What is Government For?

Two Ways News is a weekly collaboration between Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen – a newsletter and podcast on a topic to encourage gospel thinking for today (subscribe at twoways.news).

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In this podcast, Phillip and Tony talk about church and state and government and secularism, through the clear and revealing lens of Romans 13.

For more on Romans 13:1-7 listen to Phillip’s sermons God and Government.

The next episode is The Culture of Debt and Love. The previous episode is Individuals in Community.

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WHAT IS GOVERNMENT FOR?

Romans 13 has some answers

Tony Payne: There are rarely good news stories when it comes to Christians and church. It’s rare for us to get featured in the news at all, but when we do, it’s only to point out something bad that’s happened in our midst that just goes to show we are pariahs. 

Phillip Jensen: Yes, there is one newspaper that hates Christian private schools. Week after week, it’s always the big private schools that are being attacked. 

TP: Terrible headlines : Bullying in Private Schools; Dysfunctional Teacher Sacked in Private School; and so on. 

PJ: Yet at the same time, the percentage of parents sending their children to Christian private schools is growing. And this newspaper that hates Christian private schools so much, was actually founded by Christians and used to be a Christian newspaper. But now it is anti-Christian in its perspective. It hardly ever tells you about what’s going wrong in state schools, except that there’s not enough funding. 

Another article I read showed that one in 12 students in state schools have been suspended in the last 12 months for violence and behavioural problems, but that’s not made anything of. But if there’s one child suspended at a private school, that’s big news. So there’s this mood in society that church is on the nose, especially if you read that newspaper in particular or the ABC, for that matter. 

TP: And in a way, how we think about ourselves and how people think about each other in our culture is formed by these cliches, and part of what the media does, unfortunately, is repeat a narrative and cast a particular kind of narrative. And it does leave Christians sometimes feeling that our relation to other people, and particularly to the authorities and to the state, is somehow problematic or difficult or a matter of controversy.

PJ: Yes, and it’s sad in Australia, because constitutionally and structurally, we had it sorted out here. Europe has a problem of state churches. It came out of the treaties of Westphalia that whatever the king of a country said that was the religion of that country. And so you had national churches, like the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, which even to this day, some like the churches in Germany are funded out of taxpayers’ money. But when Australia was settled, we didn’t have the state church problem. And it wasn’t quite like America, where people were fleeing state churches. But even in Australia, there is still an antagonism to churches as if we are a state church. And sometimes you hear Christians talking as if they are part of the state, which we are not here in Australia. 

TP: Yes, in many other places there are two dysfunctional options. One is you see a complete separation of church and state, as if the Christian faith or any kind of faith, can have nothing and must have nothing to do with the state or the government. Society becomes not just a secular but a secularized society in which expressions of faith and religion have no place whatsoever in public discourse or government. And then you have the other side in which there’s a fusion between church and state, such as traditionally in Europe, and there’s a confusion as to who’s really in charge. We haven’t had those two options historically in Australia, but those two options have always been problems for Christians to think through. 

PJ: That’s right. We’ve had a very happy resolution in the past, but that resolution is being undermined by secularists at the moment. There’s a famous case in the 1980s called the ‘Defense of Government Schools’ case which went to the High Court of Australia. Money had been given to religious private schools by the government, which hadn’t happened before until the 1960s, and the Defense of Government Schools was a lobby group who argued that this broke the Constitution. So it ran all the way up to the high court to determine whether a government could give money to a religious school. The High Court was absolutely clear on the subject: yes, of course we can. The constitution has not got a total separation of church and state, as though the state can never do anything for any church anywhere. It can support churches, provided it is even-handed and not favouring one religion or denomination over another. And that has always been the Australian viewpoint, but the secularists are annoyed by it. And so we talk about secular education, by which we mean education about the things of this world, the things of this age. But the secularists want to say there is no other world, there is no other age, and therefore all religious metaphysical discussions are out of bounds. You can do it in your own privacy, or in your own church building, but not in our community. But that shift has not got any constitutional legal basis for it; it is simply a shift in the language. 

