Admit it.
If you read enough conservative news, you eventually get annoyed at the “helpful” commentator who acts like traditional Christians are useful idiots providing the votes needed to protect his investments in Chinese toy manufacturing.
With your head you know that big government is no friend to traditional religion. . . or Established Churches in Europe would be flourishing.
Sometimes though as you watch the culture get flooded by garbage and friends struggle with gluttony, porn, or smoking, it is tempting to use the power of the state (ever so gently!) to help them.
With your head you know that we are winning the abortion fight by our slow and steady alliance with mainstream Republicans. This is the most pro-life generation ever. Our opponents no longer defend abortion, just a women’s right to make a choice they would never make. Even mainstream media rarely shows abortion in a positive light. We might be as close as one justice from overturning Roe versus Wade and sending this issue back to the states where it belongs under the Constitution.
Patience is difficult, however, and sometimes, especially when yet another Republican president phones in his support to the March for Life, you feel used.
Politics is not church and purity is rare. Conservative Christians put “no trust in princes,” but it is still discouraging when leader after leader lets us down or appears to be using us.
It is tempting to say “screw you” or some variation of that theme and just go for broke.
When discouraged (on the left or the right) people have the natural temptation to either daydream of some apocalypse that would sweep aside the corrupt elites or some shining knight who would cleanse the temple of its filth.
The problem is that in politics the apocalypse of revolution brings Stalin and the death of twenty-two million and the knight turns into the tyrant Napoleon.
The long, slow, checks-and-balances approach of the Framers is hard. It requires grown up patience and the willingness to accept defeat and play by the rules. Most of all the constitutionalist, who respects both law and liberty, avoids the give them hell mentality of the defeatist or the Utopian.
But if your heart is like mine, you are tempted to get a pitchfork and let those elites have it.
If so, then read this very carefully:
2 Chronicles 10
The Revolt Against Rehoboam
1Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. 2And as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard of it (for he was in Egypt, where he had fled from King Solomon), then Jeroboam returned from Egypt. 3And they sent and called him. And Jeroboam and all Israel came and said to Rehoboam, 4 “Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us, and we will serve you.” 5He said to them, “Come to me again in three days.” So the people went away. 6Then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men, who had stood before Solomon his father while he was yet alive, saying, “How do you advise me to answer this people?” 7And they said to him, “If you will be good to this people and please them and speak good words to them, then they will be your servants forever.” 8But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him, and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. 9And he said to them, “What do you advise that we answer this people who have said to me, ‘Lighten the yoke that your father put on us’?” 10And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, “Thus shall you speak to the people who said to you, ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us’; thus shall you say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s thighs. 11And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.’”
12So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king said, “Come to me again the third day.” 13And the king answered them harshly; and forsaking the counsel of the old men, 14King Rehoboam spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to it. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions.” 15So the king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by God that the LORD might fulfill his word, which he spoke by Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat.
16And when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king, “What portion have we in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. Each of you to your tents, O Israel! Look now to your own house, David.” So all Israel went to their tents. 17But Rehoboam reigned over the people of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah. 18Then King Rehoboam sent Hadoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labor, and the people of Israel stoned him to death with stones. And King Rehoboam quickly mounted his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. 19So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
There is much to learn in this passage. Some parts are more relevant to cultures very different than our own and other ideas are not relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves.
Rehoboam was impatient with whiny allies and decided to give ‘em scorpions.
There is some ancient wisdom about “give ‘em scorpions” politics to consider whenever we grow weary of caution, compromise, and coalitions.
Rehoboam was impatient, acted hastily, divided his kingdom, and Israel never recovered. When confronted by advice he did not want to hear and a political situation that was irritating and subversive, he made cultural divisions political and permanent.
He stabbed a sucking wound.
The tribe of Judah, Rehoboam’s home turf, was “good Israel,” but it was weak without the northern tribes. It was too weak to sustain itself for long as a free power (without paying tribute). Divided from their northern brothers, the House of David was relegated to a cipher tossed about by the rise and fall of regional empires.
This was all because a young man grew hasty and would not be patient. Rehoboam foolishly allowed the House of David to become merely the House of Judah by failing to understand and heal the natural fault lines in his kingdom. The young king would not build coalitions with “rebels” and so he lost them.
He had one bad day and all Israel paid for it for centuries.
What was the folly of Rehoboam the son of Solomon, son of David?
First, he was a revolutionary. He wanted the young men to come into their own immediately. This is a good and natural desire, but haste can ruin a needed transition. Rehoboam did not recognize that this change would come with time and lacked any political patience. He also ignored the wisdom and advisers of the past and went with the strong young men around him.
Obviously Solomon had allowed divisions to grow by his tyrannical and “state driven” policies that favored one region over another, but Rehoboam’s folly was to make his father’s error permanent.
Second, he decided that what was needed was some “screw you” politics. He had power and he decided to use it. He was not patient, but precipitous. The results were a short and long term disaster.
Third, Rehoboam forget that political power is best when it is “unused.” It almost never is as a great as its enemies fear. Generally, the unspoken threat of strong action is enough. Conservative Christians may be tempted to use a “big stick” on the Republican Party right now, but forget that Mr. Roosevelt also said to “speak softly.”
Any group forced by Divine Providence into a situation where it must work with different “tribes” (as traditional Christians are in the United States) must be careful not to alienate groups they need to prosper. Some Christians seem to forget the need for allies and friends. Those who are not “against us” can in fact be for us in politics!
Finally, Rehobam tried to use raw state power to enforce obedience to unpopular ideas. The result was rebellion and murder where public sympathy was with the rebels and murders. Whatever the merits of Solomon’s public works projects (which included the Temple!) in the abstract, the cost in human terms of high taxation and forced labor (the equivalent of taxes for the poor), meant that justice went to the side of the rebels.
But at what cost!
Both halves of the old kingdom of David were weaker without the other part.
The rebels gained Jeroboam, a greater tyrant who corrupted them beyond hope of redemption.
The traditionalists lived on in a rump state much less than God’s best for them.
All of this because one generation of young leaders decided that they had to act immediately.
The great tragedy of “screw you” politics is that the innocent suffer first and most. The purity of the revolutionary is almost always bought at first with another person’s pain.
If the old Reagan coalition is dissolved, then it will not be those who do the deed who suffer first, but millions more unborn children who might have been saved.
As I vote, and I will vote, let me vote for a person who can keep a coalition together and not break it up on its fault lines.
As I vote, pray God, let me be patient and accept slow change that the people can accept and not demand everything that will cost me everything.
As I vote, let me listen to older and wiser heads without becoming cynical and dropping out.
Let me avoid Rehoboam’s folly in the ballot box this year.
