Inherent in the concept of “academic” is the idea we isolate things from the complexity of the real world so as to understand some element more fully. The assumption is we do this for as many parts of the reality matrix as possible so we can come back to the matrix better informed. In real practice, everyone gets really good at one particular part and assumes they have reality all worked out completely within their own little discipline. Turf wars follow. The biblical worldview assumes you start from the whole, and apply peculiar talents to the part you can grasp, but never assume you can play God. That is, you never assume your understanding of things is more than woefully limited. You know enough to act, but never measure things in terms of success, but in terms of faithfulness. The more mature and experienced are the first to admit they don’t have the world by the tail.
That sense of healthy self-doubt is missing from far too much of our world today. It seems worst in the cesspool of government bureaucracy. Those who are particularly free of any hint of self-doubt are steered into enforcement roles. It’s a paradox the people least morally qualified are the ones most likely to hold such positions. From personal experience in law enforcement, I can attest people with a conscience are driven out by the others, if only because it took them too long to leave on their own revulsion. Now, that would be fine if we all realized it and took it for granted. That falls under “know your enemy.” But no, we have to paint this glowing aura of holiness on government in general, and in particular over those who face the front line of enforcement. We have no room for recognizing there can be a hero for bad causes.
I’ve seen the underbelly of the beast and left because it was sickening. I came to that conclusion, not because I have read things like this, but because such writings merely echoed my own personal experience. I was being trained to attack everything in my own personal background. Monthly Review supports socialist and communist views avidly; I am aware of that. Capitalist writers support torture and wars of aggression, so it’s not a matter of whether I favor left or right, but condemn the whole mess. Both sides embrace different flavors of evil.
Rather than launching into another diatribe against police officers, let us cut to the chase. What we have today is fundamentally wrong all the way around. Carping about police abuses is a waste of time until we cease from the niggling academic discussion of what they should act like, and realize the whole thing is horribly broken. The reason we have high levels of complaints about abusive police behavior is more than just a reason to call for reform. It is a symptom of the utter failure of modern Western society itself. You can’t fix something which is badly designed, or poorly built, when it has an evil purpose from the start. According to the Bible, no one who isn’t related to you by blood or marriage should have any significant control over any part of your life. The very existence of strangers carrying guns and directing your compliance with written laws and policies is sin itself.
That so many cannot conceive of life without a police force simply indicates how successful Satan has been at shaping this world. Yes, much of Scripture assumes we can’t change political structures, even to the point of advising us not to try. No amount of learning can overcome the Fall, since the whole of the human being is damaged by it. The idea behind civilization was to ameliorate some of the effects, to provide a framework for keeping things together until God is finished with His Creation. He made clear through the writings of the Apostle John, called The Book of Revelation, He fully expected things to only get worse as time rolled. At the same time, He held forth a demand we increasingly withdraw from the broken structure of human society and adopt His original plan in defiance of those structures. The structures were laid out, but far too many are blinded by false assumptions going into the reading, so they can’t see what He meant to say.
We are meant to live tribally. We are supposed to stay together in the extended family household, living in whatever space we can negotiate to hold. While we do interact with the fallen world around us, we do not accept its mold, but follow our own. We are called to live a separate existence even in the middle of fallen society. All this business of dysfunctional families is Satan’s handiwork creating a system preventing that extended family lifestyle. But when we do it God’s way, there is no need for much government in the first place. Your government, your school, your social system, your entire world is your family. That’s what God intended from before the Fall.
Who says we can’t return to that? God demands it.
