All posts by Samuel Adams

I've lived in Canon City my whole life. It makes me sick to think of where this country is headed. The solutions are in God's Word.
Abolish The Police, Police Abuse, Power Trip, Theonomy

Not Everyone Is Fully Human, Right?

How many jokes have you heard about dropping the soap in the jailhouse shower? I’ve heard many, and often they’re told by people who are making the point that if someone breaks a law, they deserve whatever they get. If you don’t want to suffer homosexual rape in jail/prison, don’t commit the crime. However, being sodomized is not a just punishment for any crime.

This is so important that I don’t see how Christians are not all over it. Justice is an absolute. Absolutes come only from God. It’s impossible to speak of justice apart from the absolute standard of justice provided in God’s law. Anytime someone utters something about justice, they’re demonstrating that they’re created in God’s image.

Christians can know what justice is. How is this not a huge selling point for Christianity? How are we not proclaiming justice from the rooftops? But not only are most Christians not giving the life-giving solutions found in God’s laws to our dying society, we join in with non-Christians in misunderstanding and mocking Old Testament laws.

I don’t know Fremont County Sheriff Jim Beicker personally, though I believe he is a regular church-goer. He is accused of covering up the abuse and death of an inmate in his jail. Those who say that criminals get whatever they deserve, probably love Beicker all the more.

However, the punishment for whatever crime this inmate received was not the death penalty, or medical malpractice, or whatever. It is the job of the sheriff to keep inmates alive and safe while depriving them of their freedom.

Of course, it is possible that the just sentence for whatever crime this guy committed was the death penalty. The Bible gives the death penalty to murderers, adulterers, kidnappers, rapists, blasphemers, and those who revile their parents. If he wasn’t convicted of any of those crimes the proper course of action for the civil magistrate is to make him perform restitution.

Whatever crime he committed, he was treated as if he was subhuman, and a Christian like Beicker is supposed to treat everyone, even convicted criminals like they’re created in God’s image.

We all have God’s law written on our hearts, and this terrible situation is an opportunity for Christians to pluck those strings on their hearts to convict the local civil magistrates, and show them what they ought to be doing, and what God expects of them.

Christianity, Taxation, Theonomy

Answers to Larken Rose’s Questions

Larken Rose is an anarchocapitalist who posed these questions to someone who is opposed to anarchism. I’d like to answer his questions from a Christian theonomist perspective.

I have learned a lot from anarchocapitalists, and Larken in particular makes a lot of good points. I’d agree wholeheartedly with much of what anarchists say, but I think they don’t have a philosophical foundation for their system (which only Christianity can provide), though I love to see them ripping our current system to shreds.

So here are his five questions. I’ll put his writing in italics and answer the question just below each question.

1) Is there any means by which any number of individuals can delegate to someone else the moral right to do something which none of the individuals have the moral right to do themselves?
No human can delegate any moral rights. However, absolute morality, which Larken appeals to even though he’s not a Christian, can only come from God’s law. Part of God’s law specifies that there is one purpose and only one purpose for government: to punish evildoers. So there is a group of people (which would be a tiny fraction of the size of our current government) who do have the right to preside over trials and aid the people in carrying out justice.
I’m still trying to figure out what anarchists believe about how to punish criminals, so I don’t want to misrepresent what they believe, but I think there are some anarchists who would agree with that preceding paragraph.
To pick on the non-Christian viewpoint a little, Larken says that moral rights can’t be delegated, but why not? It seems to me that apart from God’s definition of good and evil, whoever has the most guns gets to define morality however they want. He might say that we learn right from wrong by Kindergarten, and I’d say that is because we’re created in God’s image. So he’s resting his whole view on blind faith that we all seem to know right from wrong, when there can be no such thing as absolute morality apart from Christianity.
2) Do those who wield political power (presidents, legislators, etc.) have the moral right to do things which other people do not have the moral right to do? If so, from whom and how did they acquire such a right?
As previously stated, judges have the right to preside over a trial and sentence someone to the proper, just punishment. The kings in Israel were not to wield executive power or to establish an army, but were the supreme judge of the land.

3) Is there any process (e.g., constitutions, elections, legislation) by which human beings can transform an immoral act into a moral act (without changing the act itself)?

No. This is a good point. I tried to express this to people in my community who supported the sales tax hike for roads last November. It was often like talking to a brick wall.
4) When law-makers and law-enforcers use coercion and force in the name of law and government, do they bear the same responsibility for their actions that anyone else would who did the same thing on his own?
Absolutely. God is no respecter of persons.

5) When there is a conflict between an individual’s own moral conscience, and the commands of a political authority, is the individual morally obligated to do what he personally views as wrong in order to “obey the law”?

God’s law is the standard by which all other laws are to be judged. A law that contradicts God’s law doesn’t need to be obeyed. However, I’m sure Larken would agree that some battles aren’t worth fighting, or are too costly to fight. I think that even though the income tax laws amount to theft, I ought to pay them, because I have a responsibility to be with my family if I’m able. I pay the thief, because he has a gun to my head–not because I have a moral responsibility to pay.

 

Theonomy

The Relationship Between Libertarianism and Theonomy

Maximum freedom is found in God’s law.

