“My standard is Christ … I will have to answer to him alone.”

Note: This is the longer response to a post I made at Dan’s Reihl World View blog, where a commenter took issue with Dan’s observations about the possibility of Mr. Huckabee’s willingness to let his faith potentially overstep constitutional bounds (re: the Establishment Clause)

Can this really be such a bad thing?

At first glance, a Christian would certainly think not. But to the ardent self-appointed watchdogs of American state secularism (to whom “Freedom of Religion” has become “Extirpation of Religion”) as well as folks on the right who are leery of a certain candidate’s apparent “cloak of the Gospel” being used to pander to the Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christian wing of the GOP… it could well be a warning bell.

Quoting Dan’s original post:

A less than flattering piece on Huckabee in the LA Times cuts to the heart of Huckabee’s “God” problem. You can read anecdotes about his holding up insurance legislation because it contained the words “an act of God” to define a natural disaster after a cyclone hit Arkansas. But it’s actually this phrase that troubles me the most. He was writing about his role as a politician.

“My standard is Christ,” he wrote in “Character Makes a Difference,” published this year. “I will have to answer to him alone.”

It leaves little doubt that he sees his personal interpretation of what the Lord wants as trumping something as insignificant as the will of the American people. Presidents sometimes do have to go against the will of the people to exercise their best judgment. But I’d prefer a more objective rationale for it, than Huckabee’s personal faith in God. But then, I’ve never been much of a papist, myself.

While I think most Christians (at least those who identify as evangelicals, and certainly most Protestants) would take issue with being called “papists”, let us address for a moment, again, the words which would probably curl the hairs of most of the staunch secularists (at Dan’s blog) :

“My standard is Christ … I will have to answer to him alone.”

What I wish to address is neither the character issues surrounding Mr. Huckabee, nor his misguided policies and pettiness over the wording of insurance contract legalese terms such as “acts of God” kept people homeless and at inordinate expense to taxpayers, but rather, his statement especially as it applied to his governorship of Arkansas, and how it would likely apply in a possible Huckabee presidency.

Let us start by examining if we can really extract that Huckabee is necessarily stating that he would answer (per my original misreading of Dan’s statement that Huckabee was serving church interests above state interests as Ark. Governor) to any prelates, primates, popes, pontiffs, or presbyters, diocesan Sees, Synods, Commissions, Conventions, or Missionary Boards (Catholic or otherwise).

If indeed he is a Christian, I would be inclined to understand his statement as referring to his being personally accountable to Christ, as a Christian, with Christ being the highest authority he personally has to answer to, and through His authority, that portion of Christ’s authority which is devolved unto the citizens of Arkansas (and in the POTUS scenario, the American People).

Of course, owing to the design and implementation of our Constitution, we must take care to avoid mixing ecclesiastic authority (power devolving through God to the aforementioned church leadership structures) with political authority, which outside of its real authority being of Divine origin, is largely unconcerned with spiritual issues, and in fact, as ordained by God, is a secular organ, the hand which holds the sword of Justice and through which the common interest of the people is effected.

It is noteworthy though, it is a powerful organ which must be cautiously and continuously restrained, and is so legally constrained by that same Constitution, so that it might not trample underfoot the same people who have given their authorization for it to exist: this is at the core of conservatism. While divinely instituted, it is by nature much more subject to the guidance of unregenerate mankind than it is the Word of God.

However, if you understand how God establishes authority (and you Christians out there *should* know this, based upon a reading of Romans 13) through governmental leaders (regardless of how the man achieves his position, be it a Caesar, king, pope, president, governor, or even mayor…) ultimately, it is by God’s sovereign will that a leader is set up and/or removed.

In short, all authority (according to the Bible) derives from God.

Therefore, a biblical understanding of Huckabee’s (perhaps inopportune) statement would receive it as the POTUS being accountable for his nation to God, wherein by conducting the matters of state in a way pleasing to God (i.e. providing for the defense of widows and orphans and the sheltering the truly destitute, securing the borders and making sure the economy doesn’t collapse, and bringing evil men to justice, to name but a few) he shall also satisfy God’s mandate by which he has God’s authority to govern.

Understand that this works in parallel with the construct that God has allowed us, and our founding fathers to build upon: where in times past, a monarch or other prince would rule by right of heredity, God saw fit to allow men to choose their leaders.

We understand that as the POTUS, he (Huckabee or anyone else in that office) is answerable to the US Congress (per the Constitution on his ability to act on things not expressly alloted to the Executive Branch) and indirectly thru the Congress, to the citizens of the United States, but also is answerable through the citizens by the Constitution, to Heavenly authority - namely, that of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ:

“— And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. —” (Matthew 28:18, ESV)

Therefore, the sovereignty of the We, the People derives from the Divine Sovereign, who saw fit to let those founding fathers frame the Constitution, which defined the further division of the People’s sovereignty and rule into the tri-partite government we now have.

When the people of a nation are submitted to God’s guidance, so also will they be more likely to choose a leader who is also willing to execute the will and the work of God for the better of the people.

However, this construct is also able to fail greatly, if the people have forgotten God and gone astray from Him: then we shall elect a wicked man to rule over us, and we shall drink of the polluted wells that are trampled over by the muddied shoes of greedy and wicked “shepherds”. (Read Ezekiel Chap. 34).

This is to say that as much as God has given individual men and women the free will to serve him or not, so also a government which is based upon the corporate free will of a nation to elect godly men or ungodly men to office shall reap either blessings or curses based upon the decisions it makes.

So to sum up - the “divine mandate”, which is constitutionally vested in “We, the People”, first derived from God - like all other authority which is on Earth and in Heaven.