Reaping the Whirlwind

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

"For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind..."     Hosea 8:7a


It's not often we see a direct line between causation and result in history.  America's distress today may be one of those times.

Almost 40 years ago, Ronald Reagan began his presidency with the proclamation that "...government is the problem."  He promised his presidency would attack that "problem" by making government smaller and less powerful, and instituting a government-wide policy of "de-regulation."

He did a great deal to enact his doctrine.  His followers ever since have proclaimed and followed his doctrine...at least, publicly and superficially.  Politics' real purpose is always power, and politicians are always lying when they claim they want to limit their own exercise of power.

There are so many things wrong, and hypocritical, about Reagan's doctrine.  I usually focus on its greatest falsehood: its denial of God's command that human government be His "minister," doing good to its people, and punishing evil-doers.  Reagan "de-regulated"  government from doing both.

Sometimes I ponder Reagan's reversal of America's traditional doctrine of government, that "the people" are our government.  If government is instead a "problem," it's clearly an external entity endangering "the people"...unless Reagan meant that "the people" are "the problem."

Sometimes I focus on the illogic of that statement.  Anyone who paused to think for an instant, in the flow of Reagan's inaugural rhetoric, would have had to ask how it was possible to have anti-government government.

As a former anarchist, I was probably more sensitive than most people to the fact that Reagan's doctrine..."government is the problem"...is the core teaching of anarchism.  But that's the evil I was pondering today.  Pondering what scripture says about the consequences of following evil.

The scripture in Hosea 8:7 came to mind, that those who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind: almost always, in scripture, a symbol of God's wrathful judgement.

The thought that came to mind with that scripture was very clear:  Reagan sowed in America the "wind" (the Hebrew word is ruah, which is also translated "spirit") of anarchic government, and America is reaping God's judgement in today's anarchic government.

Blessed be the Name of the Lord.