Chapter 4

Freedom and Responsibility

What was it like to live under a government where there were no taxes, no army, and no bureaucrats?

What was it like to live under a government that you couldn’t see?

What was it like to live under a government where you had to answer directly to God for everything you did — even though you couldn’t see Him?

When God was the government, you couldn’t hide behind a good lawyer. At Ai, no one saw Achan commit a crime.

Well, almost no one.

When Israel tried to take over the town of Ai, they got beat up, Joshua fell on his face and asked God why they were defeated.

God told him to get up! He had seen what Joshua hadn’t.

(Joshua 7:10-13)
Yahweh said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face like that? Israel has sinned.

Yes, they have even transgressed my covenant which I commanded them. Yes, they have even taken some of the devoted things, and have also stolen, and also deceived. They have even put it among their own stuff.

Therefore the children of Israel can’t stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies, because they have become devoted for destruction. I will not be with you any more, unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.

“Get up! Sanctify the people, and say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, for Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, “There is a devoted thing among you, Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted thing from among you.”

Then God showed them who was guilty.

(Joshua 7:16-21)
So Joshua rose up early in the morning and brought Israel near by their tribes. The tribe of Judah was selected. He brought near the family of Judah; and he selected the family of the Zerahites. He brought near the family of the Zerahites man by man, and Zabdi was selected.

He brought near his household man by man, and Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was selected.

Joshua said to Achan, “My son, please give glory to Yahweh, the God of Israel, and make confession to him. Tell me now what you have done! Don’t hide it from me!”

Achan answered Joshua, and said, “I have truly sinned against Yahweh, the God of Israel, and this is what I have done. When I saw among the plunder a beautiful Babylonian robe, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, then I coveted them and took them. Behold, they are hidden in the ground in the middle of my tent, with the silver under it.”

Since Achan couldn’t see God, he thought that God couldn’t see him. And since God didn’t jump in right when Achan took the silver idol, he thought that he was getting away with breaking the law.

No one ever gets away with sin. Achan didn’t.

That’s the way it is when God is the government. You are personally responsible before him for everything you do.

Just as Paul wrote.

(2 Cor 10:5)
[T]hrowing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;

When Israel entered the Holy Land, God gave each family their allotment of land. If a family obeyed God’s commandments, they would have such large crops they could hardly harvest them all before planting time again. Each year a tithe of that increase, but only the increase, was paid to support the priesthood; a tithe was used by each family for festival worship; and periodically a tithe was paid to support the poor. The priesthood was there to help the people, the festival tithe was consumed by each family itself, and if you needed help, the poor tithe was for you.

There was no IRS, no standing army and no government bureaucracy to support. Those Israelites had the greatest individual freedom of any people in history. The government did not try to run their lives for them.

Ultimately all human governments try to control their people — for their own good, of course. Israelites, though, under Yahweh their king, all had individual choice as to what they would do with their lives.

At the same time, those Israelites also had maximum individual responsibility. Each family and ultimately each person answered directly to God.

(Jer 16:17)
For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my face, neither is their iniquity concealed from my eyes.

(Jer 32:19)
… great in counsel, and mighty in work; whose eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men, to give everyone according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings:

Individual freedom and individual responsibility always go together. Without individual responsibility, there can be no individual freedom. If people cannot control themselves, then some type of government will step in to control them.

And —

If the people can’t individually control themselves, then they will seek some type of government to control them.

Israel’s people had the freedom to run their families and enterprises as they saw fit. If a family did well, they were blessed. Because they were blessed, they did not have to spend every waking moment striving for the Almighty Dollar, or, as it were, the Shaddai Shekel. If you have enough, why do you need more? So the people could spend more time serving God, loving family, helping others and creating beauty, to reflect the perfection of beauty working with them.

(Psalm 50:1-2)
The Mighty One, God, Yahweh, speaks, and calls the earth from sunrise to sunset. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines out.

Under that system of maximum liberty, maximum responsibility, people could focus on letting the perfection of beauty shine through them.

As David did.

(2Sa 23:1-2)
Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse says, the man who was raised on high says, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet psalmist of Israel: “Yahweh’s Spirit spoke by me. His word was on my tongue.

David’s Psalms were just him reflecting the perfection of beauty.

If a family did not do well, though, things could get ugly. They might lose their property and even become indebted servants of someone who was more diligent. Then in the Jubilee year that property was returned to the original family, to give another generation the chance to do well or poorly, whichever they chose.

