Written by Dr. Jeffery J. Ventrella |
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
In their desperation, beleaguered people often yearn for a “strong man” or a King or a Christian Prince to order and redeem the public square—yet there is always buyer’s regret—and death—when the State is seen as Savior, not Servant.

Introduction
Truthxchange exists to Inform the public, Equip the Church, and Protect the Future. Last week, we explained the origins of pagan Political Idolatry and concluded by noting that in many cases, the Church itself has acted as a change agent by unintentionally producing an idol-generating reductionism. To better confront and overcome this trend, we Christians need to first look in the mirror. Since judgment begins “at the household of God,”[1] the Church needs to understand how this idolatry incubates and impacts our culture. And, the church needs to humbly and honestly understand how we may tolerate, or even embrace it, in our thinking. We must learn to think Christianly about the public square, including law and policy. Only in this way can we equip the broader Church to effectively repel pagan political idolatry at its roots. This begins by understanding Biblical Cosmology, the structure of real reality. Let’s get to the gist.
Paul’s Cosmological Structure of Law: The Law above the Law
A fundamental issue lurks underneath all political idolatry: who or what operates as “god” in the culture. That is, what is the transcendent or ultimate authority functioning in the culture and therefore affecting that culture’s legal and political system. The Church must be clear on this. If an evangelical Christian is abstractly asked, “What’s your ultimate authority?” they would no doubt quickly profess, “the Bible.” However, the real question is not so much what they profess, but how they function day to day in real time; what is their actual authority, how do they actually assess and make political decisions, particularly when it comes to considering matters of law and policy. We may be surprised to see that inclinations to and elements of idolatry have crept into our thinking.
Why is this the case? This often occurs by failing to connect Christ’s Lordship with law and policy. How so? The Church rightly confesses “Christ is Lord!” We need to also see that law expresses lordship. The operational law of a culture or system is functionally driven by the “lord” or dominant transcendental (authority) of that culture or system. We must both say and act consistently with our Lordship commitments.
When the Church confesses “Christ is Lord,” it in effect means He reigns over all things, including political entities whether “thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.”[2]This means, among other things, that Christ’s standards, His Law, applies to all reality —it may not be confined, truncated, compartmentalized, or ignored—including with respect to policy and law. To depart from Christ’s Lordship in this area is to functionally invite idolatrous thinking into our public life no matter what we profess on Sunday morning with our lips.
So, why would this then be the case? From Paul’s perspective, “real reality” is “Twoist,” meaning that there exists a Creator-creation distinction, a fundamental binary: Romans 1:25. In the apostle’s mind, the Creator is holy, not only morally, but metaphysically; He is holy and wholly other.[3]
Consequently, the Creator alone is independent, and Paul elsewhere makes this point in addressing the philosophers in Athens. He emphasizes that the true God is the Creator God:
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…[4]
Paul emphasizes the Creator-ness of the true God as well as His aseity, or self-existent independence of the created order. Note carefully: He makes this point as he addresses the public square.
Correlatively, the creation, including by implication its positive law,[5] is therefore necessarily dependent and derivative. This means that its function, purpose, and meaning can be ultimately understand only in relation to God and his transcendent authority. Paul likewise alludes to this as well in the same Athenian discourse:
for “‘In him we live and move and have our being;’as even some of your own poets have said,“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”[6]
Paul is saying we best and most fully understand the created things in relation to the Creator God. From this flows some key things. First, because the Creator alone is truly transcendent, His law will necessarily and properly be transcendent: the law above the law, sometimes called the natural law.[7] And, therefore, second, all law and policy must be dependent on and derivative from this ultimate unimpeachable standard.
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Written by Dr. Jeffery J Ventrella |
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Worshipping the State is not inevitable; trashing the State is not inevitable. Rather, with moral clarity, moral conviction, and moral courage, Christians can—and should—seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, including public righteousness,  rendering to Caesar those things—and only those things—which are his.

