Critical Mass, Part VIII: The Necessity of a Plan
Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding; I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth (Prov. 8:14-16).
"By me kings reign, and princes decree justice." This includes covenant-breaking kings and princes. As rulers, they necessarily imitate God. They make decrees. They enforce some view of justice. The role of kings and princes is not to abdicate; it is to make decrees and laws in terms of God's decree and law. This is also the proper role of Christians, who are God-ordained royal priests. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (I Peter 2:9).
The God of the Bible is absolutely sovereign over history. Those people who believe this and who live in terms of their belief will inherit the earth. "For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth" (Psalm 37:9). Those who are meek before God are the true heirs of God. "But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11). They live in terms of God's timetable, not their own. His timetable is longer than history, for it extends into eternity.
God has a long-term plan. Nothing can change it. He has established the very boundaries of creation. "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?" (Jer. 5:22). This is why prophecy is sure.
Because God has a long-term plan, Christians are supposed to make their own long-term plans. These plans are to be governed by the Bible. Christians are required to evaluate their personal skills, their opportunities, and the time they have remaining. They are to work in such a way that they will leave an inheritance to those who succeed them: "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Prov. 13:22).
Full of Care
The typical Christian, like the typical everybody else, has no plan. No one ever told him that he needs a plan. He takes things pretty much as they come. He reacts; he does not initiate. But unlike the typical person, the Christian defends his lack of long-term planning through an appeal to Scripture, most notably Philippians 4:6: "Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." But the word translated "careful" means full of care, as in Jesus' mild reprimand to Martha: "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things" (Luke 10:41). It is troubled caring that is forbidden, not caring as such.
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body. what ye shall put on. ls not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? (Matt. 6:25).Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin (Matt. 6:27-28).
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. 6:34).
Those who like to cite such passages as an excuse for their unwillingness to make plans draw the line when it comes to getting married, yet the same Greek word is used regarding marriage: "But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord" (I Cor. 7:32). Here, the Christian insists, we need not be so literal-minded. Here the warning does not apply to him. Or her: "There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things ol the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband" (I Cor. 7:34).
Are we not to care for the things of the Lord? That was Paul's point; we are. Therefore, we are not to be full of care about the things in our lives that are not self-consciously part of God's kingdom activity. We are to bring every aspect of our lives under the law of God. Everything in our lives is to be subdued through the action of the Holy Spirit. We are then authorized to care for all these things. When we are willing to put God's work first, these other things will be put in their proper perspective. We know that they are not in their proper perspective when we worry about them -- are full of care about them -- more than we care for the work of God.
Gandhi
I own a copy of the movie Gandhi, which I regard as the greatest government-funded propaganda film of all time. I also regard Ben Kingsley's performance as the finest movie performance of all time. I watch it every year or so, just to remind myself of what one man can do if he is willing to sacrifice everything for a just cause, and yet not deliberately leave the day-to-day affairs of this world unattended to.
There he was, feeding the goats, when young Nehru and his activist friends wanted to change India. Yet it was Gandhi who time after time gave both practical direction and moral legitimacy to the full-time activists' efforts.
Gandhi accomplished this because he had a long-term goal: the political independence of India. He also had a long-term program: non-violence. He never wavered from either. And because he was dealing with the British, who were public defenders of legality and bureaucratic form, and who had been weakened by two world wars and a lack of vision, he succeeded.
He got his training in law school. He began getting experience in South Africa, on the fringes of the British Empire. He won. In India, he further developed his techniques in out-of-the-way villages, challenging the legitimacy of this or that aspect of British rule. He spent years in jail. His family survived because he had benefactors who were willing to finance him. Every successful revolutionary needs such supporters. As he says in the movie to Margaret Bourke-White: "Some of my friends say it takes a fortune to keep me in poverty." But he never gave up. For over 50 years, he never wavered from either his goal or his program. He lived to see India's independence.
Yet from all we can see from the movie, he was not filled with care. He took the blows of life, both physical and judicial, as they came. Had he not been of this temperament, the British probably would have broken him.
