Do we have to…?

Do we have to? Is it necessary that we will go towards what seems inevitable? How do we know that something is inevitable after all? Couldn’t a small interruption change the direction?

Do we have to lurch towards authoritarianism? Or maybe a better way of phrasing it is do we have to follow some kind of inevitable path?

In times of chaos, humanity leans heavily on control and those who give the projection of strength. I always wonder why humanity doesn’t examine what that leads to though — the consequences. It’s not like we don’t know and don’t have a long history of how horrible that turns out for everyone and everything. But hey, maybe we’ve just not done it the right way! Sure.

This isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. Scripture talks very plainly about this. 1 Samuel 8 records the people’s pleading with Samuel for a king to rule over them, just like the other nations. Samuel goes to God and God says, give them what they want because they are rejecting me. In other words, let them suffer the inevitable consequences of their request — maybe they will learn. And so Samuel goes back to them and tells them exactly what they will experience with a king:

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the…