Here’s what Bo Marinov has to say:

bm

The libertarian presuppositions are Biblical presuppositions. Where the libertarian presuppositions deviate from the Bible, they also deviate from libertarianism. Theocracy is the closest thing to radical libertarianism that can be had. Anything short of theocracy is short of libertarianism as well. Thus, if you don’t have libertarian presuppositions, you are not a real theonomist. If you think that there is anything closer to radical libertarianism than theonomy, you don’t understand theonomy, and you don’t understand libertarianism.

Christianity

Question and Answer Time

Someone asked Bojidar Marinov about whether local church membership is the decentralized solution we hope for, and that speaking of the universal church and downplaying the local church is more of a collectivist (bad) way of thinking.

Bojidar’s Answer:

The argument here is not between the local church and the universal church. The argument here is between the individual and the local church. Notice how no one argues against local ACTION. We are arguing against MANDATORY “local church membership.” If a group of people got together and decided, “We will act locally,” this is one thing. When a group of people got together and said, “No one is legitimate unless they submit to us,” this is another thing altogether.

It is like the clan of which I wrote in my article in clan society. Yes, the clan may act locally, but the ideology of the clan is just as collectivist as that of the totalitarian state. Our argument against the clan is the nuclear family. In the same way, the “local church membership” is where collectivism is. Our argument is: the individual doesn’t need that “membership” in order to be a Christian.

Besides, “local church membership” is never used to ACT locally. It is always used to NOT act at all. No group needs formal membership to act. The very purpose of formal membership is to limit action.

The concept of the universal church here is invoked not to replace the local church as a bureaucracy with the universal church as a bureaucracy. The universal church as defined by the Reformed Confessions is not an organization. It is only used to oppose a different concept of membership to the bureaucratic concept. It is not that an individual “joins” a church. It is that in baptism, an individual becomes part of the Church, and therefore the Church goes with him when he goes out in the world.

To use the example of the clan again, we do not replace the clan with a bigger clan, the state. We oppose the clan with Christendom.

Secession

Secession

The following is from Bill Evans:

Think an election or a simple act of nullification can change Leviathan? You have no idea of how pervasive and evil the U.S. government is (along with its countless, multi-layered, unelected agencies, departments and bureaus) a fiat currency system run by globalist families, and virtual economic slavery via a tax upon your productivity, reducing us to indentured servitude.

Secession (peaceful separation…if possible) is the biblical response to tyranny; it was the founders response. A national, central government with a messiah complex. is unfixable, precisely because it IS unbiblical.

In the same way that the church, through the ministry of the word of God instructs individuals, families, and ecclesiastical powers, it should be informing civil government and the people, that God’s Law-Word provides the only solutions to our problems. The solution to tyranny presented in God’s word is separation, followed by the establishment of a Christian republic (trinitarian/theonomic,)
aka ‘A shining city on a hill.’

Abolish The Police, Police Abuse, Power Trip

Biblical Illeteracy

A knowledgeable Christian cop posted this:

I’ve discussed the general error of this meme before, but I ran across it again, and thought I would point out another error it puts forth.

When discussing government, many Christians will quote Romans 13 to you as if that is an argument in itself. Romans 13 defines the purpose of government. Biblical government has one purpose and that is to punish criminals. It’s not the government’s job to protect anyone.

For a knowledgeable Christian to espouse an unbiblical purpose for government shows the level of knowledge among American Christians.

Abortion

Great Story

Here’s a story from some abolitionists in Georgia:

It was a busy and wet day down at the abortuary here in Augusta, Georgia, also known as “A Women’s Preffered Healthcenter”. There were many hard hearts and alot of kick back. Nearly 15 babies were put to death here. However we did witness God do a work in a few hearts today.

A mother walked away from this death house and had a change of heart towards her little one. We were able to have a conversation with both her, and later the father, about children, sin and Jesus.

After about 20 minutes, they decided to follow me up the street to the CPC (crisis pregnancy center) for additional help and counseling. They were closed, but we were able to get a hold of the director of the facility. She came down to meet with them and later called me to say the mother had recognized this as “a divine appointment.” Praise the Lord.

During all of this the Stericycle truck showed up. For those who don’t know, Stericycle is the leading medical waste disposal company used by abortion facilities across the nation. Our local kill center stores its unwanted children in freezers in the back of its building to be collected every six weeks and taken to Lake City, GA and other cities to be incinerated. Much like biblical times, when Israel’s son’s and daughters were passed through the fires of Molech, so it is with these children.

When the driver pulled in, I grabbed a graphic image and went to the end of the driveway to call him to repentance. I waited for him to cut the engine off before speaking, but he kept it running and got out his phone and took a picture. I turned the sign around to show another graphic image, and he took another picture. Then he put his truck in gear and pulled out the drive!

As I stepped out of the way, he rolled down and spoke with me. He told me that he had no idea that this was an abortion clinic, and he “couldn’t do it.” I asked if he was a Christian, and he told me that he was a pastor.

Praise the Lord for conviction and those who love Him! This man was willing to leave his job rather than live with his conscience. Pray for this man and his family. His name is Cornelius. This man trusts God for his provisions and wants to do what is right in the sight of His Lord.