Radix Fidem Blog

Having so long criticized policemen in the US, I was moved to pray for a vision of how we might move things back toward sanity. What follows is some of that vision. My authority from God is limited to simply declaring His truth. Once you read this, my mission is done. You are then accountable to God alone.

During the period of time I served in the US Army Military Police, a person whom I still believe was speaking for God prophesied that my time in uniform was not the start of a career enforcing the laws of men, but was the birthplace of my calling to know and proclaim God’s Laws. I had to understand what was wrong, had to know it intimately and first hand, and take it before the Lord. In the past few years, much in my life has changed. I now sit before this computer keyboard with an overwhelming sense God has called me to prophesy of His Laws. This is far different from what I imagined it would be, but also far better than I had dared to hope.

No one, least of all yours truly, pretends this is even likely to catch significant notice, much less foment change. Somewhere between His perfect Law and where we are today is a place which could bring us closer to Heaven, and a bit farther from Hell. What I offer is most certainly within reach of the American people as they are and as they live today. It is realistic. It will also be a wrenching change in many ways. The biggest changes are not in policy and practice, but the underlying assumptions. We have it all wrong, and God is very angry. What I write here serves to reveal some of why His wrath is already falling upon us now.

While I wore the MP brassard, I was told to have the confidence of an angel of light, to betray no doubt about what I was doing while in uniform. This, despite knowing full well none was so perfect as to be always correct. We were trained to take our doubts in private to our superiors and hone our professionalism to the highest standards, always prepared to make adjustments as we learned. Wearing that emblem of authority was a high honor easily lost. Today I wear no marks of man’s authority. I’m just the messenger, a living lawbook of God.

This brings us to the first point: In God’s eyes, people with badges and uniforms are not “law enforcement.” They are policemen; they police. They come along after a mess has been made and clean it up. The citizens are the law enforcement. It rests upon them to make things turn out right. It is to our benefit and it is our problem. We are our brother’s keeper. Passing the buck is a sin; it is poking a finger in God’s eye and petulantly demanding He fix things after all we’ve done to destroy it. Enforcing the law begins with each of us doing the best we know, and then doing everything we can and should do to keep others from destroying the responsibility which falls to us.

The only reason we even have policemen as they now exist is because society as a whole has refused its duty. America began without policemen, and the Constitution presumes we are the enforcement. But God Himself has not permitted us to hire thugs to enforce our personal vision of heavenly comfort on the rest of the world. Yet, that is precisely what modern civilian police forces are. One portion of society demands everyone else conform, and they have the political power to make it happen. They don’t have to get their hands dirty, and are insulated from the blowback of their evil demands. Virtually 90% of law enforcement activity today arises from a very narrow concept of what constitutes proper behavior. This is a hideous tyranny.

Want people to behave differently? You offend God Himself when you hire armed thugs to do your dirty work. Get involved yourself in good responsible efforts to change society, or shut up and stay out of the way. Those who aren’t willing to accept the risk their vision could be rejected are children of Satan. Good people do not want to rule over others, directly or indirectly. Might does not make right. Thus saith the Lord.

Defending against warfare and genuine threat to civil order is the proper role of civil government. It has no business poking around in social matters. The business of social welfare was granted by God to social authorities only. Social authority is not about waving weapons at people, but persuading and building relations. People aren’t free if they don’t have the freedom to dissent, to be different while harmless. You are granted persuasive authority as soon as people realize you are willing to sacrifice for their welfare. God Himself will support that. Otherwise, you have no business getting involved. If you don’t bleed, you don’t lead. God knows if you fake it.

Of course, law enforcement begins at home. The only people over whom you have any legitimate authority are the people in your family who recognize you as head of household. Here again is that business of God’s requirement we live in the extended family setting if at all possible. Given that won’t happen much in America today, let’s settle for you policing your own household first. Start caring and start paying the price. Learn what it takes and create an atmosphere where the folks closest to you are eager to work with you for a peaceful and harmonious lifestyle. We don’t have room here to discuss all that means, but God demands it. You must obey and commit yourself to it or face His wrath. It can be done and you must begin today if you haven’t already.

