If COVID taught us anything, it’s that authoritarian politicians have no shame in exploiting the plight of the vulnerable as a pretext to tighten their control over the public.

People naturally seek safety, but all too often they look for it in the wrong places. Governments, eager to capitalize on public fear, use these moments to strip away rights under the guise of offering that much sought-after protection.

For these sorts, regardless of the societal challenge, the proposed solution always comes down to the same thing: expanding government control.

Whether it’s enforcing lockdowns to protect the elderly or pushing for Digital IDs to secure the young, those pursuing power will never let a crisis go to waste. As such, our freedoms are only ever one crisis away from extinction.

When the people fear, they grasp for safety, and the authoritarian is always nearby, with their arm of overreach extended under the guise of a helping hand. Sadly, this is the way it’s always been.

In his Antiquity of the Jews (A.D. 93), historian Flavius Josephus said, “Nimrod gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into constant dependence on his power.”

The tyrant stands in direct opposition to God, because his power is often granted by the people, who bestow it in proportion to their reliance on him, rather than God. The more the people rely on God, the less power they will cede to the tyrant. Hence, the more Christian a nation, the freer and happier the people.

It’s why Scottish Reformer, John Knox famously said, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

As such, there is a significant link between the de-Christianization of Western nations and the rise of authoritarianism.

Under the guise of “pluralism” or “moral relativism,” which is the national sin of forgetting the Lord (Deut. 6:12-15), once-Christian nations, unwittingly freed the ever-expanding state from the biblical restraints necessary to preserve a free and moral society.

They told us it was all about diversity and inclusivity, the acceptance of “other faiths.” But that was not its primary purpose. Pluralism was chiefly about two things: (1) the demotion of Christianity to one of many contradictory opinions – none of which have any exclusive claim on truth, morality, and law; and (2) the fragmenting of society.

Consequently, aspiring tyrants were no longer bound to any particular moral code. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood, were now, at best, up for debate, and at worst, defined exclusively by those in power.

What’s more, pluralism, which is also known as “multiculturalism,” gave us communities superficially united, but fundamentally divided. When those fundamentals are challenged, civil unrest is inevitable. Without a common ideal, without a shared goal, unity and civility are a passing shadow.

The only force that remains is that of the state. The more fractured the people, the more societal unrest that is felt, the more the people look to the government for a unifying solution. But those in power only have one solution to every problem: further limiting the freedoms of the people, either through increased spending, and therefore, increased taxation, or by passing more restrictive legislation.

As such, pluralism, in its various expressions, is merely a euphemism for statism. If everything is true, then nothing is true – except, of course, the arbitrary boot of those in power. As such, a superior moral law that transcends earthly power is required to keep earthly power in check.

Hence, Christ’s restraining authority over government is necessary to regulate the government’s authority over the people. Without the Supreme Court of Heaven, there’s nothing left to restrain or guide the arbitrary will of the powerful over the weak.

William Penn (1644-1718), English Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, once warned, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.”

There is no other option. Either God restrains the government or the government will arbitrarily restrain the people. This is because when we remove God over government, our freedoms go from inalienable God-given rights to state-sanctioned privileges that can be granted or revoked at the whim of those in power.

We need politicians who understand their authority is delegated by God to praise good and punish evil – not as they define it, but as God defines it. We need a distinctly Christian population whose instinctual response to every social challenge isn’t to ask the government to govern us harder by intruding into our personal lives and limiting more of our freedoms.

We need to recover that which made Western nations the envy of the world. It wasn’t busybody tyranny, but the tyrant-restraining notion that both rulers and subjects are accountable to King Jesus and the higher law of heaven.

Until then, we can expect our freedoms to further diminish at every societal hiccup. As American Founding Father John Adams warned, freedom lost is lost forever. You can vote your way into slavery to the state, but you’ll have to fight your way out.

Freedom is a fragile thing, and unless we restore the God-given principles that once limited the reach of the state into our lives, we will continue to exchange our freedoms for the false promise of security, one crisis at a time.