Government and Every Human Sphere of Influence Are Accountable to God
The American people have been bamboozled for more than two generations now into believing that their government can safely ignore God and his moral standards. The underlying presumption of this folly is that the God of the Bible is irrelevant—that there is not really a God at all, or if there is a God, that He is either too impotent or too distant to be concerned with the affairs of men. This humanist philosophy presumes that the wisdom of man is the standard of all things. There is no fear of a God who is all-powerful, all-wise, sovereign over all of nature and the affairs of men, and who is himself the one and absolute standard of truth, good and right.
Can we safely forget God, if He is the basis of all reality and all truth? Dare we look away from Scripture and trust only our own limited knowledge? Scripture reveals that the Fear of God in the beginning of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. How then can men or governments safely ignore His teachings? Would it not be the epitome of arrogant bull-headedness to ignore Him and His teachings? Are we not presuming on His patience in continuing our self-centered delusions? These are questions that must be asked of those who have foisted a mandate for godless government on the American people. More importantly, these are searching questions for those who know better, but have acquiesced to throwing God out of the affairs of men.
One of the most common means of foisting this arrogant presumption on the American people has been the groundless proposition that the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution commands a “separation of church and state.” People who actually read the First Amendment will search in vain for any such words. They are not there. People who take a bit of time to study the history of that Amendment and the Constitution as a whole will find that what is prohibited is for the federal government to establish an official denomination, such as Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Roman Catholic. But most emphatically, the federal government is also prohibited from preventing the free exercise of religion. Those who have not been blinded to truth by the all-pervasive secularist propaganda of our times will see that a major underlying presumption of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence is that the God of the Bible is the guiding standard of all truth, wisdom, and justice. The First Amendment emphatically does not insist on the silly and precarious idea that government and justice should be based on the humanist, agnostic, and atheistic religion of modern humanist liberalism.
To throw God out of government, our schools, and the courts is an insane distortion of the Constitution by those who would have no God but themselves. Those who know better and acquiesce to this distortion need a renewal of courage. Our cause is just and “An Appeal to Heaven.”
The Bible does teach that government and the Church in its various denominations have distinct functions and spheres of influence. The Church may preach salvation and righteousness and admonish against sin, but it does not make or enforce civil law. It may rebuke or sever a person from its privileges and membership, but it is not given the power of the sword. Government is given the power of the sword, but it is accountable to God. This accountability includes compatibility with God’s moral law. Government can and is obligated to enforce its laws by warnings, physical force, incarceration, or fine. Government may make and enforce civil law, but meddling with the teachings, worship, and government of the Church is off limits to civil government. When Thomas Jefferson used the phrase “a wall of separation” between church and government, he was attempting to assure Baptists that the federal government would not meddle in their teachings, government, and form of worship. Our religious freedom is not freedom from God. It is freedom from government meddling in the sphere of religion.
It is very important to understand that although both the Church and civil government have different spheres of influence and different functions; both the Church and civil government are under the sovereignty of God and are accountable to Him. Hence there can be no separation of God and State, only a separation of the functions of Church and State. Governments, judges, legislators, public officials, the Church, and the people are all accountable to God. Yet the irrelevance of God has become a steady drumbeat of our humanist dominated government, media and educational establishments. Shamefully, the American people have been bullied, browbeat, and misled into accepting such humanist arrogance. The secularist powers of statist humanistic religion presume in error, and the people protest too little.
All nature shouts that there must be a Designer. There must be a purpose. Can we safely ignore that voice? Should we not ask the nature of the Designer? Is this Designer the God of the Bible? Scripture and all nature proclaim it, although many are blind and deaf to it. This blindness is a spiritual affliction that also hinders understanding of the mind and heart. If there is no God, there is no meaning or purpose in life beyond survival for a brief time. If there is no God, then there is no hope of justice and no meaning in beauty or love, only relentless indifference and brute force. But if there is a God, we cannot safely ignore him. We dare not establish our notion of justice and government without consulting him. If there is a God, the God of the Bible, He is not only the God of creation, love, truth, beauty, and mercy, but also the God of justice, and of judgment.
Can we ignore God because we cannot understand the formidable prevalence of evil, lies, injustice, and tragedy in the world? This is a common objection to faith, but it lacks the inspired humility of faith. Isaiah 55: 8-9 reminds us: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts..” Romans 8:28a reminds us: “For we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.”
