What Form of GOVERNMENT Is Best?

The righteous laws of human governments and corresponding enforcement of those laws are God-ordained for the purpose of punishing criminals, including the right to execute when appropriate (Romans 13:1-6). In other words, the LORD uses flawed human governments in general as an instrument to bring order to societies in this fallen world since they protect innocent citizens from the consequences of sinful human tendencies. You can read more about this here.

Unfortunately, governments can become corrupt and do more harm than good for its citizens, not to mention other nations. How can noble citizens prevent their government from becoming corrupt? Obviously they have to be involved in the political process on one level or another otherwise evil people will take the reins.

The question we want to answer in this article is, what is the best kind of government in God’s eyes and why? What’s the Bible say? Let’s start with…

The Most Prominent Form of Government

William Federer informs in his excellent book Who is the King in America? that the most “popular” or reoccurring form of government in human history is the kingship in which what the ruler says goes. Different cultures use different names for such an authoritarian ruler — king, queen, pharaoh, lord, caesar, sultan, kaizer, emperor, maharaji, khan, dictator, etc. — but they all come down to one person calling the shots for a country of people. Even tribes have their chiefs. (When the words ‘king’ or ‘kingship’ are used throughout the rest of this article they’re referring to this type of government).

Federer points out the facts of life in such an authoritarian rule:

If you’re a friend of the king you’re more equal than other citizens.
If you’re not a friend you’re less equal.
If you’re an enemy you’re either a slave or dead.

A king is essentially a glorified gang leader and the gang leader naturally demands loyalty.

The best case scenario in a kingship of course is to have a good ruler. The problem with this is that the ruler will eventually perish and someone else will take over. What happens when the new person lacks the nobility of the former ruler? A good example from the Bible is the righteous kings of Judah, such as Jehoshaphat, Jotham, Hezekiah and Josiah. Judah was blessed under the noble leadership of these kings; unfortunately, all of their sons were ignoble, destructive authorities and the nation suffered accordingly.

Another problem with a kingship is: Even if you have a good king or queen, what if he/she goes bad, as was the case with Saul, Solomon, Joash, Amaziah and Uzziah, as well as Jehu in the northern kingdom?

Here’s the general top-down hierarchy in this form of government:

Ruler
Govt officials (including religious ones)
Soldiers
Scribes
Merchants
Artisans
Farmers/ranchers
Prisoners/slaves

This model is the default setting for government throughout human history. Interestingly, it wasn’t originally God’s will for Israel to be a human kingship. The LORD had in mind a bottom-up model with a decidedly spiritual kingship…

The Hebrew Republic and the Pilgrims Who Came to America

The first nation of millions of people to have no king in the history of the world was the Hebrews after they escaped slavery in Egypt. For 400 years they had no human king. Instead, the LORD was their spiritual King and they had noble human representatives, like Moses, Joshua or Deborah, with the priests teaching the Law and the people being accountable to God based on conscience.

While technically a theocracy, it was a republic from a purely natural perspective. This was the beginning of the concept of equality in regards to a nation of millions with the Law supporting the concept of no respecter of person, rich or poor. Ideally, everyone was to be treated the same and by the same standard.

The Hebrew Republic was God’s original plan for the Israelites, but eventually the people wanted to be like all the nations around them (1 Samuel 8:19-20), so the LORD reluctantly gave them their first king, which was Saul, who started out good, but became corrupt.

The Pilgrims were members of the Puritan sect of the Church of England, known as Separatists because they considered their congregations separate from the English state church (as opposed to the non-separatist Puritans). They fled tyranny in Europe on the Mayflower and used the Hebrew theocratic Republic as a model for government when they arrived in Provincetown Harbor & Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620 (they were heading for the Colony of Virginia, but a storm blew them off course).

The Pilgrims in America focused on the model of pre-King Saul Israel, which was the Hebrew Republic.
Across the Atlantic, the King of England, James I, preferred the Israel of King Saul-onward.

