Thoughts on a King

I wrote the topic of this post down. Forgot what it was about. Remembered what I thought it was about. Then remembered that I was wrong about what I remembered and hopefully captured what was my initial intent for it. I recently read 1 Samuel. In it, Israel finally transitions from the “anything goes” approach to self-governance from Judges to the “let’s have a king” approach.

The “anything goes” approach wasn’t really working. Israel spent most of their free time either in bondage or committing atrocities on each other or the locals. So, it’s interesting when in 1 Sam 8, we see the Israelites begging for a king. In response, God basically says, “That’s not going to end well,” and the Israelites say, “We want one anyway.”

Samuel goes into depth on why it won’t end very well. He says a king will take your sons and make them serve him. He will take your daughters and make them serve him too. He’ll take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He’ll take a tenth of your grain and your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. He’ll take your male and female servants and the best of your livestock.

Samuel concludes, “When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

As per usual, God was right. The United Kingdom of Israel has one good king (I’m using good very loosely here), one bad one, and two medium kings.

From there, it’s a repeating disaster. After the kingdom divides, Israel has 18 bad kings and one medium king. Judah does a bit better than Israel. It has 12 bad kings, two medium kings, and six good kings. The kingdom of Israel ends up in Assyrian captivity. The kingdom of Judah makes it a bit longer before they end up in Babylonian captivity. So overall, the king thing did not go very well.

I heard this from Matt Whitman originally, but a good king is the ultimate form of government. All the power rests with one man. Provided the man only makes the best decisions, then this works out the best for everyone. A good immortal king would be the ideal form of government because it overcomes the main problem with monarchy. That problem being the mortality of the king. Although an individual king may be good, there is no promise that his successors will be. And that’s the problem with power here on earth.

Every now and then we tend to get a good ruler but most of them are irredeemable screw-ups who mess everything up. I would be no different, but that’s not relevant to this discussion. Just as the eternal good king is the ideal form of government, an eternal evil king is the worst form of government possible. All forms of government fall between these two.

A constitutional representative republic shoots for the eternal good king. By having representatives, we get around the dying problem. If people die or if people get old, we elect new people. We get around the good part by nerfing the power of the king and incorporating checks and balances. It comes at the cost of efficiency but at least we don’t have to worry about the king turning evil and executing all of his wives or something like that.

The communists in the USSR accidentally approximated an eternal evil king. Lenin and then Stalin had all the power and no term limits. When each died, another evil degenerate stepped up to take the mantle of corruption. Stalin was replaced by Malenkov who was replaced by Khrushchev, and Khrushchev by Brezhnev, and so on.

This is all basically why Jesus is the good news. In theory, he’ll be a perfectly good, perfectly eternal, king of kings. He’s the solution to the problem of human governance. But why do we need governance at all? James Madison summed it up best in Federalist 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

Unfortunately, men are not angels and that’s the main problem with kings. So, when it comes to a monarchy, depending on how it’s going, the death of the king is either the best or the worst news. And that sounds positively awful.