Whether or not a family or individual did well ultimately depended on how close they were to God. Human nature without God is destructive because it opposes God, and God destroys all who oppose him.

(Gen 6:5-7)
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Human nature can only be turned upward by turning to God. Each and every individual in Israel had the personal responsibility of seeking God with his whole heart. If he did that, he was blessed. If he turned away from God, he was cursed.

This is the law of life.

(Mat 22:37-38)
Yeshua said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment.

There was no national police force to coerce everyone in Israel into obedience. Obedience was an individual choice, not a government enforced duty. Each individual then received the fruit of his actions, either a blessing or a curse.

Human governments think they help people by controlling them, by not allowing individual freedom and choice. They protect the flock by doing their thinking for them.

Napoleon, the egocentric emperor who ended the French Republic almost as soon as it began, wanted to make sure that French women did not get cheated when they bought thread.

How noble of Napoleon!

Understand the thinking of that megalomaniac. He was such a micro-manager of people’s lives that he personally wanted to insure that French women did not get cheated when they bought thread. When they did their sewing, he didn’t want them to get stuck.

Rose Wilder Lane, who helped her mother Laura Ingalls Wilder write the Little House books, was in France shortly after World War I ended, more than a century after Napoleon met his Waterloo in 1815. When Rose went to buy a spool of thread, Napoleon’s rules were still in effect and this was Rose’s experience with that socialism.

Suppose that during the Armistice you bought a spool of thread in a French department store. Not that it is a spool; the thread is wound on a scrap of paper, for the thrifty French do not waste wood. It takes a few seconds to say, “A reel of cotton thread, please; white, size sixty.” With leisurely grace, the clerk takes the thread in her hand, comes from behind the counter, and courteously asks you to accompany her.

She escorts you across the store, perhaps half a block, and indicates your place at the end of a waiting line. In twenty minutes or so, you reach the cashier’s grating. He sits behind the bars on a high stool, a wide ledger open before him, ink bottle uncorked, and pen in hand.

He asks you, and he writes in the ledger, your name, your address, and—to your dictation—one reel of thread, cotton, white, size sixty. Will you take it, madame, or have it delivered? You will take it. He writes that. And the price? Forty centimes. You offer in payment, madame? One franc. He writes these amounts, and the date, hour, and minute.

You give the franc to the clerk, who gives it to the cashier, who gives you the change, looks at the thread, and asks if you are satisfied. You are. A stroke of his pen checks that fact.

The clerk then wraps the thread, beautifully, at a near-by wrapping counter, and gives you the package. You have spent thirty minutes; so has she; the cashier has spent perhaps five. An hour and five minutes, to buy a reel of thread.

French department stores were as good as the best in the world. The French are expert merchandisers. They knew pneumatic-tube systems; the Paris government owned one that carried special-delivery notes more quickly than anyone could get a telephone number. Department store owners admired the cash-systems in American stores. But if they had installed them, they would still have been obliged to keep the cashier, his ledger, and his pen and ink.

Why? Because in the markets of Napoleon’s time, sellers cheated buyers. Napoleon protected the buyers. He decreed that the details of every sale must be written in a book, with pen and ink, in the presence of both seller and buyer, by a third person who must see the article and the transfer of money; the buyer must declare himself satisfied, and the record must be kept, permanently, to verify the facts if there were any future complaint.

During this past century, French merchandising had grown enormously. It had completely changed; but not this method of protecting buyers.

I asked an owner of the largest French department store why Napoleon’s decree was not repealed. He said, But, madame, it has been in operation for more than a hundred years! It cannot be repealed; think of the sales girls, the cashiers, the filing clerks, the watchmen who guard the warehouses of ledgers. They would lose their jobs. He was shocked. He saw me as the materialist American, thinking only of profit, caring nothing for all those human beings.

I thought they were unemployed. They did not appear as unemployed on any record, but the actual unemployment in France and throughout Europe, was enormous. For every purchase in a French department store, something like an hour’s time was unemployed; millions of hours a day. And the cashiers, the filing clerks, the watchers of those records, never did a stroke of productive work.

