9 The Use of Force 117
Civil disobedience is, of course, a very serious matter and it must be stressed that Rutherford was the very opposite of an anarchist. In Lex Rex he does not propose armed revolution as an automatic solution. Instead, he sets forth the appropriate response to interference by the state in the liberties of the citizenry. Specifically, he stated that if the state deliberately is committed to destroying its ethical commitment to God then resistance is appropriate.
In such an instance, for the private person, the individual, Rutherford suggested that there are three appropriate levels of resistance: First, he must defend himself by protest (in contemporary society this would most often be by legal action); second, he must flee if at all possible; and, third, he may use force, if necessary, to defend himself. One should not employ force if he may save himself by flight; nor should one employ flight if he can save himself and defend himself by protest and the employment of constitutional means of redress. Rutherford illustrated this pattern of resistance from the life of David as it is recorded in the Old Testament.
On the other hand, when the state commits illegitimate acts against a corporate body-such as a duly constituted state or local body, or even a church-then flight is often an impractical and unrealistic means of resistance. Therefore, with respect to a corporate group or community, there are two levels of resistance: remonstration (or protest) and then, if necessary, force employed in self-defense. In this respect, Rutherford cautioned that a distinction must be made between a lawless uprising and lawful resistance.
For a corporate body (a civil entity), when illegitimate state acts are perpetrated upon it, resistance should be under the protection of the duly constituted authorities: if possible, it should be under the rule of the lesser magistrates (local officials). Rutherford urged that the office of the local official is just as much from God as is the office of the highest state official. Rutherford said, "When the supreme magistrate will not execute the judgment of the Lord, those who made him supreme magistrate, under God, who have under God, sovereign liberty to dispose of crowns and kingdoms, are to execute the judgment of the Lord, when wicked men make the law of God of none effect."
Samuel Rutherford and Bob Dylan would have understood each other. In "When You Gonna Wake Up" from the album Slow Train Coming,' Dylan has the lines:
The difference in the centuries, and the difference in the language used, changes nothing.
In a similar way John Locke (1632-1704) approached the same problem. Locke took Rutherford's Lex Rex and secularized it. Locke, though secularizing Lex Rex and the Presbyterian tradition, nevertheless drew heavily from it. Locke made four basic points:
1.inalienable rights;
2.government by consent;
3.separation of powers;
4.the right of revolution (or you could word it, the right to resist unlawful authority).
These were the four points of Locke which were acted upon by the men among the American Founders who followed Locke.
Witherspoon certainly knew Samuel Rutherford's writing well. The other Founding Fathers may have known him. They certainly knew about Locke. And for both Lex Rex and Locke there comes a time when there must be civil disobedience on the appropriate level. One begins not on the highest level, but on the appropriate level at one's own point of history.
Many within the Christian community would agree that Christians can protest and take flight in the face of state oppression. However, force of any kind is a place where many Christians stop short.
Force, as used in this book, means compulsion or constraint exerted upon a person (or persons) or on an entity such as the state.
When discussing force it is important to keep an axiom in mind: always before protest or force is used, we must work for reconstruction. In other words, we should attempt to correct and rebuild society before we advocate tearing it down or disrupting it.
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force, and if there is a vigilant precaution against its overreaction in practice, then at a certain point a use of force is justifiable. We should recognize, however, that overreaction can too easily become the ugly horror of sheer violence. Therefore, the distinction between force and violence is crucial. Os Guinness in The Dust of Death writes:
Without such a distinction there can be no legitimate justification for authority or discipline of any kind, whether on a parental or on a presidential level. In a fallen world the ideal of legal justice without the exercise of force is naive. Societies need a police force, a man has the right to defend his wife from assault. A feature of any society which can achieve a measure of freedom within form is that responsibility implies discipline. This is true at the various structural levels of society-in the sphere of the state, business, the community, the school, respectively.2
In a fallen world, force in some form will always be necessary. We must not forget that every presently existing government uses and must use force in order to exist. Two principles, however, must always be observed. First, there must be a legitimate basis and a legitimate exercise of force. Second, any overreaction crosses the line from force to violence. And unmitigated violence can never be justified.
