The Perils of Self-Rule

As I mentioned, I'm reading a book by Wilfred M. McClay on a history of the United States. Very good book, so far. At the end of a chapter on the start of the Revolutionary War, McClay explores the sentiments behind the conflict; that is, what stirred the colonists to action. McClay centers the motivation squarely on a desire for self-rule. He writes:

Perhaps nothing better illustrates that centrality than an interview given in 1843 by Captain Levi Preston, a soldier who fought the British at Concord in 1775 and was interviewed at the age of ninety-one by a young Mellen Chamberlain.

"Captain Preston, why did you go to the Concord Fight, the 19th of April, 1775?"
The old man, bowed beneath the weight of years, raised himself upright, and turning to me said: "Why did I go?"
"Yes," I replied; "my histories tell me that you men of the Revolution took up arms against 'intolerable oppressions.'"
"What were they? Oppressions? I didn't feel them."
"What, were you not oppressed by the Stamp Act?"
"I never saw one of those stamps, and always understood that Governor Bernard put them all in Castle William. I am certain I never paid a penny for one of them."
"Well, what then about the tea-tax?"
"Tea-tax! I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all overboard."
"Then I suppose you had been reading Harrington or Sidney and Locke about the eternal principles of liberty."
"Never heard of 'em. We read only the Bible, the Catechism, Watt's Psalms and Hymns, and the Almanack."
"Well, then, what was the matter? and what did you mean in going to the fight?"
"Young man, what we meant for those red-coats was this: we always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn't mean we should."

And that, concluded Chamberlain, was the ultimate philosophy of the American Revolution.

This desire for self-rule, I think, is fundamental to human nature. The will to take dominion, as God commanded, is tied into this desire to rule. This desire for self-rule fueled the American Civil War, the cause for Northern Ireland, the protests in Hong Kong and other conflicts and movements all around the world - some more noble than others.

But, as with all human endeavors, there is always a dark side. Man took the command to take dominion given by God to the extreme: autonomy. Humans are commanded to rule over the earth, but not over themselves separate from God's sovereignty. The Garden was man's first attempt at self-rule and it was disastrous. Republicanism and democracy can be noble and effective ways to govern, but when humans kid themselves by thinking that they can rule without God, there can be no end to the negative consequences.

The lie of godless self-autonomy is not only poisonous for governments, but individuals as well. We were not made to be independent. We were made to be completely reliant on a loving God who only wants the best for his people. We deny that truth at our own peril.