Give Us a King!

“Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” [Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]

I’ve been spending my morning reading time in the Old Testament historical books, and I’m continually struck by the constancy of human nature over these millennia of known human history. Suffer intense persecution, repent, and cry out to the Lord, miraculously overcome persecution, briefly celebrate the Lord’s provision, turn our backs on God in our idolatrous pursuits, suffer the consequences of our idolatry, and find ourselves suffering intense persecution again. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites decided that they should be more like the people around them (those same people that persecuted them) and appoint someone to be king. “But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.” [1 Samuel 8:6-9]

The innate desire to be ruled still pervades our society today. It seems to be part of our nature. As with many issues over the past three years, that desire to be ruled took on a renewed intensity for a large percentage of our citizens. As the media stoked fear, people looked for strong leadership to bring a return to safety and stability. Governors, public health officials, bureaucrats, and local politicians began issuing decrees under the auspices of “keeping us safe” that far exceeded their legal authority, and the people responded with “give us more”.

Unfortunately, many of these decrees had devastating consequences that we will be dealing with for years, while almost none of them accomplished their intended objective. Education has suffered, mental health has suffered, our economy has suffered, our churches have suffered, and our faith in the foundational institutions of our society continues to diminish.

As our institutions fail and we observe the chaos around us, we once again look for a leader who will restore us. We need someone who will destroy our enemies and impose our will on those who oppose us. Some folks on the right think Trump is the answer. Those who are done with all the unnecessary drama that Trump brings think DeSantis, Ramaswamy, or Haley is the answer. The so-called “good government” conservatives think a Sununu or Hogan administration is what we need. And as hard as it is for me to comprehend, the progressives (at least based on their words), think Biden/Harris just need a little more time and a little more power to fix what ails us.

I don’t claim to be a prophet, but I’m confident in stating that no matter who is in power after the next election, there will be no restoration. Just as the Israelites turned away from God to pursue worldly power, we are every bit as misguided in our attempt to restore our society through political means. Our politics are badly broken, but politics are not where we’ll find the solution to our problems. On the surface, our primary issue is growing cultural decline, but when we dig a little deeper, the root of our problem is spiritual.

Our society is far along in its journey of replacing God with the new religion of secular hedonism; the doctrine that personal pleasure is the sole purpose in life. The great paradox of human existence is that achieving our fleshly desires never results in the fulfillment we seek. It turns out the abundant life described in John 10:10 isn’t going to be fulfilled by the sexual revolution. Those who have most successfully achieved wealth, fame, power, and beauty always have the need to seek more, and often wind up empty and depressed. If our meaning and purpose are defined by meeting our goals of self-gratification, we will eventually come to realize how truly broken and pathetic we are.

A constitutional republic governed by “the people” requires that those people share a common moral framework, a foundation upon which a system of laws and norms can be built. We no longer have that, and under our current regime we never will. Traditional western or Judeo-Christian values are not only retrograde, but they are now considered bigoted. We find ourselves in a Brave New World. We are instructed to believe the objective lies that genders are malleable, that credentialed experts are never to be questioned, that our intrinsic value as humans is dependent upon the level of pigmentation in our skin, and that we are each entitled to our own truth. Our elite leaders and a significant contingent of our citizenry believe that toddlers should be read to by male perverts in dresses, that middle-schoolers should have access to pornography in their libraries, that confused kids should be surgically mutilated through "gender-affirming" care, and that higher education should be an indoctrination into Marxist activism. If we can’t agree on basic definitions of common words or what used to be minimum standards of decency, how can we aspire to share a culture and form a mutually beneficial society?

The answer it seems is, “Give us a king to lead us!” We want someone from our own “tribe” (however we define that) to be empowered to enforce our views about what is good upon those who oppose us and ensure that our beliefs have the force of law behind them. The pendulum of power swings back and forth in the battle over who will ineffectively get to perform in the roles of leadership, while our institutions crumble in chaos. It’s all good though, because at least our guy made their guy look foolish on social media!

The beautiful thing about chaos is that it makes a stark contrast with things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy [See Philippians 4:8]. Patterns of order are more obvious when surrounded by patterns of turmoil.

Christianity exploded into the world at a time of chaos. The Roman Empire was the greatest military force the world had ever known. It had might, wealth, a history of glorious battle victories, an emperor with incredible power, and it was built upon a crumbling foundation of hedonistic institutions. People were drawn to the hope of Christ’s salvation amidst the hopelessness of the destruction around them. Perhaps God had a plan?

From an eternal perspective, we have nothing to fear from the chaos and destruction around us. When our hope is in the King, we don’t need a king. If you find yourself stressed out by talk of World War III, failing banks, nations in decline, corrupt leaders, and new pandemics, just remember to “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted in the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” [Psalm 46:10]