King James naturally favored the Saul-onward model due to the idea of “the divine right of kings” in which Kings have subjects who are subject to the king’s will. Case closed. This is in contrast to a theocratic democracy or republic that the Pilgrims had in mind based on the pre-Saul Hebrew Republic. Speaking of which…

Democracies and Republics

While a king rules absolute in a kingship, the people rule in a democracy (the Greek word dēmos means ‘the people’ and kratia means ‘rule’). The Athenian democracy in 508–507 BC is considered the first large-scale democracy in human history.

In a republic the people rule as well, except that they appoint representatives to do the political work, which frees-up the people to raise families and conduct the business of their livelihoods (the Latin res refers to an ‘entity concerning’ and publicus means ‘the public’).

Countries today that are called ‘democracies’ are actually republics since the people of the various regions elect representatives to go to the capital cities and carry out the political duties. America is a good example.

Anarchy, Republics and Kingships/Communism

The two extremes in human government are no government and total government.

With no government there’s anarchy wherein the person or gang of people that is the strongest reigns. The “strongest” typically have the most physical prowess, manpower or superior weapons.
With total government you have a leader who reigns supreme, which is a kingship or dictatorship. However, forms of Marxism, like Communism, also fit this category because the State becomes the supreme leader; instead of one person calling the shots, a ruling class of people do so. Some ‘kings’ are merely puppets controlled by a group of elites behind-the-scenes.
The middle ground of these two extremes is the people-ruling republic.

In both anarchy and kingship/Marxism the leaders rule by fear: Do what they say or they’ll captivate you or execute you. In essence, the State becomes “god” because it is through the State that the citizens get their rights and they are accountable to the State. Needless to say, the saying “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” becomes relevant.

Obviously the best option of the three possibilities is the “middle ground,” the people-ruling republic. In this form of government the individual gets his/her rights from the Creator and is ultimately accountable to their Maker. The citizens’ political leaders are merely representatives and often have term limits.

Republics Can Become Corrupt

Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world and so even a republic can become corrupt if the people don’t maintain a modicum of virtue; that is, a communal sense of nobility or honor. When the people of a community have virtue there’s little need for police. However, if the people become depraved, lawlessness results and they’ll choose corrupt representatives, which naturally results in a corrupt or ineffectual government.

Consider how America was challenged by two flooding disasters in 2005 — flooding in five Midwestern states, which caused the governors of Ohio and Indiana to declare states of emergency, and the flooding of New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina. In the Midwest the people came together and helped each other through the crisis while in The Big Easy a dog-eat-dog scenario emerged marked by heinous criminal acts.

What can explain the diametrically opposed responses to the same kind of natural calamity in the same country? Simple: In the Midwest the communities had a spirit of virtue and goodwill whereas inner city New Orleans had developed a dangerous, depraved spirit. I’m not saying there weren’t any good people there (even Sodom had a handful of noble souls), just that the widespread atrocious acts speak for themselves.

The Hebrew Republic of the first 400 years after escaping slavery in Egypt didn’t always work but, when it did, it was because the community had virtue, which was fueled by the Mosaic Law advocated by a noble national representative, like Moses or Joshua, not to mention the service of the priests. What is ‘virture’ based on in such a scenario? The citizens embrace three basic truths:

The Almighty sees everything.
God insists on honesty & fairness and repentance when moral error occurs.
Everyone is ultimately accountable to their Creator.

If a populace embraces this perspective it naturally creates societal order because the people are policed by their God-fearing conscience above law officers. This explains why the Pilgrims who came to America based their government on the brilliant Hebrew Republic and the United States was originally “one nation under God.”

Unfortunately, during Israel’s time of the “judges” — who were divinely-appointed leaders that delivered Israel from hostile neighboring nations — Israel fell into times of moral anarchy in which “everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 17:6 & 21:25).

This illustrates why fallen people desperately need new spiritual ‘software’ and the corresponding redemption if any republic is to be successful in the long term, which is what the message of Christ and resulting spiritual regeneration is all about (2 Timothy 1:10 & Titus 3:5). And this explains…

Why the American Colonies Were So Successful

After the Pilgrims set up their New England colony in 1620, towns started springing up across the landscape, all Judeo-Christian republics. A group of people with their pastor would found a location, a town, and the church facility would service both spiritual gatherings and political meetings, aka the townhouse.

