No Golden Age

In the Old Testament book of Judges, we are told there was a cycle of behavior which characterized the tribes and Nation of Israel. During the judgeship of some charismatic leader, they would behave rather justly. After the judge died, things declined until the nation was wallowing in evil. Then they would suffer some devastation, some national trauma. At that point, they would realize they had forgotten their covenant oath and would seek a path of repentance. Then God would raise up another judge. (Please note: The term “judge” is not a good translation of the term or concept, but is commonly accepted.)
Crazy as it sounds, this system was what God had intended, despite knowing in advance Israel was easily the worst nation He could have chosen for the mission. His own prophets said that repeatedly. So when they begged for a king, it was a form of rejection. God being quite tolerant, gave them their king, and that first was a real loser. Handsome and regal, he violated the Covenant with casual disdain. In other words, Saul’s character was no different most of the Israelis of his day. His reward was a demonic insanity we can hardly imagine.
The story is well known that his successor was David. With some justice we view his reign as some kind of golden age for Israel. But how easily we forget, as great as he was as a warrior and ruler, so great were his failings. His only saving grace was his humility. Get his attention and he would do the right thing. His successor was far wiser, and far greater in his own sins. In other words, it was hardly all that different from the system under the judges. But David was the balance point between a king who held court under a tree, and a prissy smart boy who wallowed in gold, silver and feminine flesh.
David rose to power at a time when every imperial power around him was on the wane. Egypt was facing chaotic times. The old Hittite Empire was fading, and the Assyrians had yet to get well organized under a single ruler. And David was a man’s man, able to rough it in the wilderness while still humble before God. Though not bluntly stated, the prophets imply the salutary conditions for Israel of that time faded because Israel went downhill fast from David’s relative justice, as the last king who truly understood the nature of Hebrew culture and religion.
But truthfully, the Scripture refers to that time as the biblical golden age of the past because that’s how everyone afterward saw it. Truly, the Covenant was written for a tribal society for whom the closest thing to a king was the warlord who rose up only when needed. Fundamental to human nature is a great need for being left alone as much as possible. But it must be paired with a culture which makes the most of human talents, avoiding the worst of human weaknesses, by virtue of being a culture which reflects the actual facts of human nature. In no uncertain terms, the Covenant of Moses was structured for a people who had no king, but were ruled by clan and tribal elders. What we mistake for chaos and inefficiency is actually the natural human state after the Fall.
Americans like to imagine we had a golden age. Most today put that in the 1950s. A relative few scholars understand it as the period prior to our War Between the States, before the Constitution was perverted by the Whigs/Republicans. They correctly grasp the utter necessity of keeping the central government weak. Fewer still understand it was actually even more free under the Articles of Confederation.
Indeed, by God’s Laws, Shays’ Rebellion was largely justified, and Washington was utterly wrong to enforce the process of concentrating the wealth of the country in fewer hands. But to be honest, we had no golden age. From the very earliest flutterings of rebellion before the American Revolution, we had it all wrong. In many ways it was the Puritan fire which breathed life into the Revolution. Puritans had this notion God intended people to be middle class, and that any system interfering with that was evil by definition. If working hard couldn’t bring middle class prosperity, it could only be Satan’s hand preventing it. It’s the heresy of materialism.
Let’s not forget all those who extended loans to make the migration to these shores took huge losses, in part because the rebelling colonists were in no mood to repay. Much of the details over which the colonists were fussing was against royal franchises for things they refused to do without. In other words, it was all a matter of going back on promises to abide by limits they had already agreed to accept. Once the Revolution was over, the exact same cruel inequities were forced on the citizens by their new government.
How was the oppressive taxation of Solomon any different than the raiding theft of the Philistines, or any other neighboring kingdom, for that matter? How is the manhandling of TSA any different from the nagging fear of imaginary terrorists? How is the brutal police state any different from Muslim Sharia Law? If we bothered to actually think about the answer, we might conclude shocking things. By clinging to some theoretical sacred Constitution, we blind ourselves to what’s really happening to us as humans. It never was more than a piece of paper by which the masses have been manipulated into the most awful idiocy.
There was no golden age in American History.