Sydney Grammar School is a non-religious school set up by an act of Parliament. It was reconstituted in 1854 with the Sydney Grammar School Act. Not many schools have their own act. It’s a very important, prestigious school— the Acts says that the Vice Chancellor of the University of Sydney and the head of the Legislative Assembly, and all kinds of people are on the board, because this is a public, governmental kind of school. But if you look at the preamble, it says it is “deemed expedient for the better advancement of religion and morality and the promotion of useful knowledge, to establish in Sydney a public school for conferring in all classes and dominations of Her Majesty’s subjects, without any distinction whatsoever the advantage of a regular and liberal course of education”. They saw education as helpful for the advancement of religion. It was not secularist; it was secular. 

TP: It was a regular and liberal course of education, yes, but it would never have entered their heads that you could have a ‘regular and liberal course of education’ without discussing religion, metaphysics, morality, and the big why and who questions of reality.

PJ: No, it didn’t, and it shouldn’t. Frankly, you see Lord Denning, who’s a great jurist of the late 20th century in England, who said, “Without religion, there can be no morality, and without morality there can be no law. And if religion perishes in the land, truth and justice will also.” The concept that we’re going to be moral-free because we are religion-free, that a non-ethical social organization can produce justice is a nonsense. You have different moralities because you have different religions, but you can’t have that with atheism. We’ve mentioned Gulag Archipelago in the previous episodes. 

TP: Yes, we’ve got to have our regular mention of Solzhenitsyn! It’s about what sort of morality and what sort of system of justice ends up coming about in a totally atheist state. One of the staggering things about his account is how there was an attempt to have a legal code. There was a legal code for everything that was done to these people that was so appallingly unjust and awful. But the legal code was constantly being changed and was just ignored when it was convenient to ignore it and there was no justice. There was supposedly a judiciary and a political party that was devoted to the welfare of the people. But in fact, it was precisely those mechanisms through which 60-80 million people were unjustly imprisoned and many of them killed.

PJ: Yes, it’s a “justice” which really is actually social engineering, and I’m afraid that is the justice that is now coming into the secularization of Western society—that what’s right or wrong is determined by what are suitable outcomes, rather than by what is actually right or wrong. These days, nothing is actually ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. But the inconsistencies of our society mean there are certain things that are actually wrong. You can’t mention the N word, for example, and pedophilia is only ever always wrong. So I’m glad there are still certain things that are wrong.

TP: So a total separation of the idea of church or religion and morality and the state is dysfunctional. It doesn’t work. And yet, as we read the Bible, we should expect that that’s the case, because the Bible doesn’t separate them entirely, as if God operates in a little private zone over here and has his church and his people, and there’s this completely other thing over there that has nothing to do with him. 

PJ: Exactly. In the Old Testament, you have a church state which is Israel. But in the New Testament, the invitation to join into the kingdom of God is to the nations. But the separation of the kingdom of God from the kingdoms of this world is not absolute and can never be. We’re told in 1 Timothy 2 to pray for those who are in authority over us. It doesn’t limit it to the government state. It’s any who are in power and authority over us. So we should pray for police officers, school teachers, university vice chancellors, whoever our boss is, heads of private companies, we pray for them, including the government. Then so furthermore, we’re told here in Romans 13 that all those in governing authority have been appointed by God, and they must all rule with justice. God has appointed them, and they have to rule with justice. So you can’t actually separate church and state. 

TP: Because the God who is the Lord of all things appoints everybody, appoints all authorities, as our passage says, and is the lord of his church. Perhaps we should tease it out in Romans 13 itself. 

PJ: Yes, let’s go back to the end of chapter 12 which talks about love within the church and how we relate to outsiders with our love. 

