What is politics?

The ideal personality from scripture for modeling a biblical view of politics is King David - noble, serving, not self-promoting, courageous, humble, pleasing God instead of man, willing to lose versus displease God, seeking the will of God in all he did. Thus, by his example, you have a biblical view of the ideal politician. But before we answer the question as to the ideal politician, perhaps we should answer the question: What is politics?

The bible doesn't even mention civil government in the first few chapters, wherein we quickly get an understanding of the creator God and his attitude toward humans, marriage, sin, procreation, work, rest, etc. However, there's no mention of any government, except for God's government over all things and the family government. Does that make civil government and its accompanying politics invalid? Not necessarily. But it might mean its importance shouldn't be played up, like it is today. The national news media revolves around politics, as if what happens in Washington, D.C. is always important, no matter how banal or trivial the actual event or words may be.

There is discussion of cities, even a kingdom, being founded in the early chapters of Genesis, but nothing about government of those cities. Unless we're to infer some type of government in Gen. 10 being established just after the worldwide flood by personalities like Nimrod, a descendant of Cain who had a kingdom involving Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh, there's really little to no mention of civil government until the tower of Babel. At that time, people organized to build a tower with some sort of religious purpose, so there must have been some form of organized leadership. But God was not impressed with their building of the tower of Babel to the point that the scripture doesn't even mention the leaders.

Perhaps we could infer that a lack of civil government was one of the reasons that the earth was "full of violence" before the flood. Gen. 6. Or that evil civil governments were the cause. The fact the bible doesn't say may mean that both lack of government and evil in what government that existed contributed to the violence.

As you read the New Testament of the bible, you find very little mention of politics by Jesus. In fact, you'll look long and hard to find any thing of substance at all. Students of His words have culled meaning from his comment about Caesar's coin and giving to God what is God's. Advocates of taxation use his comment to support their view that higher taxation is always justified, but that is clearly not his intended meaning, as if he were some sort of advocate of tyrannical taxation of the citizenry. He simply showed that he was not an advocate of paying nothing for the services provided by civil government. In other words, he is not an advocate of the "free ride." But beyond that he had little to say on the subject. Perhaps that should give us an idea as to how important it should be to us; Jesus Christ did not think civil government was the cure-all for what ails us as individuals or our society. It goes without saying that He did not bow down to the idolatry of Caesarism; His followers died to show their loyalty to Him versus that of Caesar. His apostle John wrote a prophetic work on what civil government looks like without Christ; it's a monstrous beast, defying God and devouring humans for opposing its policies. The new testament cannot legitimately be used to support high taxing, big government without taking verses out of context and distoring its meaning beyond recognition.

Noah Webster's first dictionary, the 1828 edition, defines politics as: "The science of government; that part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals. Politics, as a science or an art, is a subject of vast extent and importance."

I found more modern definitions less specific and more general, thereby leaving open too much room to expand what politics might govern. Even Webster gives too much power to politics when he says it is for "the improvement of their morals." He should have said, "the improvement of their standards of morality within the confines of the laws governing behavior." That's a power for God alone. In our day, it seems like politics devours too much of our lives - in the news, our financial system, in the regulation of our everyday lives.

Rare in the bible is the magistrate who acts in a godly fashion. It seems that political power poses a great danger for those who wield it to wield it wrongly. It seems a great danger to the most godly of men, like King David, and it is a deadly beast to every citizen in the case of those who do not pretend godliness, as in the case of King Ahab and Jezebel. The religious hypocrite uses its power for purposes of self-advancement and illicit ends to the point of receiving the greatest condemnation from Christ Himself. See Matthew 24 and 25. In his rebuke to Simon Peter in Matthew 16:23, Christ implied that those who place their interests in line with that of humanity as opposed to God are aligned automatically with Satan. Therefore, to take the root Latin word of politics, polis, and assert that the science of politics is all about people, as modern humanistic definitions do today, would place it in the realm of Satanic activity.

There has to be a godly definition, or one would have to posit that there is an area that the God of all things does not govern. That would be a serious error and contradiction - to say that an area of human life on earth is not governed by the God who created and governs all things. Finding a godly definition and practice of politics is the end to which this particular blog is devoted.