Jesus told His disciples (Matthew 19:3-9) that, under the Covenant, God tolerated a certain amount of hardening in the heart against the divine moral character. The Mosaic Code on divorce was a practical solution in the context. The best souls wouldn’t need a loophole like that, but without such loopholes, government would be impossible in a fallen world.
There has always been a conflict between ideals and human failure, and this is why the sacrificial system existed in the first place. It was a way to keep alive the consciousness of our fallen nature. God didn’t need sacrifices and bloodshed; we need to make sacrifices to learn humility and keep before us that material wealth is not our god. So it became a very important element in eldership and general wise government that we expect some tension between the ideals and what people can actually accomplish. It’s utterly necessary to present good moral ideals; it’s utterly typical that we expect a measure of failure and make provision for it.
Bad government begins with that loss of tolerance. That is, tyranny is rooted in a failure to exercise God’s gift of mercy and the awareness of our need for mercy. Tyranny is always a matter of fantasy — the tyrant imagines a perfect world and determines that he will wring it from the people he rules. We see this in the US with the nit-picking details of our legislation and regulation. Instead of presuming that people will fall short, and making some allowances for moving forward and keeping the community alive, they lock down presumed outcomes. Instead of building a culture that presumes the value of social stability, it raises an impossible standard that constitutes a challenge to find new ways to beat the system.
Did you know that the US Army has a written regulation that attempts to describe in detail how soldiers must lace their boots? And you have to get written permission to use zinc oxide for shaving burn because it might be noticeable as an unnatural coloration of your skin. A majority of US military regulation is just like that: An impossible demand that cannot tolerate one iota of individuality. That’s a reflection of most legislation of civilian life, as well. The whole thing is designed to instill fear, so that you cannot possibly walk through life doing the most ordinary mundane things without technically violating some law on the books somewhere.
But in a world where this is the mindset under which everyone operates, you end up with a limited tolerance in those governed for excessive regulation. And it’s possible to push too far and face a revolt. And if your governing system makes no proper allowance for that, you guarantee bloodshed. Never mind the bogus mythology — “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s never been like that, and never will be. Good moral people don’t want to rule, so we don’t force them to; we let evil idiots rule instead. We merely pretend that the people running for office are good moral people, and the pretense is preposterous. The whole of our government system is composed of people who generally failed at everything else in life.
So for example, black markets eventually become the real market. When you prohibit too many things, you end up with no ability to actually enforce anything at all.
For many years, I’ve described black markets not as the evil danger to economies that governments profess them to be, but as predictable and sensible reactions to the overregulation of official markets.
Pick your priorities wisely. Smuggling isn’t immoral, just illegal. Laws can be evil, too. And if your proposed government agenda pushes impossible social demands too far — as with the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) — you’ll get various kinds of push-back from sensible folks. And because SJWs are absolutist tyrants, not only will they not get their way with others, but they and their ways will be destroyed as intolerable, not allowed to enter the marketplace of ideas. Progressives don’t know when to quit.
We who represent the Law of God should understand that such divine justice is its own reward. God’s own standard of enforcement is pretty lax compared to Western expectations. God has said it Himself in so many words: If you don’t somehow sense the joy and love within His Law, then you’ll never obey it in the first place, and you’ll reap none of the blessings that give the Law its body.
We are each feudal vassals in His invisible moral empire. He grants to us a certain domain of divine calling. Those who enter that domain fall under our dominion to varying degrees. A critical element in all of this is a certain amount of volition; people have to voluntarily come under our dominion on certain conditions. It’s a covenant; it’s alive and constantly changing and growing. Every day brings fresh micro-negotiations without words, and sometimes bigger negotiations with words. Sometimes there is a break in the covenant where the boundaries of dominion end. Again, it’s a living thing that occupies only so much space. Yours is a micro-government, a vassal shepherd sheik of God.
Seek the wisdom of God on when to push and when to pull, when to ignore things and when you must crush dissent. It will always be an art, resting on your own sense of calling and mission. You cannot possibly copy someone else, but you can adopt mentors and learn how to emulate their talents in your own way. Carry that wisdom into your considerations of the world around you, and recognize how divine moral character — woven into Creation itself — will affect the aspirations and follies of mankind. You can begin to understand why tyranny always fails on its own, but you also begin to see why and how it fails.
