Cheers for socialism, and for kings
The power of the pol
If there’s one iron law that has ruled humanity from beyond antiquity, it’s that power corrupts. “Corrupt” has two meanings, with the first being dishonesty, or moral debasement, especially dealing with money. The second is “change or debase by making errors or unintentional alterations.” Both apply to people placed in positions of power.
There’s another law that’s more subtle, and that is that the people always get the government they consent to, or the alternative is to be conquered. A conquered people eventually either dissolves, is assimilated, becomes slaves, or moves away. With the exception of slaves, those who remain consent to be governed by their own actions—true rebels fight to the death.
The root word of “politics” is “pol” which in ancient Greek came from “polis” (πόλις), meaning city or city-state: a society; a subdivision ordered by a government. So we get the words metropolis, police, policy, poll, and of course, politician. In modern usage, “pol” really means “of the people” because it’s people we’re talking about, groups of people who share a common governing order. And the people allow someone, or some group, or some system, to govern themselves.
Even in direct democracy, where everything is voted on, someone has to count the votes; and whoever counts the votes has power to announce the results, and therefore represent the will of the pol. But who counts the votes to select the person who is to count the votes? Who counts the raised hands for “yea” and “no” at the organizational meeting? Who calls such a meeting to order, or sets the time? Once you get beyond two people, things get complicated. Direct democracy inevitably becomes corrupted into something else, but the pol decides what takes its place.
This is why the root of true socialism, where the state represents the true will of the pol, and everyone partakes, each to his own ability, and his own needs, is daft. It’s the same problem as direct democracy, except it ignores the first iron law, that power corrupts. Whoever speaks for the state, gets to decide the will of everyone, and that quickly becomes tyranny, meaning all but the leaders (or one leader) is a conquered slave of the state, with some less conquered than others. (See “Animal Farm”.)
There’s lots of nuggets to be gleaned from the stories and history of the Hebrew people in the Bible about government. From the time of Abraham through Jacob, who became Israel, and the twelve tribes, the people were governed in a patriarchal family, tribal system. That system is extremely efficient, especially when the patriarch is wise, wealthy, and loving. By the time the Israelites had grown to several million over the course of 400 years in Egypt, and become slaves to Pharaoh in the process, they needed a new leader. God sovereignly selected Moses to lead them, along with Aaron and Joshua.
The people didn’t obey Moses unless they were forced to, and fortunately for Moses, God had his back. At the holy mountain of God, the people fell right back into corruption when Moses disappeared for 40 days, even as the cloud of God’s presence brooded above them. They were literally in God’s sight, by their own eyes, practicing sin. That entire generation passed from the earth before God allowed the people back into their ancestral, covenantal land. And God did not allow the Hebrews to have their own leader. Instead, through the Law Moses wrote down, the people had judges, in the fashion of Jethro and Moses, who ruled on specific claims, one at a time.
As long as the Hebrews hewed to the written word of the Law, as written by Moses, the concept of judges made sense. Each tribe had a patriarch to make practical decisions, and there was an entire class of Levites and priests to administer to the requirements of God in the Law, so that God had the people’s back. But the final word resided with the judges. This system worked until the prophet Samuel, who was a judge, made his own sons judges, and Samuel’s sons became corrupt.
The story is in 1 Samuel 8. The “elders” or the patriarchs of the tribes, gathered at Ramah and told Samuel his sons were corrupt, and they wanted a king, like other nations have, instead of judges. So Samuel asked God, who answered:
“Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
Then Samuel told the elders what a king would do. He’ll take your sons to be soldiers, your daughters to be his perfumers, cooks and bakers. He’ll capriciously appoint some to be commanders over his armies, and take your harvest, and your materials to make his weapons. He’ll take your fields and orchards and vineyards for himself and give them to his friends and servants. He’ll do the same with your money and profit. He’ll make you his slaves. He will conquer you when you defy his will. And you will cry out to God but he’ll be deaf to your cries, because you chose this.
“No, give us a king anyway,” the pol said. They wanted to conquer others, and the way nations did their conquering in those days was with a king, well appointed, splendid and behind banners, with chariots and horses and a royal guard, standing in the sun with a strong jaw and a face like flint, holding a shining sword aloft. The Lord told Samuel, “Obey their voice and make them a king.”
Samuel chose Saul to be the king, because Saul was the epitome of what a king should be, in the eyes of the pol. Straight from central casting, as they say. “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he,” it is written in 1 Samuel 9:2. “From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.”
From the day that Samuel anointed Saul as king, until Hoshea, was deposed when the northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians, and Zedekiah, King of Judah, reigned over its destruction by the Babylonians, the Hebrews were ruled by a line of kings. Most of those kings were corrupt. The people suffered, exactly like Samuel had told them. The people cried out to God, and God did not answer. The pol asked for politics, and they got exactly what they asked for.
The ancient age of republics like Rome became the age of conquerers and empires, then emperors who fashioned themselves gods, just as the Egyptian pharaohs did. When Jesus Christ walked on the earth, Judea was governed by the pol, and they sought an earthy king like Saul. Most of Christ’s followers abandoned him, not because he couldn’t do miracles (he did them!) but because he was not the king they were looking for.
But the early church, in Acts chapter 2, once they were enabled by their experience with the Holy Spirit, lived as one, just as Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
If there is a true socialism, this was it. No king but Jesus, and Jesus didn’t live and walk among them. He was in heaven, and the Holy Spirit, speaking through believers, who studied the Word of God, sharing in teaching, fellowship, signs and wonders, and the good works that flow as fruit of the spirit.
