What is role of government?

I believe that the leaders of today’s Christian Right have a miserable track record of political “ministry” by any measuring stick, except that of giving themselves continued access to the smaller and smaller circle of Republican bigwigs who will still pretend to listen to them.

This is not to say some of them are not doing good work, it’s just not in the area of backing candidates for office who will really deliver on the right issues.

Maybe it comes from a shallow understanding of how to apply the Scriptures to government (though even they do not err so badly as the religious left does). I don’t know. I just know they have backed the wrong horses for a long time and gotten little to show for it.

Since they don’t seem willing to learn from their outrageous blunders, perhaps it’s time they stepped aside and saved the Christian community on the right the embarrassment of being in the same philosophical ship they ride.

Here they go again.

It’sclear that, though they won’t come right out and say so, that they want Rick Perry, the tough-talking Texas governor, to be the Republican nominee for president. They even had a high-profile public prayer event (”The Response”) which prominently featured Perry so that he could “out-Christian” the rest of the field. And many of the flock are lapping it up, figuring if Perry is the guy leading the prayers in the stadium, he must be the guy that Christians are supposed to back.

I find that very sad that our Christian leaders are so defiantly opposed to the direct teachings of the Lord Jesus Himself: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.

If you do, you will have no reward from your Fatherin heaven... And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:1, 5-6

While I don’t think they understand what the Scriptures say about the role of government, there is no missing the intent of this passage of Scripture.

In light of this, their actions surrounding “The Response” can only come from willful disregard of Christ’s teachings in order to advance a political goal.

No lasting good will come from that.

Perhaps they mistakenly think that the Christian position is that the central government should have the role of punishing people for anything that God disapproves of. The Scriptures show that God does notthink much of a strong central government (1st Samuel 8). When the people tried to make Jesus just such a political king, He went and hid Himself, preferring a kingship won one heart at a time and submission to His moral code on a voluntary basis. While in Romans we learn that government does have a God-appointed role of bringing wrath on evildoers, the whole scope of Scripture shows us that just because He disapproves of something does not mean that He wants the central government to punish people for doing it. This is true even in the law which none of us can keep, how much more then since grace has fulfilled that law?

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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch, and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].