41 Golding’s Lord of the Flies, just on a different scale. We would collapse into a system where pure power defines reality, where our families and possessions are at the mercy of the biggest kid on the block. We would, without government, organize our lives around simple survival. Even with a poor government in place, there must be order for that government to survive; there must be some structure, some system of punishing wrongs (even if they are terribly defined), and some ability to protect people from simple, naked aggression. In this way, I see government as an element of God’s grace in our lives. We have government so that we might enjoy our lives, even if they are hard. We should, at the minimum, thank God for government because it provides enough order to exist. And, if we are blessed to live in a stable society that has a better-defined view of justice, where we can live in peace and watch our children grow up, where we can provide for ourselves without constant fear of oppression, we have even more for which to be thankful. Second, we should always be aware that government itself, since it is made up of human beings who are equally capable of that twistedness, can also be a scourge. Government, in some ways, has a unique ability to be violent and destructive because governments hold the majority of power in our societies. If one of government’s responsibilities is to use force to restrain evil, we must consider that this force to counteract evil can, in itself, be turned into evil. The 20th century was the American century. It was the century that ended with the U.S. as the only superpower. It was a century in which we sent a man to the moon and led the greatest technological revolution in human history. For America, the 20th century was a great age. Remember, though, it was also marked by terrible wars. World War I and World War II claimed millions of lives. Those wars were initiated by governments, fought by governments, and, eventually, ended by governments. Our military cemeteries are full of people who died because governments failed to settle disputes. Not only did governments fight one another in long, bloody conflicts, governments also destroyed millions of their own people. Nazi Germany’s death camps were set up to rid its own population of undesirables — Jews, the handicapped, and homosexuals, for example. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, starved millions of his own people in Ukraine because the agricultural system there undermined Communist ideals and the wealthier people posed a political
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=