Does God like democracy? — part 04

So, if a human monarchy does not appear to be what God wishes as his most preferred government then what type of governmental system does God prefer? Well, I could go governmental style by governmental style, but let me cut to the chase. The Scriptures do not give support for any one type of governmental system. As I pointed out, a human monarchy type of system does not appear to be God’s preferred system, though He is quite willing to work with one.

But, here is what is true. By the time of Jesus Christ, democratic systems existed in Greece, and had existed for several hundred years. But, here is what is interesting. Democracy never shows up in Scripture. Does this mean that God is anti-democracy? No, it does not necessarily mean that. But, what it does mean is that Americans should not promote democracy around the world as though it were God’s preferred system. Democracy is simply not found in Scripture. Nor ought we to critique countries whose system is not a representative democracy merely and only on the basis of their governmental system.

Finally, this is what makes our nation-building forays sometimes fail. We need to be strongly in the business of promoting human rights and liberties around the world. But, we need to be careful in assuming that a representative democracy with no hereditary offices is the only way to ensure those rights and liberties. Rather, like God, we need to be willing to work with more than one system. There may be countries in which a constitutional monarchy might be the best system to ensure human rights and liberties. There may be countries in which, like Lebanon in the middle 20th century, one of the offices needs to be guaranteed to one religious or cultural group and another of the offices to another such group. And, we may need to not be the people who make the choice of governmental system if we are occupying that country. That is the hard part for us.