Crossroads: Government is Not the Only Game in Town with Dr. Max Lyons

♪♪ Hello, and welcome to the Crossroads Podcast, the show where Mark Meckler and Rita Peters discuss hot-button issues from a biblical perspective, helping to equip other Christians to bring light to a darkened culture. Rita is the senior vice president of legislative affairs, and Mark serves as the CEO and co-founder for Convention of State's Action. Find out more about visiting conventionofstates.com slash pop. Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of Crossroads, Where Faith and Culture Meet. I am your host, Rita Peters, and my wonderful co-host, Mark Meckler, is busy this week with some other things, so I'm going to be hosting solo this week, but don't fear because I have a great guest for you today. I'm really excited about today's program. It's actually one of my favorite topics. It's the topic of jurisdiction, and that sounds like a really technical, not a very fun word, but jurisdiction is really all about power and lawful authority. Who has that, in what areas? That's what we're going to be talking about today. Our guest is a dear friend. It's Dr. Max Lyons. He serves as director of teaching services at Foundation for American Christian Education. Dr. Lyons is a teacher, curriculum writer, and conference speaker, specializing in the areas of Bible, history, government, law, economics, and biblical worldview. Wow, that's a lot. He has taught a biblical worldview adult Sunday school class for two decades, and served as teacher and administrator in three Christian schools since 1979. Dr. Lyons holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Virginia Wesleyan College, a master's in Christian school administration from Regent University, and a PhD in Christian education from Whitfield Theological Seminary. That is a bunch. And finally, don't want to miss this part, this important. Dr. Lyons and his wife, Margie, have four children and seven grand children. Dr. Lyons, welcome to the program. Well, thank you so much, Rita. I'm excited to be here and talking about the concept of jurisdiction is like, as they say, it's like being paid to eat chocolate, so. We're gonna have fun together. That's right, and I am convinced that by the end of this program, everyone listening or watching is going to be convinced as well that the topic of jurisdiction is interesting and really essential to understand today. Now, I want to back up just a minute before we dive into the topic. Your organization is called Foundation for American Christian Education. Tell us about that. Well, so the short version is that the Foundation for American Christian Education or FACE, F-A-C-E for short, is an organization that is working to restore proper education in America and around the world. We are an international organization. Started in our founders, Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater started their research in the 1940s. Wow. So you've been around a long time. They started to, they specifically, Verna Hall started to see the slide of America into socialism in the 1940s. Of course, you know, coral marks, that was in the late 1800s. So we had socialism and communism, thought rising around the world and they saw it in America and started researching what were our founding principles and where did they come from with the idea that maybe we can stop this move in the wrong direction. So Rosalie Slater was an educator, joined Verna and saw an educational program in her research. And so consequently, FACE now is focused on, laser focused on restoring proper education, biblical Christian education to the home, the church, the school, and not just in America, as I said, we actually have more schools associated with us and they're called principal approach schools. We actually have more outside of the US than we have in America right now. But the growth has been dramatic over the last couple of years. So in short, FACE serves anyone trying to do Christian education, whether they're parents, homeschoolers, K-T12 schools, higher education, churches, Christian education, leaders and churches and pastors, it's very broad, addressing true education, anybody that wants to do it at whatever age because we're always, all of us were always learning. So we have some 80-year-olds that are taking part in our programs. I love it. I strive to be a lifelong learner myself and to raise kids who are lifelong learners. It's so important. And how timely that way back then, the founders of your organization were concerned about the rise of socialism and how timely for today's America where that is just such a threat to our entire system of governance and the way people even think about the role of government. Now, before we move on, Dr. Lyons, what is your role with FACE? What do you actually do? So I'm the director of teaching services. So I kind of say it, I like to refer to myself as kind of the boots on the ground guy. I work directly with, if someone calls in whether it's a homeschool parent needing assistance or if it's getting started or being curriculum or a school-winning assistance, either starting a new school, which we have lots of those right now or an existing school that wants help with some of the things that we have to offer. I'm that person to assist them. So I get to help write curriculum. Teacher training is a big part of what we do. And we've got some summer coming up where we have summer training courses here as well as around the country. I'm in charge of all of that. So it's a wonderful opportunity. We love being able to serve the community in Christian education. And so that's generally what I do. Great. Well, we are grateful for you and the work that you do in that capacity. That's so important. Now, what we haven't mentioned yet and what your bio doesn't say is that you are also an author. And that's really why I invited you to be my guest for this program today. You have written a book called Government Takes All What's Left For Me, The Biblical Case for Limited Government. And I have