Lenin
At the other strategic extreme was Lenin. He was driven by a personal motive: revenge for his older brother's lawful execution for revolutionary violence. He had a long-term goal: the capture of political power. He had a strategy: political organization. He had an ideology: Communist revolution. He never wavered from any of these. Even among Communist fanatics, Lenin was regarded as a fanatic. Lenin was filled with care.
Gandhi had worried about the kinds of leaders that would be thrown up -- the correct verb, the correct voice (passive) -- by revolutionary violence. This was why he opposed violence. He kept looking beyond the day when the British would leave. He wanted decent men in power. He also wanted the British to be friendly after their departure. Once Pakistan and India were divided, he got his two wishes. India did not wind up as China did. The Communists never made serious inroads into India outside of the state of Kerala -- and even there, they were elected to office.
Who inherited in Communist Russia? Stalin: the man Lenin warned the Party not to put in his place after his death. His warning did no good. Lenin could not control who would succeed him because of the inherent logic of the system he built: one based on raw power and the guilt-free willingness to shed blood.
The point is, both Gandhi and Lenin succeeded because they had long-term goals and long-term plans. They both had strategies from which they did not waver. Gandhi's legacy to his followers was far better than Lenin's, for Gandhi had adopted a more decent strategy.
Reactionaries
Their opponents had no long-term strategy of defense. This was because they no longer had a long-term strategy of dominion. They had become bureaucrats who reacted to events rather than exercised leadership. The Czar had no vision. Like Louis XVI of France, Nicholas II was dominated by a narrow-minded wife and bad advisors. He had no desire to lead. Like Louis XVI, he lost his throne because of it. We are told officially that he also lost his life. in any case, he disappeared forever from public view.
Similarly, the British government by 1900 no longer had a vision for the Empire. Better put, whatever vision England's elected rulers had was being supplied by a group of self-appointed humanist conspirators who were, in the British phrase, too clever by half. From 1890 to 1948, they surrendered the Empire. (The Gandhi movie briefly alludes to this: it shows Gandhi attending a Round Table conference in the 1930's where the surrender was first discussed. The Round Table group was also known as "Milner's kindergarten." The best study written about these conspirators and their failure is the first half of Otto Scott's 1984 book, The Other End of the Lifeboat. Their spiritual and institutional heirs in the United States and Europe are now in the final stages of setting up their Babylonian New World Order. It will eventually suffer the same fate that the British Empire did, and for similar reasons.)
The British managers of India were stupendous. After the Sepoy rebellion was put down in the late 1850's, about one thousand young men governed India, rarely having to resort to military violence to enforce their will. But as Peter Drucker has written about the British in India, British rule was vulnerable because of their belief that "administration could suffice and could take the place of policy, decision, and direction." It couldn't. (He cites Philip Woodruff's 1954 book, The Men Who Ruled India.)
Conclusion
It is not just vision which is required in order to extend dominion in history; it is a long-term plan. There is such a plan: God's decree. There is a history book that describes how it has been implemented in the past: the Bible. This book also sets forth the rules that are to govern the plan's implementation by God's authorized representatives in history: Christians.
The Christian who wants to maximize his service to God in history is required by God to imitate God in His role as long-term planner. The Christian is to subordinate himself to God, and then subordinate his plan to God's plan. This means that he must fit his plan into God's time table by means of God's law. One reason why Christians have achieved so little since the days of Charles Darwin is that the most dedicated leaders among their humanist opponents have adopted Darwin's time frame--long--in making their plans, while Christians have adopted Louis XV's: "After me, the deluge." His grandson, Louis XVI, lived to see the truth of that prediction: a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is why eschatology matters.
It is time for every Christian to sit down and begin evaluating the resources at his disposal, including the only irreplaceable resource: time. If necessary, he should imitate Hezekiah by praying to have his time on earth extended in order to complete his task (II Chron. 32:24-26). Then he needs to make a plan.
**Any footnotes in original have been omitted here. They can be found in the PDF link at the bottom of this page.
Christian Reconstruction Vol. 16, No. 4 (July/August 1992)
For a PDF of the original publication, click here: