Blinded by History
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Those with a vague awareness of the recent history of this column know that it is my tendency to speak less than kindly of the government here. And those up on the current event that is this issue know that we have been speaking rather highly of the study of history. But as so often happens when we turn our attention to the government, everything gets turned upside down. And so prepare yourself as I begin to talk bad about history, and good about the government.

This country began as a noble experiment. It was conceived in liberty, as the great men who were our founding fathers wisely established a system of government that had as its binding document a Constitution which spent more time saying what the federal government could not do, than on what it was supposed to do. I imagine had I been there when the doors of Constitution Hall opened I would have been dancing in the streets. That Constitution was the fruit of a coalition between Enlightenment deists and devout, mostly Reformed Christians. There's no sense trying to prove that they all kept their quiet time faithfully, nor that they were closet Freemasons paving the way for a one world government. That it was a compromise is evidenced in its failure to last. But when it was good, mercy was it good. It was a comparatively successful compromise because many of the ideas the deists brought to the table were ours to begin with. They liked the wisdom of God, they just didn't want to have to deal with Him. That's why they were deists. So the Christians were, in some sense, playing with the houses' money, and couldn't lose much anyway (at least in the short term.)

And so freedom rang. Out of this essentially Christian culture, protected by a properly limited government, came this great nation, or perhaps I should say, that great nation. Free from the worry of tyranny, families and churches set about doing what families and churches are supposed to do, reflect the glory of God in obedience to His law, and in the exercise of dominion. We became the most wealthy nation in history, and for a while, thanked God for it. The virtues of the founding fathers that we learned as children in government schools were indeed virtues. They are virtues worth defending, as we did in New Orleans, Manassas, and Guadalcanal. They are virtues that I still hold dear, and I believe rightly so, not because, they are American, but because they are virtues. (The same is true, of course, of the virtues of the Southern culture. The point is not that they were southern, but that they were virtues.) And of course there were always sins along the way, deviations from the straight and narrow. But still, what a country we had.

The trouble is, of course, that we have it no more. And I get in trouble because I try to remind folks of that truth. When we wrap Washington up in the garb of her past, we don't see how ugly she now is. When we see the past instead of the present, we are lying to ourselves. And to suggest that the emperor is nekkid is not to deny that the clothes he once wore were indeed beautiful. And therein is the danger of our own history. How the government of these United States came to be stripped of its glory is a long and winding story consisting of chapter after chapter of compromise after compromise. And each of those compromises was made a little more palatable by the honey of what we used to be. To put it another way, because we had it so good we put our guard down, and the mouse that roared turned into&hellips;Leviathan. We let the cute little thing out of its cage, fed it a steady diet of demanding more and more from it, and now we find that it thinks it owns the place.

But just as I hope my dear wife still sees me as that thin fellow with the nice thick hair that she married, so we, when we fall into the trap of patriotism, keep thinking the beast is the same cute puppy it was. And no one likes anyone to talk bad about their puppy. It was a puppy, the cutest one ever. But now it is Cujo.

Sure, we can still be grateful that we get to go to the polls, that I can write this without fearing that I'll be carted off to jail, that we can meet together for worship (if the zoning commission doesn't mind). And so we should be grateful, though not too grateful, remembering that these are our God-given rights, not things on loan from our Uncle Sam.

But the government we have now is a corrupt, vile, wicked, God-hating monster. Forget about taxes, gun control, burdensome regulations. Forget, even for a minute, their reprehensible schools. This government should be maligned if only because it protects, with the full force of law, the mothers and doctors who kill 4000 babies a day. As such I shouldn't here be pleading with you to stop waving their flag, I should be begging you to put down your guns, and obey Romans 13.

Thinking about how cute my dog was when she first came here, how loving and affectionate, wont change the fact that later on she ate my chickens. And to be angry that she ate my chickens is not to deny that she was once cute. And to shame her for what she has done is not to fail to hope that she'll get better. We ought to love our country. We ought to love what our government once was. And we ought to work and hope and pray that we will once more have a government that honors God. But as long as we have the government we have, our only option is righteous, holy hatred.