to tell you, Dr. Lyons, I probably can't express adequately how much I love your little book. And I say little just because it's a short read. It's very concise. If you're listening to this program and you'd like to learn more about this topic or read about what we're gonna discuss today, you should totally get this book because it's not for the deep, all the philosophical underpinnings. It's not some 600 page treatment of all of the depth of what could be discussed. But it's just for a layperson to understand the Biblical case for limited government. This is the book for you. It's very readable, very quick read. It is available on Amazon. I checked this morning. It's I think $7.99. So I'm not here to sell your book, but I just want people to know, I love this book. And when I first read it years ago, I was just taken by how useful it was. So a book is all about jurisdiction or lawful authority and the different roles that each sphere of society is meant to play. It's a clear, concise explanation of how society is meant to operate under the Bible, but also under our constitution. And it talks about each component of our society doing what it is particularly suited to do and what it was actually designed to do. So this is the topic we're going to dive into, but I have to know first, what inspired you to write this book? Yes, for it, answer that question. If they want to purchase the book, I would prefer that they go to face rather than Amazon because we like connect with people. So it's simple F-A-C-E dot net. And we have a book tour and we have many wonderful products. So what inspired me to write this book was partially related to what Verna saw as she saw us sliding into socialism. As I've studied history, studied and taught history in government and economics, it's been kind of my wheelhouse over the last few decades. I came to realize that one of the key topics that kind of underpins everything is understanding this idea of jurisdiction or the lawful use of lawful authority as my friend Dr. Gay Friedan says that jurisdiction is. So I was looking around, I was actually looking, before I do any writing, I've written nine books. I do a literature survey first to see if someone else has already written on the topic because if they have and it's a good book, I'll just promote their book. It's a lot of work and trouble in my to publish. So I actually found a very good book on jurisdiction, but it was written in the 1800s. And as I read it, I realized a lot of the historical references, et cetera, and the language just, for someone reading it today would be a little difficult. So I thought it was a very important topic and especially with regard to runaway government today. And we all know the problem that we're having with the concept of limited government, we've kind of lost that concept. That was such an important concept for the founding generation, the writers of our founding documents, but we've almost lost at least a number of people in our country have almost lost that idea. So I just felt like it was something that really need to be taught on. And again, I like to write in a concise way because the 600 page books don't always get read as work quickly as a short book. So yes, I did try to deal with the subject succinctly, but I really felt compelled to also, I wanted to bring out the biblical case for limited government because it's not, I love Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Mark Leven, but they did not, even the founding fathers, they did not, this isn't their idea. They got the idea from the Word of God. It's a biblical idea and I wanted Christians to understand that. Absolutely, it's so important. And it's interesting, your background in education certainly qualify you that you could have written a very long extensive treatise on this topic, but I've heard people express in various ways, it's harder to express your idea in a concise way so that people can just really get it and understand it. It takes a lot more effort and did a great job with it. So here's how I want to proceed. Let's just lay a bit of groundwork by having you describe what these different segments of society are that we're gonna talk about. And then just in a sort of conclusory fashion, tell us what is the proper jurisdiction of each one? And then after that, I'm gonna ask you to dive into, what's the basis for this, the biblical basis and constitutional basis. So tell us, Dr. Lyons, what are the different components of society and their jurisdiction? So some will say that there are four jurisdictions, and some will say that they're five, it's just one can be a subset of the other in my mind, but the basic jurisdictions, and this was, again, it was God's ideal, not ours, it's individuals, then the family, and then the family of families is the church, then we have voluntary associations, which you could combine that with the church because the church is a voluntary association. But since it's a special one, ordained and created by God, I think it deserves its own emphasis. And then civil governments is the final one, and I say that because there's local, there's state and there's federal. So those are the five jurisdictions, and God has ordained that they each have responsibilities, and he gives them the authority to do certain things. But Tom, every one of them has limits, and we have to have limits on our authority because of the sinful nature of man. That's the reason there has to be limits. The Bible, tell you in Isaiah, it talks about Jesus and that the growth of his kingdom will never end. There's no limits to the authority of God and Jesus, but that's okay because they're perfect. But there has to be limits on us because we're imperfect. And this division into these five areas, again, is a check on the sinful nature of man because God has decentralized authority and power, not centralized it. And that's a key distinction between the battle of worldviews right now. We've got a side that believes in centralization of authority and that has never worked out well because it's against God's order. Yeah, absolutely. I think individuals, the family, the church, those are self-explanatory, what those are, and government's self-explanatory. We all know what that is. Explain a bit what you mean by voluntary association. So voluntary association, that would be groups of people that they're not coming together because they're forced to in a civil government. They're coming together for reasons that they choose. So the Salvation Army, the YMCA, business, commerce, every business is a voluntary association. It's not connected to the government. And again, the churches, the churches of voluntary association as well, but there are over a million non-profits, voluntary associations in America. And most of them are focused on solving some societal, you know, mothers against drunk drivers and alcoholics anonymous and those types of things. It's a very important part of the structure that God has given us. Yeah, so each one of these has its particular role to play and there are limitations on that role. So if I could give an example, I would say, it's primarily the role of the family to nurture and direct the education of children, right? That would be an example of the responsibility given to families. Are there some other examples like that that you can give us for these different groups, different jurisdictions? Sure, well, let's start with the individual, who's responsible for my health, my education, my welfare, pretty much almost everything you can think of, the answer would be me. That's the way God has designed it. And then when you come to the family, you know, besides the, when you're talking about children, the raising of children, for example, until they become adults, yeah, everything to do with those children, you know, their education, their health, their protection, you know, the love that they need, all of those things would be under the jurisdiction of parents and, you know, shockingly, a lot of those things are under attack today and actually have been for a long time. But most people intuitively would know that those things are under the jurisdiction of parents. You know, the church has a particular jurisdiction to evangelize and disciple. There's a teaching responsibility to the church as well, to, you know, corporate worship, the administration of sacraments. You know, we don't want people, you know, Max Lyons to fill up his tub or his pool and start baptizing people. That would be inappropriate. That's not my jurisdiction. Or, you know, grab the elements and start serving communion. That is, that is, you know, that's what God called the church to do. Now it seems to me that for the most part, this concept is fairly well understood and respected until you get to the category of government. That's right. And that's where it seems to all fall apart. So I'd like for you to kind of start our conversation on government jurisdiction by describing the proper functioning of government, according to the Bible, because some people might not even, you know, necessarily know that the Bible does have something to say about civil government and what its purpose is. Mm-hmm. Well, you know, we could take hours on what the Bible says about civil government, because you start in the book of Genesis and you go all the way through. And I mean, kings, judges, it's all there. The government that God gave to the nation of Israel, what some have referred to as the Hebrew Republic, there actually were hundreds of books written with that in the title centuries ago. There was this common understanding of this, but I'll go back to Genesis, you know, self-government, the whole idea of Christian self-government. God said to Adam and Eve, you know, you can eat of any tree except for the one. So he obviously does, you know, design man with the ability to govern themselves. And that really is the root and foundation of all government is self-government. We see the rise of civil government. We see in Genesis nine, six, you know, the death penalty for murder. That's the first time you see that in scripture. You see the rise of civil government because of the fall and the sinful nature of man. So, you know, most people in terms of the New Testament, just skipping over a lot that we could talk about, but in the New Testament, you know, Romans 13 is the most definitive statement on government there. And I've spent a lot of time exegeting that and looking at the, you know, the original language. But it seems clear to me and many others as well, and I'll think I'm an outlier on this, that according to Romans 13, the basic function of civil government is to punish evil doers. So, where I go with that in our modern society is that it's proper for government to have, for us to have military, to have police, judges, courts, courts, ability to, you know, systems to punish evil doers and to cause reimbursement or recompense to be, to give, and to those that have been offended. However, you know, where we have a problem with that is I put, biblically, I'll put a period there. I think I believe that it's responsibility for government to punish evil doers, period. And consequently, it's the responsibility for the other jurisdictions to be, the government punishes evil doers, the others are the ones who do the good. So, they're the ones to do the positive things. That would be the individual, the family, the church, volunteer associations. They're the ones that should be educating and taking care of the needy, you know, welfare, taking care, you know, helping people with health issues, you know, all the good that could be done in society, that's the jurisdiction of, the four jurisdictions outside of civil government. And you can see where we've messed that up, and we've been riled. Yes. And I want to stay here for just another minute because that was something in the book that was really helpful to me as just providing a framework for thinking about it, a positive role of government versus a negative role. And of course, I don't mean positive, meaning good and negative, meaning