Human Depravity and Government Part 2

Upon reading my last post, I confess I was a bit dissatisfied with the connection I made between human depravity and the structure of the federal government. I made a good connection, but I didn't tease it out. So here's another take.

First, what if our government believed in and relied on the inherent goodness of people? If this were true, we'd have no reason for much of the laws we have. Why would we need to write more laws if everyone obeyed them without negative consequence? We wouldn't. Think of all the laws we wouldn't need: all criminal law, federal laws regarding immigration and gun control, and the government wouldn't tax people at all because out of their goodness they'd give to the big government cause. Of course this absurd.

Second, has there been any government in the modern era of the nation-state who exemplified the inherent goodness of humanity? Even communist governments founded upon the ideal of absolute equality always denigrated into totalitarian states bent on conforming people to the will of the state/party. It frankly, on top of being immoral, is impractial to structure a government based on human goodness.

Does this mean I believe humans don't have the capacity for good? No, it does not. Humans are also made in God's image (Gen. 1). But social and governmental standards are different than individual and personal ethics. I believe there are many decent, law-abiding citizens. But we must assume the depravity of humanity as a first principle in government.

So can the government be an instrument of that good? No it cannot. The government can only be an instrument of coercion. The government asks for taxes and goes to war. Even these modes of the government are established by the Christian thought (Romans 13). The government, by the very nature of its entity, cannot be an agent of compassion. Even in welfare, medicaid, or health insurance (seemingly compassionate acts of government), the government must get that money from somewhere and it must force its laws upon the populace. Note: the government can only be about force, then. Acts of compassion convolute the role of government and misconstrue the first principle of government: humans are deprave and therefore governments tend to abuse even attempted compassion.

So what's the good news? The good news is that we can be involved in a wonderful, albeit broken, democracy in this era of the United States. This means, from a Christian perspective, that we can and should be involved in the reform of government at every level. And should we decide to run for office, we should be very cautious about the role our own depravity can play as it hungers for power, fame, and success. They are universal human temptations after all.

In sum, be wary of any glowing or enlightened terms about the goodness of government. It's not a moral entity, it cannot be good or bad. It is only an agent of coercion, so let's make sure we give the coercion definite boundaries.