Scipio Nasica, the Roman senator, wanted the state to remain large and looming so that a sense of fear would exist amongst the people and so that he who wielded the sword would be seen as something of a big bad guy. Why would anyone want that? Because a fear of the executor of justice would keep the public from indulging their own lusts which would lead to rot, which leads to riots, which leads to societal collapse. Christians shouldn’t read this as an argument for corrupt cops, but for God-fearing tough ones. Listen to Augustine from City of God:

And greed and sensuality in a people is the result of that prosperity which the great Nasica in his wisdom maintained should be guarded against, when he opposed the removal of a great and strong and wealthy enemy state. His intention was that lust should be restrained by fear, and should not issue in debauchery, and that the check on debauchery should stop greed from running riot. With those vices kept under restraint, the morality which supports a country flourished and increased, and permanence was given to the liberty which goes hand-in-hand with such morality. - Book 1:31-32

America’s children haven’t been spanked since the sexual revolution and now they want to burn down the house with their parents in it. It is the icons of authority that are being attacked . . . not racism. These fires are aimed at truth claims, at . . . wait, let me get my chart from the NMAAHC . . . intact families and the belief in a relationship between cause and effect. In the end, Apollos will commit this patricide in the halls of the university, while Dionysus will do so in the streets. Reason and chaos working together under a common banner means that the Lawgiver must die.

Scripture teaches that the power of sin is the law (1 Corinthians 15:56), not because the law is bad but because being told no entices the corrupt nature. If it looks as though the representatives of authority (Bibles, police, etc.) can be removed, it means the children can have as many yummies as they want.

R.S. Thomas, the Welsh poet, sarcastically described the candles in the dead churches of Wales as pitiful attempts to lure God, like some sort of moth, into their stone traps. If we stood where he was standing, these protest fires are pathetic attempts to scare Him off. It won’t work. America may collapse, as may the West, but our prayer needs to be that a thoroughly Christian nation might rise in its wake . . . not one in name only, with more pages cut and pasted from Greek philosophers than the Bible . . . but a Christian nation that would name Jesus Christ in her documents as the King of Kings. You can’t scare God off with little fires; that’s what He uses to claim the nations.

In Book 2 of City of God, Augustine talks about the perversity and the debauchery that was applauded in the theatrical performances during the honoring of certain gods and goddesses. He remarks, in chapter 4, that he loved the fun of it all when he was a child, not recognizing the deadening effect its morbid irony was wreaking on his conscience. Why did it never register that these jokes would not be told in front of the actors’ mothers . . . so why should they be told in honor of the Heavenly Virgin, Juno? These gods, Augustine explains, not only oblige this behavior, but they are the ones who require this kind of behavior. It was the gods, not the senators, who required the people to rise and play . . . to perform the theatrical debaucheries and to incite spectator violence. What kinds of gods are these? It reminds me of the video of the protestor waving a mask in the face of a resolute officer, frantically vomiting a hyper-prosaic mess of threats, accusations, malicious conjecture, and, the ultimate insult, suggesting that the officer was incapable of love while suggesting that he himself is simply being a good neighbor. What god of love produces these kinds of suitors?

Augustine goes on to say that even moralistic philosophers are ineffective because they lack divine authority. For this reason, you can be sure that, unless Jordan Peterson surrenders to the Christ of his dream . . . the Christ before whom the kings of the nations bow, he will be at best just another man of the hour, remembered for a moment in history in which some found him helpful. You can see, even now, how any helpful voices who advocate for sanity, apart from the authority of God’s law, are being devoured like the sons of Sceva that they are.

Inevitably, the question of how we got here will always be bantered about, regardless of the stage of decline in which one finds oneself. Augustine says that the former tolerances of the ancient Romans, even with their censorships, paved the way for the Greeks to remove all the stops when it came to the obscenity that was allowed in comedies. They tolerated one degree of impropriety and simply expected that no one would take it to the next level. After all, the Romans ubiquitously revered moral character.

I can’t help but think of Frank Sinatra, live at The Sands, in 1966. During a track entitled Tea Break (Sinatra Monologue), Old Blue Eyes starts with a joke and suggests that if he continued the rhyme, The Sands Resort and Casino would be a barn in the morning. What in the world did he mean by that? He was suggesting that the lewdness of his unspoken rhyme was of such a caliber that the famous resort would be a thing of the past if he had said it out loud. How strange to our post-Christian ears. This was a funny thought to his audience and one that is seen by the next generations as pathetically prudish and pedestrian. Nowadays, the favor would be against The Sands still, but for complying with a systemically corrupt force such as censorship, simply in order to stay in business. The immorality of it all.

The Bishop of Hippo tells us that, in Rome, actors were allowed to be diplomats and politicians because it was widely agreed upon, throughout the commonwealth, that if a man had success in the public opinion polls, if he was a household name held in any kind of regard, the gods must surely have seen fit to use him as a leader of the people. The parts could be interchangeable between politicians and actors, since being followed by the people was the main goal. This, keep in mind, is all part of the fabric of the tapestry Augustine is weaving in order to show that Christianity was not to be blamed for the downfall of Rome, but the decay within Rome, against which, Christianity was its greatest hope.

Augustine would have loved Alexander Tytler, the Scottish writer from the late 18th century. It was Tytler who framed up the theory about the 200 year life cycle of democracies. The final stage, in which hospice is called in, is marked by the realization of the people that they can give generous gifts to themselves from the public treasury. It is then simply a race between end of life care-providers to see who can make the nation as most comfortable as possible in her passing. Politicians simply promise bigger doses of pain meds than their opponents. With economic collapse comes disorder and anarchy, which usually requires some sort of totalitarian/dictatorial takeover in order to bring it to an end. The cycle then starts all over.

America needs to be remade, not put back into its original shape. Some say the reason Charles Hodge failed to engage John Williamson Nevin in a timely manner was that, with Nevin, it was the first time Hodge had ever been accused of not being reformed enough. Similarly, America does not need to return to its Christian roots but it needs to repent of not having dug them deep enough. America’s “Christian” past is not sufficiently Christian enough to simply ask God for a homing mechanism to get us back to the place from which we came. America needs to be made into a shape that is much older than the Declaration of Independence. America needs to become a Christian nation that declares Jesus Christ to be the King of Kings, not only in the religious mind of her citizens but in her documents. Expressly. Explicitly. This nation needs to foster a worship of the Father, not a murder plot.