TP: Romans 12:14-21

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

PJ: Now, we see a shift towards our relationship with outsiders in this last section of chapter 12, which comes out of a transformation of the mind, because who in their right mind is going to give food to our enemies, give drink to our enemies, to bless those who persecute us. But we are to think of ourselves differently. The first half of the chapter says we’re not to be thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. And this section also is talking about that we mustn’t be haughty, but we must associate with those who are poor and who are less significant in society. And so our love has to be genuine, not only in loving those who love us, but loving those who do not love us. For the character of God’s love is vastly different and more profound than the character of this world’s love. We’re not conformed to this world, which loves its own but we are transformed into the mind of God, which loves our enemies.

TP: And it breaks that dreadful cycle that blights so many communities, which is the cycle of revenge. And in a way, because our culture has been so steeped in the gospel for so many centuries, because the nature of our justice system and the way we organize ourselves has been so influenced by by passages like this, we’re often not aware of just how dysfunctional a culture is in which personal revenge or vendetta actually takes place.

PJ: Yes, our dear friends in PNG, and the Indigenous Australian justice system, who have not had these hundreds of years of Christianity, have quite a vicious system of payback and warfare. And not just on the national level, even on the personal level, a family that is riven by divorce is still being fought out between the different parties and no one will concede. Everyone wants to argue and to fight back, and it’s like Bleak House. The only people who win are the lawyers. It’s just dreadful. And so the sense of justice demands repayment. The trouble is, justice does require repayment. But what this passage is saying is enormously liberating for sinful humanity—that justice and payment is God’s work, not ours. 

TP: He is the just judge who will, in the end, repay. Don’t take that into your own hands because it just sets up this cycle of punch and counter punch and there is no-one above us to bring satisfactory justice. 

PJ: Yes. And because I will read your unjust treatment of me as being considerably more unjust than my treatment of you, the vendettas keep going on and actually escalate, and you need an outside judge to give the verdict on which way the judgment should fall. But in this world, we do not have to wait till the end, because God has set up his system of justice, which is why chapter 13 flows on from that little argument. 

TP: Yes, Romans 13:1-7 says:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

PJ: Tony, what do you think is the chief purpose of government?

TP: Oh, it’s to give me nice things. I pay them taxes, and in return they give me nice things. Is that the purpose of government? On a more serious note, I think that increasingly we’ve come to see the role of government almost as a god substitute in our culture. 

PJ: Yes, secularists do have a god—it’s called government—and that’s why they are always making more and more of the government, requiring more of it and getting it to interfere with more and more elements of our lives. But that’s not why we have government, is it?

TP: No, I think it comes out in this passage and also in other parts of the Bible that the primary function of government is justice. It’s judgment. It’s to administer justice indifferently, as that old fashioned word says. It means that justice is not partial to one side or another, that justice is administered according to the law to reward what is good and to punish what is evil. And that’s a primary function of government. Which means you then need to frame clearly what laws will determine justice within our culture. So there is a legislative aspect to the administration of justice. But when you look back to the Old Testament, even though you have a kind of theocracy–a nation of God–you see within the role of the king in the Old Testament the role of the judge, of administering justice, but also of leading and fighting wars against Israel’s enemies. So what does the king do in Israel? He’s supposed to read the law so that he can administer justice and fight on behalf of the people.

PJ: And he himself is under the law, which is a wonderful concept. So there’s not an absolute monarchy in the Bible, as there was in most of the world. Instead there is a monarch who is under the law, administering the law with that impartiality that you speak of. But he is also the ministry for defense. Those are the two primary ministries of government, but our ministries in government these days go to more and more things which are not necessarily bad in themselves, but is it the government’s job to do them? Can they do them as well as other functions or structures or aspects of our culture or society? And can they do it without increasing the bureaucratic invasion into the community? And can they do it so that people remember that the country is not the government and the government is not the country? I sometimes think that the Australian government thinks they are Australia, but 1/3 of the people of Australia are in not for profit, voluntary organizations doing the work of Australia. And families are not under the government’s control, though more and more the government is wanting to say how families can, can’t, should, shouldn’t operate. And so there’s this ever growing power around governments when justice is the fundamental activity of government.

