This is another get-to-know-me.
God reveals Himself as an Eastern feudal lord. That’s the best way to understand how He reigns over His Creation. It’s a personal feudal relationship. If you understand that at all, you understand a primary need of all His vassals is that He reveal His moral nature, His character and personality insofar as its possible. Thus, you would expect generalized edicts of what He expects from His subjects and how He wants them to live. With this comes the revelation that, as our Maker, what He wants is inherently in our best interest.
His revelation is rooted in Law Covenants. He makes a covenant with His vassals so that they become family-in-effect. It’s an adoption; we have a direct interest in His affairs in terms of a personal inheritance. He then models this as the proper way of His vassals dealing with their feudal responsibilities. He grants some of His vassals authority to rule on His behalf, instructing them to rule as He does.
More specifically, He has divided the ruling roles into two: priest and king. At least, that’s how they are translated into English. Unfortunately, both of those words come with a lot of baggage that is foreign to what God had in mind. While we can work on “priest” and get a pretty good image, “king” is a real mess. A better image is tribal chieftain or elder, a shepherd of people. In one sense, every man in His service is part elder and part priest. Depending on the context, it becomes necessary to carry the duties of both. However, in formal organization under His covenant, the roles are properly separated.
The priest is consecrated, separated away from other tasks, and does nothing else. The elder does everything else. And while priests are appointed, elders naturally rise to the top in the organic order of family structure. They simple are there according to tradition and custom as the shepherd of their people. It’s not a matter of ambition, but a duty that falls upon a man by birth.
This was pretty easy for the Hebrew people to work out, but when churches began to form outside those Hebrew tribal societies, it became increasingly necessary to find other ways to decide who was elder of the covenant body. In my case, it was simply a matter of a covenant body forming around the work I was already doing by myself. I knew I was called to be an elder, but it was a matter of letting Him advertise my position. Instead of inheriting my eldership over an existing family, I have been growing a family from scratch. And if you are a member of my covenant family, it remains your volition and heart that binds you to me.
Our identity as a family obviously means other folks are excluded. Not from associating with us or receiving anything we have to offer, but they are excluded in that we differentiate between family and guests. That’s how God does things. Those who willingly accept His authority can become family, while others can be servants or slaves. Everyone serves Him, but not everyone knows Him or even gets to see His face. The boundaries are relational and moral in nature. Significant shifts in the boundaries would lead to chaos. Don’t forget that a primary objective of Biblical Law is social stability.
This is the background for understanding what I mean by pointing out that, in our current political and social context, nationalism is closer to Biblical Law than the alternatives. While a good many states aren’t exactly nations, the existence of any government at all presumes a commonality in those who are governed. Ideally it would be a nation-state, where the nation shares sufficient culture — language, customs and values — to be governable. A mixed mob without any kind of common identity is not governable; they are simply slaves of whomever is in charge.
Globalism pretends otherwise, but the intent is slavery. Imperialism generally doesn’t bother with pretending. Nationalism means leaving other nations alone to run their own affairs and keeping your identity intact. People who immigrate must accept the existing language, customs and laws, or remain as visitors with a greatly reduced role and reduced participation in the blessings of the community. Their presence is conditional. They aren’t citizens and need to be aware of their precarious status until they decide to embrace the demands of citizenship. Lowering that demands causes trouble. That’s just common sense, but in Biblical Law, the barriers are pretty high on purpose, in part because the folks already considered citizens need to be kept in line, too. (See the previous post here about limits on strictness.)
Nationalism looks like arrogance only if you are an asshole seeking to destroy the nation. It also looks threatening to the plutocrats who are some mixture of globalist and imperialist. The plutocrats know beyond all doubt they are not part of the common folks; they are not part of the national culture. They are de facto foreign occupiers because they have assumed an entirely different national identity with no loyalty to the people they rule. They regard those people as their slaves.
I grant you that nationalism can come with a lot of obscene, filthy baggage, but that mess is not part of the core nature of nationalism. Nationalism is aimed to keeping a common identity and promoting the common welfare through volitional participation. It’s an entirely natural impulse that God wired into the human race. It’s wired into Creation as a whole. Cosmopolitan egalitarian openness is evil. It’s an invitation for invasion, either by military force or by invasive migration. It is contrary to Biblical Law. Be kind to the visitor, but do not grant them equal access to the privileges of citizenship.
Shifting back toward that kind of nationalist politics in the US today constitutes a revolt, as it would be in a lot of other Western countries. The imperialists are doing what they always do, but the globalists have decided this is the time to assert the final measure of their enslavement of the human race. They will do so by first massive migration of hostile folks into every stable state to create chaos, and then they plan to take over the governing authority everywhere. God will not let this happen. The chaos the globalists have sown will prevent their takeover, because the chaos gives birth to a resurgent nationalism. You cannot train nationalism out of people. The citizens will take up arms against both the rulers and the invaders, both.
It’s not as if there will be some clean and complete revolution, but there will be chaos that forces a decentralization of ruling controls. The power will devolve outward to local government agencies, and those agencies will be largely purged of globalists. This much is obvious to anyone who understands how God does business.
But this is why I promote nationalism; it’s not so much that I love my nation, but that I love God’s Law. This is the best I can get in the context, and I would willingly serve a broad nationalist political drive for that reason alone — this is God’s stated will at all times throughout human history. I’m willing to work toward undermining the globalist plutocrats, but I won’t put my hands to it without a clear mission calling that puts me in that position. I won’t lead such a cause, but I would be glad to lend assistance to someone who has a valid plan that doesn’t violate my convictions.
And I would fight such a war according to the values and customs of the Ancient Hebrews, not according to modern Western sensibilities. I’m willing to take advantage of the differences, too.