All this enforced unemployment made it impossible to do anything quickly. European life was leisurely; it had to be. This charmed the Americans gaily passing by, all the tedious waiting done for them, all the red tape untied, all the police stamps got onto their papers by Cook’s or Amexco or their bankers or hotel porters. How serene, how cultured was European life, they said. No one hurrying, everyone with time for meditation and enjoyment, walking through the parks, sitting at cafe tables under the plane trees. How harassed, how hurried and rude and crude was American life in comparison, they said.

You recognized an American as far as you could see him, by the way he walked. Chin up, head high, briskly going somewhere, with an unconscious mastery of the earth he trod. No European moved like that. Europeans walked prudently, slowly. Their every gesture consumed time in merely letting time pass. That made their lives and their countries seem so restful, to Americans. And you can see precisely that same way of walking, that same sense of useless time, in the prisoners in any American prison-yard. (1)

Napoleon the elitist, who thought he was so much smarter than all his poor subjects that he had to protect them from themselves, never thought of the possibility that women themselves could tell when they were being cheated and then they would buy their thread elsewhere. The alternative to Napoleon’s government control was for people to have free choice as to where they bought their thread. Automatically, then, the cheaters would have been threadbare!

Monopolies protect only the monopolists.

As it was, when the government tried to keep the French women from being cheated, all French women were cheated, by having to pay more for their thread and by having to wait an hour to buy it.

Human governments think they help people by controlling them. This applies to political governments and religious governments. They want to do your thinking for you —

For your good!

A political government run by elitist central planners wants to educate your children, control your finances, control your health and decide if you live or die — all for your good!  The socialists know best. A religious government wants to decide your doctrine and establish your orthodoxy — all for your good. The theologians know best. The Church even decided that people who believe in the Bible should not even be allowed to read the Bible — to protect the people against heresy — and they burned those few men who dared to translate it into the common languages!

Governments always want to protect their flock by doing their thinking for them.

But ancient Israel did not have human government, either political or theological. Instead they had great freedom! No government oppression! With liberty and justice for all! God allowed them free choice as to what they would do. They could buy thread wherever they wanted.

The Jubilee year brought liberty in several ways.

(Lev 25:9-11)
On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee to you.

People oppress other people, through wealth and government. At the Jubilee, wealth oppression was stopped. In Israel, some people accumulated excess wealth. But their power was limited by a natural correction. Property was regained, slaves were released, and transgressors were freed. Everybody had enough. Nobody had too much. That was liberty for all, power for none.

But that liberty always carried responsibility.

(Lev 25:17)
You shall not wrong one another; but you shall fear your God: for I am Yahweh your God.

For example, they were commanded to loan to a poor neighbor, even if they had to forgive the loan later.

(Deu 15:7-11)
If a poor man, one of your brothers, is with you within any of your gates in your land which Yahweh your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother; but you shall surely open your hand to him, and shall surely lend him sufficient for his need, which he lacks.

Beware that there not be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, “The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand;” and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing; and he cry to Yahweh against you, and it be sin to you. You shall surely give, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him; because that for this thing Yahweh your God will bless you in all your work, and in all that you put your hand to. For the poor will never cease out of the land. Therefore I command you to surely open your hand to your brother, to your needy, and to your poor, in your land.

If someone’s donkey took off or went down, the Israelite had to take care of that donkey.

(Deu 22:1-4)
You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide yourself from them. You shall surely bring them again to your brother. If your brother isn’t near to you, or if you don’t know him, then you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall be with you until your brother comes looking for it, and you shall restore it to him.

So you shall do with his donkey. So you shall do with his garment. So you shall do with every lost thing of your brother’s, which he has lost, and you have found. You may not hide yourself.

You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide yourself from them. You shall surely help him to lift them up again.

An Israelite even had the responsibility to foresee and avoid any potential harm to his neighbor, and put a railing around his roof patio.

(Deu 22:8)
When you build a new house, then you shall make a railing around your roof, so that you don’t bring blood on your house if anyone falls from there.

Israel had enormous freedom and enormous responsibility. Serving God was more than just studying doctrine. It was about changing who you are.

When God was the government, the people had liberty and responsibility.

1. They could do anything they wanted.
2. They had to answer for everything they did.

More than any other nation ever, Israel was one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.

Human government is the great oppressor of people. Human government is the great hindrance of God for people.

Israel did not have a human government controlling them from the outside. That meant they had to control themselves from the inside.

And that meant having the individual self control to obey a God that they couldn’t see.

Endnotes
1) Rose Wilder Lane, “The Planned Economies,” Discovery of Freedom.