As Knox and Rutherford illustrate, however, the proper use of force is not only the province of the state. Such an assumption is born of naivete. It leaves us without sufficient remedy when and if the state takes on totalitarian dimensions.
One factor today that is different from Rutherford's day is that due to the immense power of the modern state there may be no place to flee. The Pilgrims could escape tyranny by fleeing to America. But today this is often much more complicated and for many in the world today the frontiers are closed.
At this time in our history, protest is our most viable alternative. This is because in our country the freedom that allows us to use protest to the maximum still exists. However, we must realize that protest is a form of force. This is very much so with the so-called "nonviolent resistance." This was, and is, not a negation of force, but a choice of the kind of force to be used.
In our day an illustration for the need of protest is tax money being used for abortion. After all the normal constitutional means of protest had been exhausted, then what could be done? At some point protest could lead some Christians to refuse to pay some portion of their tax money. Of course, this would mean a trial. Such a move would have to be the individual's choice under God. No one should decide for another. But somewhere along the way, such a decision might easily have to be faced. Happily, at the present time in the United States the Hyde Amendment has removed the use of national tax money for abortions, but that does not change the possibility that in some cases such a protest would be the only way to be heard. One can think, for example, of the tax money going to Planned Parenthood which is openly a propaganda agency for abortion.
Another illustration would be Christian schools resisting the undue entanglement and interference of the state into their affairs. This same thing is equally true for other private schools. That might include resisting the Internal Revenue Service's use of its tax rulings if they were used to enforce such undue entanglement and interference. Again there would be trials and possibly jail for someone. But at a certain point there may be no other effective protest.
The problem in relation to a state public school system is not just an abstract possibility. As I write, a case of undue entanglement and interference is in the courts in a situation that corresponds exactly to Samuel Rutherford's concept of the proper procedure for a corporate body to resist.
The state of Arkansas has passed a law allowing creation to be taught in the public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is trying to have this law revoked, saying it violates the separation of church and state.
Here is a clear case fitting Rutherford's criteria. The state of Arkansas has passed a law. The courts are being used by the ACLU to try to nullify a state law which has the support of the original meaning of the First Amendment. The ACLU is arguing its case based upon a certain concept of the separation of church and state. But it must be stressed that this concept is entirely new and novel from the viewpoint of the original intent of the First Amendment and the total intent of the Founding Fathers. This new separation concept is a product of the recent humanist domi nance in the United States and is being used in this case to destroy the power of a properly elected state legislature's "sovereign" ruling.
The ACLU is acting as the arm of the humanist consensus to force its view on the majority of the Arkansas state officials.
If there was ever a clearer example of the lower "magistrates" being treated with tyranny, it would be hard to find. And this would be a time, if the appeal courts finally rule tyrannically, for the state government to protest and refuse to submit. This fits Rutherford's proper procedures exactly.
It is a time for Christians and others who do not accept the narrow and bigoted humanist views rightfully to use the appropriate forms of protest.
In this case in Arkansas the ACLU has shown that it is the reverse of a civil liberties union. It is trying to make the schools totally secularistic, against the majority wishes of the Arkansas Legislature, and probably the majority of the citizens of the state of Arkansas. Under the guise of "civil liberties" it is tyranny, and not only the individual states should resist but the people should resist. The Humanist forces have used the courts rather than the legislatures because the courts are not subject to the people's thinking and expression by the election process-and especially they (the courts) are not subject to reelection. This is also related to the courts increasingly making law and thus the diminishing of the Federal and state legisla tures. The people must act against tyranny by returning these issues to themselves. The Time magazine article of January 18, 1982 reporting on the lower courts ruling against the Arkansas legislature spoke of "a poll showing that 76 percent of the United States public favors the teaching of both theories"- i.e., evolution and creation. Thus if the poll is accurate, the lower court's ruling is openly contrary to the will of not only the legislature of Arkansas and the people of Arkansas but to 76 percent of the United States population. Any election figure getting such a percentage would consider this a mandate. Surely, the Founding Fathers would have considered this situation to be tyranny. It would be appropriate to remember the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773.
