more of the worst kind.

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Jesus, in Matthew 12:43-45).

A Christian’s relationship to the state (or governing authorities generally) cannot be separated from the rule of Jesus Christ. This does not mean we’re called to set up a theocracy. But it does mean that we cannot accept that the state and its institutions are neutral or truly, thoroughly “secular”.

The state and its institutions are made up of people—people who are made in the image of God, people who will live forever in eternal joy or eternal anguish, people who are subject to spiritual influences whether they believe in them or not.

So when the state makes an enticing offer to the people, Christians ought to beware. Whether it takes the form of welfare benefits that help this demographic or that, or whether it promises to use all lawful power (and then a heap more) to accomplish attractive ends, both favors and power can be tools of manipulation, bribes. Beware.

The Pattern of Temptation

When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Satan first aimed to have Jesus seek provision outside of God’s will (to break His fast by turning stones into bread). After next suggesting He test God, the devil turned to his third ploy: he offered Jesus power if only He would bow down and worship the devil.

Provision. Power. All yours if you will operate outside of God’s revealed will, if you will pledge your allegiance to someone or something that is not God.

Eve in the garden faced the temptation of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The devil promised her that “she would not surely die.” The obvious consequences of taking the fruit (obvious because of God’s direct warning) were cast aside as fear mongering.

Cross the line. Take and eat. You will not surely die.

In fact, says the serpent, “you will be like God…”

There’s the lure of power, in this case by way of knowledge.

She saw that the fruit was good for food… There’s the lure of provision outside of the will of God.

The Israelites wandered in the wilderness and complained against God, longing for the provision of Egypt, willing rather to go back to slavery and be well-fed than to continue in freedom and reliance upon God. “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” They were seeking provision outside of God’s will and would have accepted a bribe of food to return to servitude.

Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. And he has become a proverbial warning to those who would value worldly pleasures more highly than the blessing of God.

The Israelites asked Samuel for a king despite being warned that such a ruler would conscript their children, tax their produce, and eventually enslave them all. But the people persisted. They’d rather be like the nations around them, having the power of a king to go before them in battle, than to trust in the LORD as their king and remain free.

Democracy in America: For Better or for Worse?

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville identified two key human tendencies by which democracies could bring about their own demise: 1) valuing equality over freedom and 2) happily electing and consolidating power in the hands of a ruler that reflects their interests. (All quotes in this section are from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.)

“I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible; they call for equality in freedom, and, if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism; but they will not endure aristocracy.”

Here Tocqueville wrestles with the problem of equality taking precedence over freedom. We see the push for this today from both sides of the line in taxpayer-funded provision of some sort designed to “level the playing field”. For some, regardless of party affiliation, as long as equality of condition is the objective, it does not matter how much individual liberty gets trampled in the process. The provision that brings about “equality” is sought above all.

“Men who live in the ages of equality are naturally fond of central power, and are willing to extend its privileges; but if it happens that this same power faithfully represents their own interests, and exactly copies their own inclinations, the confidence they place in it knows no bounds, and they think that whatever they bestow upon it is bestowed upon themselves.”

Thus, electing a leader in their own image, the people gladly give greater powers to their own reflection, forgetting that their political enemies may do the same in the next election cycle.

The lures of both provision and power in our modern democratic age center around the inordinate (or imbalanced) value that the people place on equality. With this in mind, Tocqueville continues:

“The foremost, or indeed the sole condition, which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get the men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.”

Totalitarianism, or “democratic despotism”, as Tocqueville refers to it, occurs when the people give over their freedom to “a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; …they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons but the people at large, who hold the end of his chain.”

Thus by continually electing those who promise the greatest provision or the greatest extension of power to our tribe, we unwittingly set ourselves under a new form of despotism. Our love of equality—perhaps our envious hunger for it—makes us blind to the loss of our liberty.

But at least we have the right to vote for our subjugation.

We All Have a Choice: Sell or Stand

Eve had a choice—she cast a vote. So did Esau, the Israelites in the wilderness and those who later asked for a king.

Jesus, the Son of God, however, stood His ground. He responded to temptation with the Word of His Father. The temptations of the “prince of darkness” could not sway the King of Kings. Nor should such schemes sway those who follow in the Lord’s steps.

If you want a glimpse of what that kind of faithfulness looks like, read Hebrews 11:1-12:3. Be encouraged in your faith, but also take note of how often the testing of that faith comes by means of government: not only via persecution but also by offer of riches.

Where our allegiance lies matters. It matters eternally in spiritual things. It matters to politicians in worldly things—and they’ll offer a pretty price to purchase it from you.

When politicians on both sides of the line promise provision, the people are in a constant state of being bought—it’s just a matter of branding. And each election becomes a tug-of-war between the government-funded vision of “equality” preferred by one voting block and the vision preferred by the other.

When one party promises power over the other, government gets bigger. The people sell their freedom for the chance to “win,” just like the Israelites asking for a king. The back-and-forth from one party to another is just another tug-of-war—this time over an ever-larger beating stick. We justify its growth every time our side takes hold of it, and we cry foul when it’s taken by our opponents.

The enemy of our souls doesn’t advertise the destructive nature of what he’s pedaling. Nor do politicians like to tell us all that will be accomplished by their proposals and programs (whether intentionally or unintentionally). They’re selling something, too.

Being subjects of Christ and students of His Word ought to help us to discern when another master is attempting to purchase our allegiance. And it ought to help us to stand firm against it.

Eternal Vigilance

Jesus died to save sinners (me and you) from the wrath of God, giving us the hope of eternal life and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to live this life in a way that glorifies God and brings us the greatest good within His will. The price of our freedom and our inheritance is the blood of the Son of God. It’s costly. There is no higher price and no greater love. And so we Christians are called to be watchful of anything that would trample the blood of Christ, that would compromise our allegiance to Him first and foremost. We are to be vigilant in the battle against sin and temptation.

The freedom we enjoy today in America came at a great cost. Though it is a lesser freedom and a lesser cost, it was still hard won. And it can perhaps all-the-more-easily be set aside if we are not watchful, if we refuse to guard it.

The temptations that ruin souls also ruin nations. And our great experiment isn’t over. While our eternal salvation is in the bag, the enduring victory of America is yet to be won.

A woman once asked Benjamin Franklin regarding the Constitutional Convention: “What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?”

To which he responded: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Can we keep it?

*****

This essay only begins to scratch the surface of Christian civic responsibility. I intend to further that discussion in a forthcoming article.