Who Will Be Our Messiah?

This election has brought into focus two things positively mystifying, and ominous, about Americans’ attitude toward the presidency of the United States. One is how much blame they foist onto the President for things that are, constitutionally, the responsibility of Congress, or, worse, that are beyond the control of any human being, such as bad weather. The other is how much they look to a president to be a savior from every sort of corporate or even personal ill and discomfort, exemplified by Barack Obama’s “messiah” status with many voters. These phenomena are ominous because they indicate an elevation of the presidency that borders on idolatry. They signal a return of the age-old tendency—once anathema in this country—to look not to ourselves under God for our governance and solutions to national problems, but to a single strong leader to save us.

The same thing happened in Israel millennia ago. Since their arrival in the Promised Land, the Jews essentially had a theocracy led by judges and prophets, who administered justice, taught them the law of God, and led them in battle. Under this system, they did just fine without benefit of a king or a huge bureaucracy. That was until they asked their leader, Samuel the prophet, to, “appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” (I Samuel 8:6) Samuel knew this was a bad plan, but the Lord told him to grant their request, saying, “It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.” (I Samuel 8:7)

In the rest of I Samuel 8, Samuel warns the Israelites about what would happen once they had a king to rule over them. Please read it yourself, but the gist is that he would tax them silly for his own projects and make slaves of them. Samuel warned, “When that day comes, you will cry out to the Lord for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (I Samuel 8:18) But they didn’t heed the warning, and suffered the consequences, as the rest of the Old Testament records.

Of course, America is not a theocracy and there are many other differences between ancient Israel and the United States today. Yet there are parallels, and we would be wise to learn from Israel’s example. What happens in a nation’s spiritual life eventually works itself out in its political life. Israel rejected God. With that rejection, they lost their will and ability for self-government. They demanded an all-powerful king to rule over them and fight their battles for them.

Are we not doing exactly the same thing in America today? We have rejected God in our personal lives and in our public institutions. The resulting moral decline has left us slaves of our lusts, unable to govern ourselves, an ability that is the very foundation of a free society. Since nature abhors a vacuum, to the degree that we will not govern ourselves, we will be governed, by an increasingly stronger and more centralized authority. Another way to say it is that if the Messiah is not King internally, in our hearts, we will need an external king to control us. Like Israel in Samuel’s time, we clamor for such a savior-king to remove the effects of our sin, but not our sin.

We will either worship God or the state. We cannot be a godless nation and a free one. It’s time for us to humble ourselves for some national soul searching to decide whom we will serve, and so determine the future of our nation.