We have no king but Caesar[1]
Especially those of Caesar’s household[2]
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s[3]
God the Creator is a God of purpose, design, and order. His Creation is structured and ordered[4] and He requires the collective conduct of those worshipping Him to be done “decently and in order.”[5] What about society in general beyond the ecclesiastical realm? Here’s a hint: After liberating His enslaved people, God gave them law to structure and order society.[6] Liberty evidently requires order and structure, not radical autonomy with unfettered “freedom,”[7] or anarchy. This raises the question: What is the role of the State? If Caesar is the only king, should Caesar be functionally imbued with God-like attributes reaching, regulating, and even redeeming every crevice of society?  Alternatively, if Caesar is not the only king, should Christians just ignore or even despise the State? How should we view the State and its role today? Is it Savior, Suspect, or Servant? Lies that live distort the answers to these questions. Let’s get to the gist.
The State as Savior?
No pious Christian would ever crassly confess that the State is Savior; only Christ is savior, Yet, our conduct can often betray our confession. Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine a disaster, any disaster: Hurricane, tornado, wildfire, floods, pandemic, et al – anytime these occur, the knee jerk reaction functionally looks to the State to remedy the situation. And, even when not facing an emergent situation – education, health care, housing, poverty, inflation, social media, et al, the “first call” for solving societal issues seems to be the State, and in reality, its taxpayers.
Increasingly, the gut reaction of many citizens looks to the State to fix things. This reaction, however, is based on a lie for several reasons. First, the nature of the State is coercive; it bears the power of the sword.[8] Put in more concrete terms: What do we really want officials with guns and bazookas to do? Accordingly, whatever the State touches will be subject to coercion; its only operative mode is inherently coercive. If this power is not defined and confined, it will, over time, reduce citizens to being subjects, restricting or eliminating liberty to innovate and otherwise flourish. When this occurs, the cultural mandate is stunted, undermining one of man’s purposes.[9] Dictatorships may profit select individuals, but rarely, if ever, do they prosper a people as a whole: compare North Korea with South Korea.
Second, the State can never possess sufficient power and knowledge to salvifically regulate a nation into prosperity, let alone righteousness. To think otherwise embraces a utopian delusion and lives a lie. A State may gain or acquire significant power, but that power—no matter how significant—can never rival the Gospel’s power to rescue, heal, and save. It alone is the “power of God for salvation to everyone.”[10]
And, even setting aside the State’s lack of power for generating eternal consequences, the State lacks both efficient and sufficient knowledge to make viable temporal differences concerning human action and economics.[11] Managed economies are always mediocre economies doomed with persistent shortages, wide inflationary swings, and higher unemployment. The fundamental lie here is that it mis-orders the nature of productivity: Production must precede Consumption, not vice versa which all Keynesian managed solutions impose.[12]
When the State is viewed as Savior and deploys its coercive power to impose price controls, rent control, crony capitalistic deals, tariffs, wage regulation, taxes, etc., based on this lie, economies—and human flourishing—diminishes. As we shall see, the State cannot save even temporally because it was never designed nor purposed to save. Yet, recognizing this truth often leads to another enslaving lie: maybe the State should be viewed not through utopian glasses as Savior, but through a cynical lens, as a necessary evil. Christians are told to reject and avoid the State since “politics is dirty,” always viewing the State with suspicion, cynicism, and skepticism.
The State as Suspect?
Maybe this quip only appeals to legal and political nerds, but it illustrates a point:
Did you hear about the Libertarian’s proposal to revise the 1stAmendment?Here’s the new language: “Congress shall make no law PERIOD!”
The idea here is that the State should do next to nothing; in fact some Libertarians actually believe in nearly zero State action.[13] The assumption is that the State lacks competency or even moral illegitimacy for protecting and structuring ordered liberty. Libertarians instead believe that the unfettered market best orders society and solves its coordination problems. Libertarians are half right.
First, as the next section will show, the Biblical truth is that the State is both legitimate and limited – so far so good. However, while Scripture presupposes the morality of liberty-based markets,[14] it is the virtuous market that Scripture embraces. Saying “markets are good” is not to say “all markets are good.” Unconstrainted markets such as those that Libertarians promote, operate to feed sinful man’s appetites. In other words, there always will be markets, that is, demand, for bad things that compromise or undermine human flourishing and ordered liberty: drugs, gambling, sex trafficking, child pornography, contract murder, fencing stolen property, stealing or forging art masterpieces[15], medically mutilating and disfiguring children presenting with gender dysphoria[16], et al. Relying solely on markets absent a moral compass ultimately leads to systematizing moral weakness and corruption.
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