In a different area from the state schools: "undue entanglement" in the Christian schools makes an especially apt illustration. In Russia the state schools are geared to teach their form of state religion-the materialistic, humanistic world view-as the exclusive position. And simultaneously one of the outstanding issues in Russia concerning which Christians must disobey the state to be loyal to God is the state's laws against the parents' teaching their children concerning Christ and Christian truth.
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools. But then, those holding the humanistic world view move to control (through the curricula and other ways) the Christian or other private schools-even though these schools were set up at private cost by the parents in order to give their children an education based on the world view of a universe created by a God who objectively exists.
There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union. Marxism usually is not taught here, but the total exclusive secularization is as complete. It should be noted that this is not only a problem for Christians but for other religious groups.
We must never forget that the humanistic position is an exclusivist, closed system which shuts out all contending viewpoints-especially if these views teach anything other than relative values and standards. Anything which presents absolute truth, values, or standards is quite rightly seen by the humanist to be a total denial of the humanistic position.
As a result the humanistic, material-energy, chance world view is completely intolerant when it presents itself through the political institutions and especially through the schools. In his book Leftism, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn writes that as humanism begins to dominate the state "religion is then removed from the market place and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not tolerate any gods besides itself."' The school is their special target.
This is readily apparent in the Soviet Union. And it is carried forth in the name of religious freedom. For example, the Soviet Constitution provides:
Art. 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the State, and the school from the church. Freedom of religious worship and freedom of anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.
Though this is clearly apparent in Russia in regard to its schools, it is also apparent in the public schools of the United States. The humanistic, material-energy, chance world view intolerantly uses every form of force at its disposal to make its world view the exclusive one taught in the schools.
One of the unhappy things in our country is that when states have objected to the continued encroachment on the original rights of the individual states, the objection has usually been motivated by some selfish end. However, if this could be put aside and the matter considered objectively, then we must realize that the individual states, in the origin of the United States, did not trust an overly powerful Federal Government, and the Constitution limited the Federal Government to definite areas. It was understood that powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government were not its prerogative.
James Madison (1751-1836) in The Federalist, no. 45, wrote: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite." In the intervening years this has been totally reversed.
Having lived in Switzerland for thirty-three years, I am especially sensitive to this. The individual Swiss cantons have courageously resisted the growth of Federal encroachment in Switzerland much more resolutely than the states have in the United States. Thus, the checks and balances in government between canton and Federal Government are functioning for governmental freedom in Switzerland much better than those between the individual states and the Federal Government in the United States. In our day, the checks and balances in government which resulted from the Reformation are functioning in this regard more consistently in Switzerland than they are in the United States. In Switzerland, federal statism has thus been somewhat restrained.
We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state. Russia is the perfect example. But with the weakening or loss of the Christian consensus the Reformation countries have also become an example-including the United States. Thus, if the United States is to move back toward the original Reformation basis, this would mean severely limiting the scope of Federal State authority.
It is curious that the present Socialist Government in France, out of sheer pragmatism, is trying to dismantle its overly centralized government. It may be only pragmatic and "political," but it is instructive. This overcentralization is the outgrowth of Napoleon's Governmental Code. They are trying to dismantle the authoritarian result which was produced by the chaos caused by the French Revolution. These results of chaos and then Napoleon's resulting authoritarian regime with its network of administrative bureaucracy were the very opposite of that which was produced by the American Revolution on its base which placed God above the government.4 It is worth repeating James Madison's statement concerning the purpose of the United States Constitution: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite." But as the Judeo-Christian consensus in the United States has weakened and all but disappeared, with lack of vision even from a pragmatic perspective, let alone principle, the United States federal government has continually taken over the very power the original government of the United States did its best to curtail, limit, and resist.
Again we must see that what we face is a totality and not just bits and pieces. It is not too strong to say that we are at war, and there are no neutral parties in the struggle. One either confesses that God is the final authority, or one confesses that Caesar is Lord.