One good example is Puritan ministers Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone who led a group of about 100 people to establish the settlement of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1636. Hooker also founded Windsor and is unsurprisingly considered to be the “founding father” of Connecticut. Meanwhile theologian Roger Williams founded Providence, Rhode Island, in 1636 wherein he established the first Baptist church in America.

These ministers & their people were naturally involved in the politics of their settlements. The word politics comes from the Greek polis, which means ‘city.’ Politics is simply the business of the city. On a national level, it’s the business of the nation.

These communities in the New World were very successful and naturally attracted increasing people from Europe who understandably grew weary with governmental tyranny and religious oppression, not to mention they desired land to farm or ranch. Whole congregations with their pastors migrated to the colonies and pioneered settlements.

In the 1700s up to the Revolutionary War a wave of 450,000 immigrants arrived mostly from Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, including throngs of Pietist Lutherans from Deutschland. Thus the population of the American colonies skyrocketed and the independent nation of the U.S.A. was born in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence.

As noted, the Puritan immigrants of the 1600s were very involved in the governance (politics) of their communities in America wherein practically everyone was a believer. Hooker, for instance, delivered his most famous sermon in 1638 on governmental power in Hartford wherein he declared “The foundation of authority is laid firstly in the free consent of the people.”

This was revolutionary in the 17th century when Europe was controlled by monarchs and oligarchs and the common people had precious little say in the running of their governments. It’s no wonder that Hooker was dubbed “the father of American democracy.”

Harvard University, incidentally, was established in 1636 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and named after its initial benefactor, a Puritan minister. What would America’s wise, devout ancestors think of the gross Leftist propaganda and perversion that is spewed out of this once-great institution today?

Is Being Involved in Politics “Unholy”?

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut of 1639 is considered to be the first written constitution in history and thus Connecticut was nicknamed “the Constitution State.” Unlike the Mayflower Compact, this agreement made no mention of the British monarch and it became the blueprint for the American colonies and the U.S. Constitution. The document is profoundly Christian-oriented with the eleven orders prefaced by the statement “to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches.”

This is in contrast to the Pietist Lutheran immigrants of the 1700s, who felt that believers should focus on God’s Kingdom, the Church, and not be involved with “man’s kingdom” because it was somehow unholy. The obvious problem with this outlook, of course, is that it discourages believers from being active in the governance of their communities and encourages the less devout to take the reigns of politics.

This is a recipe for disaster since — if every believer did this — it would guarantee a society governed by unbelievers or, at best, nominal “believers.” In other words, it takes control away from noble believers to determine how they should be governed. Imagine, today, giving all governmental power over to loony Leftwingers who ludicrously believe there are hundreds of genders, that homosexuality is natural & healthy, that mentally ill males should be legally permitted to use the women’s restroom and that practicing the truths of the Bible is bigoted and hateful.

You’ve no doubt noticed that this is increasingly happening in America and other Western nations with the radical Left gaining more and more power through propaganda in schools, universities, media and art, as well as brazen voting fraud and taking control of key political positions.

This leaves two possibilities for believers:

Government can get dirty so don’t get involved because you’ll get dirty (and, after all, God wants you to be holy).
Government can indeed get dirty so make sure you’re involved to help clean it up.

The latter option is just common sense, particularly if you want to leave your children — physical children or spiritual children — a nation that’s noble and free; a nation where the Word of God is freely spread without hinderance, including truths that (supposedly tolerant) LIEberals don’t like and desperately want to suppress.

God’s Very Nature is FREEDOM

Our LORD naturally prefers a form of government that provides the most freedom for citizens because liberty is core to God’s very nature:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

2 Corinthians 3:17

Thus in the Scriptures you’ll find several statements like this:

Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.

Psalm 115:3

The Lord does whatever pleases him,

in the heavens and on the earth,

in the seas and all their depths.

Psalm 135:6

In other words, God functions in a state of total freedom and therefore does whatever he wants. Guess what? People, male and female, are created in God’s image and likeness and so have this same desire. We intrinsically hate captivity and the restraints thereof. We want freedom!

