Ultimate Authority

SCRIPTURE: And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:25-27 NIV

QUOTE: “A lot of progressives…are very opposed to our founding or to even the Declaration because there’s this notion that there is a God and you’re not him. That’s very threatening to people who embrace socialism, Marxism and communism because they believe that governments are, in fact, God; that government gives rights, and government controls you. When you recognize from the founding perspective that there’s a God and the government’s not God…’the king is not God’ is really this massive statement. They’re saying to the king, ‘you don’t get to give us our rights’…. This novel American notion…literally transformed the world.” — Crossroads interviews with Tim Barton, Historian, President, WallBuilders, July 8, 2021

THOUGHT: As complicated as I can be, I truly admire the simple, cogent explanation — the one that helps make sense of the whole. That’s what I find in Barton’s comment. While we can dispute many things about our founding and the lives of the Founders, there is one golden chord that runs through the story — the king is not God. It was and is a massive, thunderous, inflammatory, treasonous claim that resonates back through history, touching the stories of every people who wanted to live freely, unafraid of out-of-control government, or sovereign, or feudal lord, or emperor. People who wanted and needed God-given rights. They needed protection without being enslaved and otherwise stripped of dignity by the protector.

The king is not God and the government is not God — that’s because there is a God in heaven and that is the God who has ultimate authority over our lives, and the lives of those who govern us. We all give answer to that God — the God who created us and set us down in a particular time and place in hopes that we would reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

Now, when you throw that concept out because you don’t want God, or aren’t comfortable with the rules he already set in motion for self-government, there’s going to be a problem, and Tim Barton helped me understand it.

PRAYER: Great God of the Universe, we pray that this ‘novel American notion’ which was really your plan throughout all time, might live on. The king is not God; there is a God in heaven and he has not abdicated his throne. Yours is the ultimate authority and we give it to you again, even on behalf of our nation, where people seem to be running from your rule to pursue a human rule that will eventually enslave them. Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.