bad. I mean, positive as in proactive role. And negative as in reactive role. And you point out that really the role of government, primary role, at least is more of a negative role. It's, you know, protecting the rights of people, protecting us from evildoers, protecting us from invaders, punishing the evildoers, the lawbreakers. That really is what government's primary role is. And when we start to think of government as having the positive role or the proactive role, it seems like that's when we get into this big jurisdictional mess. That's right. One of the ways I like to talk about this is, you know, sometimes I can be accused of, you know, well, you must not care about the poor because you don't want government doing this or that. You don't care about the poor or the needy. And it's no, of course I care about the poor and the needy in the sick, but I want to care about them. I want to care for them through, you know, my individual work, my family, my church, the voluntary associations I'm part of. It is not the role of the government to do those things. Is that where we get mixed up so much today is then just thinking, well, if you're opposed to a government program that does this, then you don't care about the sick and the poor. Yeah, be careful when someone says you don't care because they're actually claiming to know what's in your heart and that the heart is God's jurisdiction. The actions are man's, but the heart's God's jurisdiction. So I would respond, I actually care more for them than you do because I want them to be served the proper way, which is going to benefit them better. So yes, Marvin Alasky read a book in the, in the 1980s that I love, it's called The Tragedy of American Compassion. Love that book. And it's on my top, you know, my top list because he actually demonstrates how for 200 years, we did welfare correctly in our country based on an idea, proper understanding of jurisdiction, individuals that needed help, whether it was health or, you know, their alcoholics or whatever, they, you know, couldn't work. They were helped, first of all, by their family and then secondly, by the church and voluntary associations. So, and it worked way better than it's working now. So, so, so yes, you know, we, we can both agree that people do need to be helped because that's just human compassion, but we disagree on methodology. And we're really arguing for the biblical method. And guess what? Because it's biblical in God's way, it works a lot better than the other way. Yeah, and guess what? The Constitution backs us up because of the Constitution, I would say, and I know from reading your book that you agree, the Constitution really implements a vision of government that's very consistent with that biblical vision where jurisdiction is carefully divided and limited specifically to keep government from encroaching on the other jurisdictions. And we don't have time to get into all of the ways that the Constitution does that, but you do discuss it in your book and, you know, it's right on. So, Dr. Lyons, would you say that today in America, we have a problem of idolatry of government? That's probably a good way of stating it. I think it was Rush Jr. that first used the idea of the Messianic state. And I think that's very true. We've come to really view the state in a way that people, that we ought to view God. You know, now instead of our father, Lord and Heaven, it's our government who are in Washington. And I mean, you just look, you know, there's a disaster. And the first thing that we look to is a statement from the president and federal money to be coming to that. Isn't that indicative of the fact that we are really, you know, whoever's your provider is kind of your God. You know, Providence is another name for God. And so many of us look at the government as that provider. And we need to wake up because government has a function. We're not anarchists, but we need to have government do what it's called to do. And then the rest of the jurisdictions, including us and our family and our churches, do the rest. That's God's order and that's the best. Absolutely. Well, Dr. Lyons, we are about out of time, but I never wanna leave the program without providing people a solution that they can look to. Of course, prayer first and foremost, prayer for our nation. Also education, which is something that you are heavily involved in. And thirdly, you know, the organization that Mark Meckler and I are involved in convention of states. I would encourage you, you know, if you're looking for ways that you can be involved in implementing a meaningful solution to the problem with our government and government overreach in particular, go to conventionofstates.com and learn about that. Dr. Lyons, I wish I had another hour with you today, but please, before we close out, tell people again, your website where they can find your book and also how to get in touch with you. Also available on your website. What is that site again? It is facefac.net. That is the website and me personally, it's max at face.net. So those are tied together, it's pretty easy. I can help you in some way or we can serve you in some way and face, please reach out to us. Dr. Lyons, thanks so much for being with us on the program today. Thank you. Well, that's all of our time for today. I would like to thank our generous sponsors at Blue Ridge Chimney Services, Blessings Christian bookstore, Sunshine Ministries with Christian Radio, Wishing Well, Florists and Travel Services and our friends at New Beginnings Church and Garber's Church of the Brethren. Thank you all for listening and for your encouragement and financial support. If you'd like to help keep crossroads on the air, you can do so by check to Crossroads at PO Box 881 Harrisonburg, Virginia 2-2-8-0-3. I'm Rita Peters, inviting you to join us again next week for another edition of Crossroads Where Faith and Culture Meet. Thank you for listening to the Crossroads podcast. To learn more about Convention of States, go to conventionofstates.com. ♪♪♪