Reader TT asks: Do you ever find your libertarian views of personal freedom conflicting with the idea of the Kingdom of God, or the Kingship of Christ in our lives as Christians?
No, I really don’t. The way I see it, God has the ability to force us to behave however He might like. And yet, He doesn’t. He says, look, here’s My Son. He’s the only way to Me and My Kingdom, but I’m not going to have him pick you up by the scruff of the neck and drag your butt over here, even though I’d really like to do that. Your freedom is so important to me that I’m going to leave the decision completely up to you, even though it breaks My heart to know that a lot of you are going to blow Me off.
Is that characterization in accordance with Scripture? I think so. And if so, does it sound more like the view of a Democrat, a Republican or a Libertarian deity.
I am free to do whatever I want. But if I want to please God, then I must choose what He says is right. No one ever said that freedom was without consequences, in fact, Jesus Christ said quite the opposite. The wages of sin are death. To argue that this is not a real choice is simply stupid, as all you have to do is look around you to see men and women making terrible, self-destructive choices every single day. The fact that the choice should be glaringly obvious to anyone with a brain doesn’t mean that it isn’t real.