Prophet Samuel,The Candidates, & the Letter to Diognetus

  Today is election day here in the United States, and we face more a dispiriting choice for our highest office than we have seen in this country for a long time, perhaps ever.  It may be that we are testing the validity of Joseph de Maistre’s famous observation, "Every country has the government it deserves” (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite).

Give the people what they want: King Saul and Prophet Samuel

    Before we consider that possibility, I’d like to take a look at 1 Samuel, chapter 8,  the Vulgate Latin version of which we are reading in my advanced Latin classes right now.  It occurs to me that this scripture may have some some applicability to our current situation.  In this Biblical reading Samuel, judge and prophet, has grown old, and has passed his office of Judge on to his sons Joel and Abijah.   Unfortunately, the sons do not “walk in the ways” of their father (1 Sam 8:3). In fact, they are thoroughly corrupt: they are greedy, take bribes, and generally “pervert justice” (1 Sam 8:4).  The elders of Israel get together and go to Samuel. After pointing out the (rather severe) shortcomings of Joel and Abijah, they propose a radical solution: “Appoint a king to rule over us, like all the nations” (1 Sam 8:5).  

    Whatever merit there might be in their complaints, Samuel doesn’t like their proposed solution.  He turns to the Lord in prayer, and receives a surprising reply:

"Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.  According to all the deeds which they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, hearken to their voice; only, you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." (1 Samuel 8:7-9)

    Samuel follows the Lord’s instructions, and warns them of the various ways in which the king will abuse and exploit them: how he will take their sons and daughters and put them in various roles of service to himself, and how he will take various of their possessions and bestow them on his servants (1 Samuel 8:11-17).  He concludes with a stern warning: “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day" (1 Samuel 8:18). The people are unimpressed.  On the contrary, they seem determined to illustrate H.L. Menken’s wry definition of democracy: "The theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”  After Samuel’s long list of the wrongs they will suffer,

. . .  the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, "No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles." And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, "Hearken to their voice, and make them a king."   (1 Samuel 8:19-22)

    The people of Israel don’t understand that they can only be free when the accept the Rule of God, because the alternative is the tyranny of mere men.  As Bob Dylan (in a moment of lucidity) once wrote, “You gotta serve somebody.” Men and women who serve God and his commandments are able govern themselves in this world, on a personal level and corporately.  Those who reject the Wisdom of the Lord in the hope of being their own masters find themselves instead the slaves of fellow creatures, of “such a thing as myself” (as Shakespeare’s Cassius says of the tyrant Caesar) . . . or worse. St. Paul advises us that “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners” (1 Timothy 1:9).  A state peopled by godless citizens will, necessarily, be under the heel of tyranny.

    That’s my fear for the United States.  I’m not saying that either of our present unlovely candidates will, of himself or herself, bring about the end of the republic.  They are rather a symptom of a deeper problem: we wouldn’t be in this position at all, faced with so execrable a choice, if we had really kept God as our true sovereign.  It’s not that we haven’t had our own Samuels: Benjamin Franklin warned that the U.S. Constitution offered “A republic, if you can keep it”, and I’ve often found occasion to cite John Adams’ warning that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

    My purpose here is not to endorse either of the two stunningly flawed human beings the two major parties have offered as presidential candidates.  I do think it is clear that one of the two is decisively less unacceptable to serious Christians, but it still remains a true choice of the lesser of two evils.  The outcome of this or any election, however, is of only passing importance.  More significant to me is the fact that a substantial number of Americans, from across the political spectrum, have deemed character, morality, rule of law, truth, and even basic decency as less important than getting what they want.  It’s bad enough that such a society will inevitably see ever greater human suffering in this world; a much worse consequence is that it will become even harder to hear the words of the Gospel in so degraded an environment, and many souls may be lost. The election of neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate will change that grim reality.

    At the same time, this is a season of Hope, and of renewed purpose for those of us who aspire to follow Christ.  St. Paul tells us that, in reality, “our citizenship is in Heaven” (Phillipians 3:20). The anonymous author of the 2nd century Letter to Diognetus elaborates,  reminding us that we Christians  “dwell in the world, yet are not of the world”, and further that

as the soul is in the body, so are Christians in the world . . . The soul is imprisoned in the body, yet preserves that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are the preservers of the world. The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tabernacle; and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible [bodies], looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the heavens.

In other words, we have our work cut out for us.  Nonetheless, the outcome of today’s election, however bad, will be of only passing importance in this world; our conduct in this world will be of eternal significance, both for ourselves and any other souls we can bring with us, in the next.