“The circumstances surrounding our lives are no accident; they may be the work of evil, but that evil is held firmly within the mighty hand of our sovereign God…All evil is subject to Him, and evil cannot touch His children unless He permits it.”—Margaret Clarkson
“When God ordains anything to come to pass, His purpose in doing so is altogether and absolutely good.”—R. C. Sproul
We were once a nation that acknowledged the God of the Bible as the basis of all truth and justice. We have more recently become a nation based on the dangerous proposition that God either does not exist or can be safely ignored. We have repeatedly thrown the God of justice and mercy out of our courts; the God of truth and wisdom out of our schools; and the God of love, who in the Bible commands obedience to his teachings, out of our government and out of our lives.
It is not only in the courts and halls of government that God is being dethroned. This is the culmination of decades of propaganda by journalistic and educational media dominated by the humanistic and man-glorifying philosophies of modern liberalism. To this coalition in recent years have been added the influence and power of the increasingly politically correct and even “woke” corporate engines of commerce. Many lemmings follow in their course. Even many of our churches have essentially thrown the Bible out of church and replaced its teachings with forms of humanism more in fashion with the times. Modern Biblical literacy is becoming so rare and shallow that even many evangelical Christians cannot discern the difference between humanism and Biblical Christianity. But there is a difference, and God will not likely be patient for long with those who would adulterate his teachings in the cause of popular fashion. Nor is it possible that he will surrender His throne. He may give the perpetrators of his removal a little more rope to hang themselves, but to God alone will remain all power and judgment.
We are becoming a nation that has forgotten the God of the Bible. But even more, we now see actual government hostility to the Church and all things spiritual and moral that derive from the Bible. The humanist philosophy that is wrapping its tentacles around our culture and society will have no other gods but man and man’s government. It will have no serious contenders for the loyalty of its subjects. Believers in the God of the Bible do not make sufficiently pliable servants for such a state. Theirs is a different moral compass skeptical of the innate goodness of man, uncomfortable with liberal ambitions to engineer and control every aspect of society, and misaligned with the idolatry of government. Big government does not view kindly even small eruptions of courage and truth outside its own regulation. They are a threat to the state and must be suppressed or marginalized, if the “enlightened” objectives of a supreme state and its anointed managers are to be realized.
The Biblical concept of sin is an uncomfortable concept for humanist liberals. They prefer to define righteousness for themselves. Modern liberalism, based as it is on humanist or man-centered reason, defines its own moral code in defiance of the God who has spoken through the Bible. Thus it is by definition self-righteous. Self-righteousness is the most deadly moral poison of all. Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “In order for men to do great evil, they must first believe they are doing good.” Self-righteousness is an extremely slippery slope leading to tyranny and horrendous evil not even recognized by its perpetrators. As always, self-righteousness bears a gnawing grudge against the righteousness of God. Self-righteousness is largely blind to its own evil, and under its dull eyes evil multiplies and escalates exponentially. It is like a hidden cancer that will eventually manifest itself and consume a people. This is the price, as Solzhenitsyn said, of “forgetting God.”
Will God suffer such arrogant rebellion and indifference and continue to bless a nation that denies his significance and even his existence? The God of the Bible is a God of justice. Patient and loving, He may be, but ultimately He must bring to judgment all violation of truth and righteousness. Will there be no consequences if we continue on our present course of minimizing and insulting the sovereign God of the universe? Can those of us who claim to believe in the God of the Bible safely acquiesce to ignoring Him? How quickly will his judgment come? Will it be final or corrective? If corrective, how severe must it be to get our attention? How dare we separate government from the God of all truth and justice?
“It is He… who brings princes to nothing, and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when He blows on them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.” Isaiah 40: 23-24. ESV
Can the God who raises up nations and princes and brings nations and princes to the dust be ignored by a nation’s courts, legislatures, civil magistrates, and people? Can our nation’s foreign policy ignore truth, promises, and obligations of good will and common security? How secure are our freedoms, our liberties, and our prosperity if we declare that God is insignificant and irrelevant in the affairs of men and nations? Should not the God of the Bible, the absolute sovereign of the universe, our maker, and sustainer be First in all our deliberations both public and private? Our answers to these questions will have profound consequences.
On the encouraging side, I notice that many more clerks in retail stores, are now freely wishing people “Merry Christmas!” Light is breaking through the darkness. We are not forgotten. “Aslan is on the march.,” and we should be praising the God of all Truth and our Savior and True King.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalm 111: 10a. ESV
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