With your immediate neighbors, someone has to take the initiative to negotiate the conflicting wishes and desires. If you think about this for just a few moments, you will come to the realization it would require a vast change in how we build our homes and plan our neighborhoods. Again, we don’t have room to address that here, but note in passing we may work on that someday. For now, we work with what we have. You are not permitted to dominate by forcing your comfort at your neighbor’s expense. There is no one correct and civilized standard for landscaping and decoration. That sort of arrogance comes from Satan. Yes, cutting your grass is a valid demand from your neighbors, because there are known health hazards for failure, hazards which most certainly do affect your neighbors. You cannot, by sloth or by excessive zeal, externalize the costs of your comfort onto others. There is room for give and take and negotiation.

Eventually you can bring together other neighbors if one household refuses to negotiate. You must make that effort yourself, genuine and repeated, before you take it to someone else. Overly loud music which shakes your windows is an example of wrong. An occasional bit of noise in the front yard from an exuberant party is not. God hates the so-called public drunk laws, as well as most drug laws. Someone making a fool of himself in public is not your problem unless he starts urinating on your flowers. He should get in trouble for harming the flowers and making a stink, not for being drunk. On the other hand, it’s not a crime to punch out a drunk crunching in your flowerbed if that’s what it takes to get him out of it. Put up a good fence, make sure it’s just inside your actual property line, and be done with it.

Given a little time, it won’t take much to understand the difference between real harm and prissy-whiny nonsense. The Nanny State is an abomination to God. Humans are pretty messy, and even worse when you get them close together in large numbers. There are distinct advantages to a high population density, and hassles to match. Take your pick, but the vast majority of what we see today is unreasonable demands for one particular narrow concept of what is acceptable.

You cannot and should not try to control people’s behavior at large by force, much less what they think or say. It’s a sin to even want such power. Rather, you should do the work to restore a sane civil society. No, it’s not a concrete goal you can attain and get on with your business. It’s an aspiration, a never ending commitment which makes life worth living. Just because certain real harms are associated with behavior which is not itself any real harm to you is no justification for seeking to squelch the latter. Your rights end in a much smaller circle than is commonly imagined. A very large area of “crime prevention” is an insult to God’s justice. For the most part, you do not prevent crime. You cannot hinder human behavior which is not immediately harmful, and you aren’t permitted to call something merely repellent “harmful.” You can make crime costly, but aside from taking the responsibility for being on guard against it, you cannot stop others from sinning, and most certainly you can’t keep them from wanting to sin.

God’s justice says we err too much on the side of restriction. Most civil laws on the books today make God angry at us. We have to learn this world is fallen, badly broken, and bad human behavior is the norm. All the more so with Western Civilization being such an insult to God. We cannot even get close to what God says is possible, so for as long as we are Western, life should suck.

To reduce crime, you don’t hire more armed thugs with badges, and you surely don’t give them some uniquely privileged status to torture or kill on a whim. To reduce crime, you make good weapons widely available, utterly legal and require training in their proper use as part of learning to read and write. In a world where “open carry” is common, you’ll have fewer people wrongly killed than in the current system where personal weapons are restricted. This has been proven, but no one who handles the statistics is willing to be honest about that. The only people unarmed should be those who have refused to accept the training after abusing a weapon, and those who simply don’t want to carry one for whatever personal reasons. In this crazy world, no one has the inherent right to disarm anyone, except in the most extreme cases.

That silly video where a loud bang results in every customer taking a defensive stance, pointing a gun and scanning visually for threats should not be a joke, but the norm.

The only reason to have policemen is to investigate and report after a crime — a real crime — is committed. They would be armed for the same reason everyone else is, but not necessarily with bigger and better weapons. They don’t have more authority! They can get involved same as you when they see crime happening and try to stop it. They should never be permitted to stop anyone from using their own lawful weapons for lawful purposes. This business of them having a unique right to control every situation on behalf of the State just because they show up is simply evil. They have zero mandate from God to keep the peace beyond what any other citizen has.

Thus saith the Lord.