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Lure of theocracy
#################
:date: 2023-10-26T09:40:34
:status: draft
:category: faith
:tags: sermon, politics, monarchy, democracy
\
“So all the elders of Israel gathered together and approached
Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, ‘Look, you are old, and your
sons don’t follow your ways. So now appoint over us a king to
lead us, just like all the other nations have.’
[…]
So Samuel spoke all the Lord’s words to the people who
were asking him for a king. He said, ‘Here are the policies of
the king who will rule over you: He will conscript your sons
and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they
will run in front of his chariot. He will appoint for himself
leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, as well as those
who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of
war and his chariot equipment. He will take your daughters to
be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. He will take your best
fields, vineyards, and olive groves, and give them to his own
servants. He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce
of your vineyards and give it to his administrators and his
servants. He will take your male and female servants, as well as
your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own
use. He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves
will be his servants. In that day you will cry out because of
your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t
answer you in that day.’”
-- 1. Samuel 7:4-18
We have heard this text in one of our Sunday sermons, and the
preacher talked to us how we could accept it both personally (“Be
careful what you wish for, you just might get it.”) and from the
point of view of a nation (“We will be like all the other
nations.”), but we haven’t talked much about pure politics of it.
And we should, because this moment when the Israel asked for
a king, and they changed radically from the situation when “[…]
there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right
in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) to the organized kingdom was
from the political/sociological point of view probably the most
important moment in the history of the nation of Israel.
And we should talk about it even more, if “[w]e believe, teach,
and confess that the only rule and norm according to which all
teachings, together with [all] teachers, should be evaluated and
judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and
New Testament alone.” (Lutheran Book of Concord, Formula of
Concord, 1), because when thinking about the government of the
state, The Holy Bible presents us with rather difficult
challenge.
We should talk about this passage more also because there is a
wide variety of interpretations of this passage with terms of
aspirations of many current Christians for what would constitute
“the true Christian politics”, and some of these interpretations
are in my opinion based on pure misunderstanding of the text and
(even more) on misunderstanding of the politics.
Some Christians idolise the era before the establishment of the
kingdom as some kind of dream state which we should hope to
re-establish in our era. Sources of this excitement differ, but
none of them seem much persuasive to me.
I have met some sources of libertarian persuasion, which tried to
describe the pre-kingdom era as time of unblemished
libertarian/anarchistic utopia, where people could live free
without an interference of a government, which God allowed only
ad hoc when the defence required it.
Most political evangelicals I have ever read had even more
frightening attitude of adoring the Judges era as their dream of
the political theocracy.
If we want to base our teaching about state on The Holy
Scriptures then we have to start with studying what really is
present in them.
.. Were judges prophets? Did God directly talked with them?
----
Let us sum what actually is in the Book of Judges.
----
Merovingian dynasty where gradually all power was taken by mayors
of the palace (originally manager of the king’s household,
glorified butler, like Mr Carson of the Downton Abbey; the same
combination of steward taking over the power while ruling in the
name of the absent king was used by J.R.R.Tolkien in Minas Tirith
of “The Lord of the Rings”).
“Země pak měla mír čtyřicet let, než Otniel, syn Kenazův,
zemřel.” (Soud 3:11, B21)
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