The problem of course is that humans have a flesh or sinful nature which corrupts their desires. Thankfully, the LORD has provided a way for us to “escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:4); it’s called “participating in the divine nature” otherwise known as walking in the spirit (Galatians 5:16). When you learn to “put on the new self” you’ll be spirit-controlled rather than flesh-ruled (Ephesians 4:22-24) and, hence, your desires will be righteous rather than corrupt. (You can learn more about living by the spirit here or see this video).

Think about it, if believers “escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” by walking in the spirit, the community in question will have virtue — a spirit of goodness — which is the opposite of lawlessness. And this is one of the reasons the American settlements were so successful in the 1600s, attracting throngs of freedom-seeking people in the 1700s, the vast majority of them being believers and, often, pastors & their congregations.

While all forms of government in a fallen world are flawed and have shortcomings, the republic model — often called ‘democratic’ — is the best for individual liberty and opportunity. People tend to flourish in republics whereas they languish in the gross restraints of communist countries or dictatorships, which explains why folks naturally try to escape communistic states and dictatorships in preference for the freedom-loving republics and not vice versa. For instance, have you ever heard of anyone trying to go through the Iron Curtain to a Communistic nation in order to escape freedom in the West? Obviously not. The concept is laughable.

In republics the Word of God is freely spread and believers gather & worship at liberty whereas in communistic states or corrupt dictatorships/kingships believers have to meet secretly and, if they’re caught, they’re fined, imprisoned or worse.

The Purpose of the American Constitution & Bill of Rights

America today is increasingly devolving into a one-party state in which the Federal government has become a monster with an installed (not elected) Resident of the White House ruling through executive orders and mandates. I’m of course referring to OBiden.

The American Constitution is the supreme law of the United States and its primary purpose is to prevent one-person rule, which is glaring in its opening statement:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Constitution is a legal document that says what it says and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say, yet it’s also a “living document” in that it can be altered if appropriate and these additions are called amendments. There are currently 27 amendments with the first 10 referred to as the Bill of Rights, which put handcuffs on the Federal government to prevent it from becoming an oppressive monster.

Frederick Muhlenberg from Pennsylvania was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives and the first signer of the Bill of Rights in 1789, which was passed into law in 1791 after being ratified by 11 states. His brother also signed it. Their father happened to be the founder of the Lutheran Church in America and Frederick went on to become a minister, as did his sibling.

The future first Speaker of the House pastored several assemblies in Pennsylvania and one in New York City from 1770-1779, which is when he decided to enter politics, and with good reason: He was pastoring in the Big Apple when the intimidating Redcoats arrived at the onset of the Revolution and Frederick was compelled to go back to Pennsylvania.

Why do I bring up Muhlenberg? Because he & his brother were ministers in the Pietist Lutheran sect and therefore originally supported the idea of believers not being involved in governing “man’s kingdom” since politics can get dirty and God wants his people to be holy. However, as they matured their experiences convinced them that believers must get involved for reasons already noted.

These two men signed the First Amendment, which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This is where the idea of “separation of Church and state” hails from, but this amendment certainly doesn’t suggest that believers can’t or shouldn’t be involved in the politics of their towns, cities, states or nation! There are two clauses to this amendment:

The Establishment Clause: All this means is that the government is prohibited from establishing a state sect of religion and tyrannize the people accordingly, like Spain did with Catholicism.
The Exercise Clause: This just means that citizens are free to exercise their spiritual beliefs as they see fit. It’s their God-given right.

The point is that two pastors signed this amendment into law along with other members of Congress. As such, they certainly wouldn’t prohibit ministers & believers in general from serving the people in politics! If that were the case, then everyone involved in government would have to be atheists, which the Bible plainly calls fools (Psalm 14:1, 53:1 & 10:4).

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Understanding “the Right” and “the Left” from a Biblical Perspective

Understanding the Religion of LIEberalism

What Scripture Passages Disprove Calvinism?

The Basics of Christianity

The Seven FREEDOMS — Take Hold of ‘Em!

FREEDOM! LIFE! JOY! POWER!