I have, on more than one occasion, taught a class on dystopian novels. We’ve read Brave New World, 1984, That Hideous Strength and more. I always ask my class “Why do these men, the rulers over these dark and domineering cultures, do what they do? What exactly are they after?” The answer was simple, yet profound. What they wanted, in each of these stories, was power. It sounds simple enough, except for this: power is supposed to be a means and not an end. We are supposed to aspire to power so that we can do this thing or that, to achieve some higher goal. Power is a tool, a technology, and should not be a teleology. Things, however, are often not as they should be, ever since man first aspired to rule himself, outside the law of God.
It was right after man’s fall that technology is mentioned for the first time, “So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3: 24). A sword is a tool, a technology. Its aim is to either provide a powerful disincentive toward an act or acts, to stop the act or acts by destroying the one eager to perform the act, or as an instrument, a tool of judgment to punish the one who has done the forbidden thing. This is the same tool, or technology, that Paul says was given by God to the state, to act as a minister of justice. It is a tool designed to overcome the wills of the citizens.
It was sin which made it necessary that there be a state in the first place. It is, given our circumstances, necessary. But it is the same sin which ought to lead us to be suspicious, and on our guard regarding the state. That is, the state can be, and often is, evil. Our founding fathers recognized that truth and sought to create, (or rather recreate, after the model of the Hebrew republic of the Old Testament) a system that would have the strength to combat tyranny, yet not have the strength to exercise tyranny.
They used three principle weapons to achieve this goal. First there was the system of checks and balances among the branches of the federal government. Their thinking was that each branch would guard its own power zealously enough to keep any of the others from growing too much. Second, they established a second system of checks and balances among the levels of government, as codified so clearly in the 10th Amendment. If the states, the counties, the municipalities, even the people guarded their liberties against the feds, then the feds would stay in check. The third, and perhaps greatest weapon dealt with weapons, the second Amendment to the Constitution, recognizing the right of individuals to keep and bear arms.The founders wanted the citizens to be armed, to be equipped with the technology of rebellion, to act as a check against the federal government. That’s how the founding fathers founded us in the first place.
The battle for freedom is at times a technological one. Whether it be the almost comical little arms race between the state troopers and the lead-foots of this world, making more and more sophisticated radar guns to outsmart more and more sophisticated radar detectors, or the real arms race between Communist aggressors and the ostensibly freedom loving west, whether we are free or not often comes down to who has the bigger gun.
The exercise of power requires the exercise of power to enforce it. What they require of us is beside the point. Whether they are exercising financial power through the IRS and its thugs, or exercising economic power through manipulating markets and the money supply, whether they are wielding psychological power through indoctrinating our children in their re-education camps, or through their simple rhetorical lies on television, they are bent on exercising power, and enjoying the exercise thereof. And all of it hinges ultimately on their bigger and better guns. All of it hinges on keeping us in fear.
How do we respond? Fearlessly. We must be armed as well. We need to be equipped with knowledge about the law, both God’s and man’s, refusing to give ground to spurious arguments and the laws that would alienate our inalienable God-given rights. More still we need to be armed with His gospel, knowing we are free in Him, and have nothing to fear. We are already slaves, to Christ, already dead, in Christ. We are in chains the freest of all men, for we are citizens of a better country. Let us then live as free men.