But you know what’s really cool to me?
Socialism works. In fact it creates a society that is unconquerable, cannot be assimilated, and survives even slavery, tyranny, or dispersion. It walks through diaspora without evaporating into history. But there’s a catch, and it’s no trick.
The “Christian church,” such as it is and has been over history, not long after the completion of the books of the New Testament, (which is really misnamed, because it implies an Old Testament; that’s a teaching for another day—there is no Old Testament and New Testament; I only use those names for convention so you’ll know what I’m talking about), the church chose the pol over the Acts 2 version of socialism. It accumulated treasure. It appointed leaders. Those leaders became corrupted. They argued among themselves. They split. They led their pol and exacted the same price that the kings of Israel required.
The “Christian church” we see today, with tens of thousands of groups, fellowships, denominations, sects, splinters, and—yes!—cults, is not the Church that God intended for us to have. But God is not ignorant of anything. He’s omniscient. Therefore, God knows our nature, and he knew this would happen, that power would corrupt. He knew that they would choose the pol over the equality offered when there’s no king but Jesus. And God fully intends to set things right.
But there are examples of the Acts 2 church. The Pilgrims who left the Church of England did not share all the gifts of the Spirit and the theology of the Acts 2 church, but they did live in a socialist society, pledging all their property to the group, at least for the first two or three years in the New World. They were focused on survival, and God granted them grace and sustenance, though they suffered greatly. The Mayflower Compact provided for a governor, so they never really had a time without a pol. By 1623, the economic pull of private property and distribution of labor moved them into the more-or-less capitalist model, while their ties to England strongly bound them to that system.
Christian socialism is not the statist version we see in the secular world. It allows for private property. It allows for the distribution of labor, buying and selling, haggling over prices. It is neutral about the paying and collecting of taxes, and the functions of civil government. But it is devoted to a king who is not here on earth, and to the worship of a God whose kingdom is eternal, so that changes the focus of how things are acquired, used, and disposed.
The Jesus People, who walked straight out of the counter-culture, hippie movement that was filled with sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, began in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, and other places in California, then spread around the country (and the world). They explicitly followed the Acts 2 model. Many of the modern worship, and non-denominational charismatic movements that dot communities today had their beginnings in the Jesus People.
The rock band U2 found fellowship in an Acts 2 church called Shalom in Dublin, Ireland. Though Bono and The Edge remain deeply committed to their faith, many in that church saw the pursuit of fame to be “worldly” and to be rejected. It’s interesting that the Apostle Paul was likely akin to a rock star in the ancient world, but the folks in Dublin didn’t see things that way. In Acts 17, Paul had to deal with a demonic groupie, and encountered trouble with the authorities for doing so.
I think the best modern example is the Jesus Family in China, which began in 1921, in Shandong Province. The Chinese Communist Party studied this group with particular interest, because they lived communally, self-sufficiently, and supported each other with love, and without foreign support. It seemed like a socialist paradise that for nearly 30 years, worked without strife or corruption.
You’d think the communists would learn something from the Jesus Family. And they did, but what they found was not to their liking. Instead of owing its success (and allegiance) to the state, the Jesus Family owed all to Jesus Christ, and experienced signs, wonders, miracles, and devotion to the future kingdom that God has intended for His people. Their stubborn refusal to give up their beliefs of the Bible, and the coming reign of their King, Jesus, on the earth was deemed antithetical to the godless communism of Mao.
The Jesus Family was outlawed, its compound in Mazhuang was destroyed, its members were slaughtered or forced into separation, and its leader Jing Dianying arrested. Dianying died in a Chinese prison in 1957. The result of this was to spread the Jesus Family’s work throughout all of China. Mao had famously vowed to make the Bible completely irrelevant. In 1992, a Jesus Family group re-emerged in Shandong, six times larger than the original. Again, the government demolished their facility, and arrested Zheng Yunsu, the leader, sentencing him to 12 years in prison.
Current estimates put the number of believing Christians, most of whom worship in illegal house churches and small gatherings, at between 44 and 80 million, with some estimates as high as 100 million or more. Christianity thrives in persecution, and also has no allergy to socialism. Christianity is, in its heart, social, and therefore socialist.
Kingdoms of men are of the people, the pol. The Kingdom of God is of God, and of Him alone. God’s Kingdom is not political. It is not capitalist. It is not of the civil administration of people. It is not democratic. Its leaders are not elected. They are appointed, anointed, as Saul was by the prophet Samuel. Its judges are not subject to our whims. The coming Kingdom, the one that the Jesus Family was persecuted for its refusal to give up that belief, is not one we people have elected. It is not corruptible by power. It is not motivated by money or affected by the things people accumulate.
Those who will live under the Kingdom of God ruling on the earth will bow their knee and confess Jesus is Lord, because He will be Lord of all, by His will. Now we are living in the age of grace, when we can pursue whatever the pol wants. At Christ’s return, we will not be able to reject Him as the King we didn’t want.
But now, we can choose to live like He’s king. We can even live as socialists, as one family devoted to the King of Kings. We can live like Acts 2 says they lived right after Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. In fact, that’s the preferred way to live. It’s how the Church was always intended to function. It is the pol who corrupted the Church, just like it was the pol who corrupted the Kingdom of Israel.
If we believe, we understand that our purpose is to make straight the way, to prepare for Christ’s arrival, which is imminent. If we, the American church, don’t get this right, there’s 80, or 100, or some larger number of Chinese Christians who do get it.