TP: So if justice is the essential activity, and combined with that, the justice that’s involved in resisting the unjust attacks of of enemies, what about resistance, then, to the government? If the government is God’s avenger and God’s minister and you don’t like aspects of our government going too far, shouldn’t you just accept the government’s decisions as God’s decisions?

PJ: There comes times when resistance is right. I’m not sure that’s the right time for resistance. I don’t think the education of the community is the government’s business, and yet many people think education is the government’s business. I think justice in education, maybe, but education is not. There’s no reason that the government has to provide schooling. It’s the families that are responsible for schooling their children. But I don’t think that’s a basis upon which you could resist the government. You have to have a very clear word from God in order to resist government, and the government has to be acting in profoundly unjust ways before you would be right to resist the government. It’s a struggle. For example, the Christians in Hong Kong today have great difficulty in knowing how to resist and how far to go in resisting the government’s intrusion in their life, because it’s an intrusion that is different to the previous government’s intrusion into life. At what point do we say enough? I suspect it has to be a long way. It’s God’s government that is appointed. And in Romans 13 you see the government he’s talking about was the Roman Empire.

TP: This was not the kindest, gentlest, most just government in the history of the world.

PJ: It certainly was not. And yet, Paul is saying, give honour to those who are in their position. However, the apostles in Acts did say that there was a point where we have to decide whether we obey you or God. There comes points when the government calls upon you to do that which is contrary to the expressed will of God, and then you should resist. But even in resistance, there are good ways and bad ways. Contrast Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King with Malcolm X and Black Lives Matter. 

TP: Yes, I don’t remember Martin Luther’s quote exactly but he dreamed of living in a country where people are judged by not the colour of the skin but the content of their character. 

PJ: That’s right. He was non-violent, while Malcom X promoted violence and was for racial separation. He was arguing for apartheid in America at the same time as Africa was arguing against apartheid. Luther King was addressing and resisting in a very non-violent way with pleading and preaching, compared to Malcolm X which has given rise to the Black Lives Matter campaigns which have been again divisive and violent in their rejection of the society and the culture at the moment. 

TP: It is fascinating to see the evolution of the ideas. Martin Luther King said, I don’t want to pay attention to the colour of skin. I want it to be about your character. And the word that was often used to describe that was that you are after a ‘colourblind’ approach to policy and to public life—that I don’t care what colour you are, and I certainly won’t discriminate based on what colour your skin is. I’ll treat you as a person, and I’ll judge you on the content of your actions and character, not on your background or your ethnicity. But it’s fascinating how in the last 15-25 years, there’s been a flip, and once again, we’re back towards a more tribal kind of view of things, that the colour of my skin really does matter, that you must notice the colour of my skin, that my identity as a person of a particular colour is really what’s important about me, and that all of a sudden, those differences between us are actually determinative and the most important thing. And it’s really a 180 from where Martin Luther King was heading.

PJ: It is. And coming back to the passage about paying respect and revenue and taxes to those it is owed to, those who have been appointed by God have a right to expect of me respect and honour and support, because they’ve been appointed by God to institute justice in this world. That means it’s important that I pray for them. That means it’s important that we preach the truth and be heard to preach the truth, that we participate in the public square, extolling what justice really is, extolling what injustice really is, so that those who are in authority can make just and right decisions. Because it’s not just the governments who need our support, many leaders in large organisations across the country also need our prayers and support. 

TP: Indeed. Our role as Christians is to do what Christians do, that is to preach, to preach the truth, to live that truth ourselves, to see that come out in our genuine love and our genuine submission and our respect of all people. To see that through our prayers that recognize this world is fallen and broken and sinful in so many ways, that we all need God’s help to do what he wants of us, and most especially in this case, that governments and those in authority certainly need God’s wisdom and guidance. So rather than always just criticizing and always just complaining about our governments, which is kind of like a national sport in Australia, we should pray for them all.

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