the greater magistrates
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

In our family we believe in the two-party system. As far as the Sprouls Jr. are concerned, as long as you are voting your conscience, you can vote for either of two parties. If you feel it wisest to vote for the Constitution Party, we're behind you. We'll give you a sticker that not only says, "I voted," but one that says, "I voted well." If, on the other hand, you think it prudent to vote for the American Heritage Party, we think that's just ducky too. Our applause will be forthcoming.

Some of you, I'm sure, have heard of neither political party. They are both rather small organizations, so small in fact that I have had the privilege of doing work for both of them. (It's a good thing I haven't been sitting by the phone waiting for a call from "our president" and his people to come and help out.) Prior to the last national election I was honored to deliver the evening's address when Howard Phillips received the Constitution Party's nomination for the office of President of the United States. Not long after I received an invitation from the American Heritage Party to help with their curriculum development. Before accepting I asked them, "I don't want to get in the middle of some internecine warfare between two tiny organizations. I get enough of that as a Presbyterian." The gentleman proffering the invitation explained to me that the American Heritage Party was, only in a tactical sense, a splinter of the Constitution Party. Their convictions were the same. What set the AHP apart was that it believed it better to pour our energies into local elections first, before we worry about winning the White House. Everyone involved in the AHP, as far as he knew, actually voted for Howard Phillips.

I've seen the existence of these two parties brought forth as evidence of the folly of third parties, as if differing strategies, and a lack of organic union were a sure sign of failure. The truth is a vote for Howard Phillips doesn't preclude a vote for a whole slate of godly men in the American Heritage Party for county commissioners, town counsels, or state legislators.

There are real differences of strategy. One is top down, the other bottom up. One is a focused wedge, the other a wide front. But both arenas are places where Jesus Christ reigns. And both are arenas where our calling is to make that reign manifest. All the eggs in all the baskets are His. If we neglect one for the other, we err.

As with all things, we must do all that we do ordinately. To neglect the national because of the local is as wrong as neglecting the local because of the national. Our problem in our age, however, tends more to be the latter. Our news is national news, our politics national politics. We have succumbed to the nationalization of all our lives. We have a national culture, a national media, a national discourse, a national ethos. Washington D.C. not only stands astride the globe like a colossus, but stands astride Washington County, Virginia, in like manner. We are all Yankees now.

This is why we must swing our own pendulum back toward home. While theonomists of varying stripes write learned monographs on how to rule the nations, frantically filing away the manuals for reconstruction for the remnant like so many dispensationalists putting so many copies of Left Behind behind glass with a sign reading, "Break, in case of rapture," we don't bother to learn how to rule on the local level. Nor have we learned the simplest of truths: that locally is where real rule happens. It's simply the political manifestation of the same truth; we would rather start a new denomination than raise a godly family. In short, we despise the day of small things.

There was a time, in a day of glorious small things, when the average person living within these United States would go their whole life having seen only one federal employee, the postman. Those days have long since passed. Perhaps the biggest factor in their passing was that dreadful time in which federal employees first marched against the sons of the south.

My conviction that the south, despite the widespread practice of unbiblical chattel slavery, was profoundly wronged by Mr. Lincoln's army, not surprisingly sometimes bothers folks. Just recently I received an email from an aggrieved reader of an old column I wrote in this space entitled "Whistling Dixie." He wanted to know how it was that I could sanction rebellion against lawful authority. He wanted to know if I had excised Romans 13 from my Bible. In my reply I suggested first that I could never sanction rebellion against lawful authority, and I was well aware of Romans 13, because it was doing its proper job in restraining me. Instead, I argued, he had begged the question. The War was fought precisely because the two sides disagreed about who was the greater magistrate, and who the lesser. Rather than using Calvin's theory of the lesser magistrate to justify secession, I would use Paul's theory of the greater magistrate to condemn the invasion of the Confederate States by union troops. That is, in short, the states are higher than the States.

While I am content to labor to lop Leviathan's head off by having a man absolutely committed to the sanctity of life, to the Lordship of Christ and to Constitutional government sitting in the White House, nevertheless, if we would be federalists, let us fight like them. If we believe in local power, then let us practice, not in the sense that one practices batting with a pitching machine, but in the sense that one practices law, ruling locally.

Let us, then, first rule our homes well. If we are so called, let us rule the church with wisdom. Then, and only then, should we strive to rule in the petty matters. Only then can we play with that toy boat known as the ship of state. Let us not despise the day of small things, but cherish it, knowing the truth of the paradox, that the great things lie within the small things.