[My response to the readings for March 29-31 in the One Year Bible]
Today Deuteronomy gives some guidance on what the king of Israel should be like. For example, “The king . . . must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them,. . . must not take many wives, . . . must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold, . . . and [must] not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left.” Full excerpt here.
Then from Luke we get a little anti-Rome stuff (demon named Legion sent into some pigs which were only kept for selling to the Romans), a reminder that Herod killed John the Baptist, and this little bit about decentralized church polity:
Jesus Sends Out the Twelve
When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave their town, as a testimony against them.” So they set out and went from village to village, preaching the gospel and healing people everywhere.
I consider this post to be quite big of me given my feelings toward Rand Paul and my frequent professional battles against the Goldwater Institute. But, nonetheless, there is some Biblical support for small, decentralized government.
One reply on “Day 29 (Libertarian Hebrews)”
"power and authority"
I hate not being able to read every language in the world with perfect fluency.
I was tempted to go into length about the detailed meaning behind Jesus not only granting the power, but also the *authority* to drive out demons and cure illness.
It seems to imply a lot that one could have that power but not that authority. But given the potential for many meanings, I guess it would take a few weeks of research before I could even start that discussion.
And that kind of sucks.
girec