Temperance and the Price of Liberty 

Introduction

Apparently, a number of founding fathers are credited with saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And we still didn’t listen. 

Christopher Rufo reports on the many layers of corruption emanating from and around Texas Children’s Hospital. Beginning with a transgender program serving children as young as 11, defiantly continuing quietly even after laws were passed and promises made, culminating now in the involvement of the FBI and federal prosecutors intimidating and charging not the corrupt doctors and administrators but the courageous whistleblowers who reported on the unethical, criminal, and fraudulent activities surrounding the permanent maiming of healthy bodies. You can even watch a video of FBI agents questioning one nurse from Texas Children’s. 

The same thing has already happened to Paul Vaughn, a peaceful prolife activist and homeschooling father of seven whose home was raided by FBI agents with drawn weapons after a peaceful protest of an abortion clinic eighteen months prior. Vaughn and several others now await sentencing in a federal court on July 2, facing up to eleven years in prison. Meanwhile, if you burned down a police station during 2020 it was a “mostly peaceful protest,” but if you burn out on a PRIDE flag painted on a crosswalk, you’re a dangerous criminal.

The New Right

Many on what might be called the new Christian Right have begun arguing for a more forceful resistance to this neo-Marxist jihad. Not a call to vigilante violence, but a call to take up political power and wield it for good. Some hear these calls as no different than Boromir urging the Council of Elrond to take up the One Ring of power. And I have to admit that some of the voices have occasionally sounded that way to me. There is a kind of worship of political power that our radical progressive adversaries have which is utterly immoral, ungodly, and therefore, not an option for conservative Christians. We absolutely need to be on guard against the flesh, and the offers of power from the Devil. That is always a trap. Don’t take the bait.

But others are simply pointing out that someone will run the FBI. Someone will make the rules. Someone will decide whether to prosecute or not. Wouldn’t it be better for hard-headed Christians to hold those positions of power than the current regime? And since the public square clearly cannot actually be neutral or naked, and some God or gods will be honored and some form of blasphemy will be penalized, shouldn’t Christians stop making Faustian bargains with unbelief? Of course the cries come up that this will entail “Christofacism” and Mosaic Sharia Law and a Handmaid’s Tale of bigotry and oppression. But the fact of the matter is that Puritans founded and built this country. And while there were certainly some abuses in some places, it was that Christian conscience and commitment to all of God’s Word applied to all of life that made room for the most religious and political liberty in modern history. Sodomy was illegal in many states until about fifteen minutes ago, and somehow we managed to build the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

Edmund Spenser & Sir Guyon

Book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene is the story of Sir Guyon the Knight of Temperance – no, it’s not some kind of moralistic fable against the dangers of alcohol. Spenser’s Knight embodies the classical and Christian virtue of temperance. While in some cases, temperance means moderation and avoiding excesses and extremes, what becomes clear over the course of the tale is that Christian temperance is something more like the love of and execution of “appropriate action or force.” Temperance resists the enticements of excessive physical pleasure, but it also resists the repulsion of physical pain or emotional discomfort. Temperance desires and does what is right and good and appropriate despite what it feels like.  

Some evils a temperate man flees, repudiating the discomfort of what might appear to some as cowardly; other evils a temperate man stands his ground and fights, resisting the temptations to ease or comfort. In the face of some evils, a temperate man is slow and subtle, opposing an impulsive or wrathful spirit; in the face of other evils, a temperate man is fierce and fiery, rejecting the seductive spells of apathy, laziness, or fear. Temperance in this way is not really “moderate” in the sense of mediocre or average. Temperance is appropriately trained desires and action suited to the needs of the moment. The name of Spenser’s Knight of Temperance even points to this: “Guyon” means something like “lively struggle.” Temperance wrestles with every moment, seeking what is good and what is best. Temperance is lively and assertive thoughtfulness, desire, and action well-tempered to the occasion. 

In this view, Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of the Lord was temperate. Joseph’s flight from Potiphar’s wife was temperate. Moses’s pleading before the Lord for Israel was temperate. David’s challenge of Goliath was temperate. Daniel and his friends exemplified temperance in their defiance of evil decrees and endurance of persecution. It was the temperance of Christ that caused Him to endure the suffering of the cross, despising its shame, for the joyful crown and conquest that was set before Him.

Temperance is the virtue that combats every form of gluttony, including the gluttony of comfort, peace, and respectability. Temperance is self-control, wise self-government but going all the way down into the soul, into the bones: instincts and desires trained for action and appropriate force. Like “meekness,” it is strength under control. It is power wielded with virtue. 

Watchful Men

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” might have been another way to say what the Apostle John says: “Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward” (2 John 8). In fact, the exhortations to watchfulness come regularly in the New Testament. Stay awake. Be alert, sober, vigilant. But like the first disciples, we are prone to get tired and fall asleep.  

George Washington warned, speaking of the Constitutional order, that, “It is important … that … those entrusted with its administration … confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department any encroachment upon another…. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create … a real despotism.” Limited government does not happen automatically because someone swore an oath of office. Power is limited by opposing power. The different spheres or jurisdictions were meant to be balancing powers. But they only work if those who occupy them exert the appropriate powers of their offices and rein in the encroachments and excesses of themselves and others.  

Thomas Jefferson believed he was already seeing that consolidation and encroachment in his own lifetime: “Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit, by consolidation first, and then corruption…. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.” And here we are. 

Constitutional checks and balances only work when there is intense protection of jurisdictions, justice, and morality. In other words, inappropriate and evil exertion of political power must be met with and restrained by appropriate and righteous exertion of political power. This is part of temperance. Conservatives have sometimes feared confident and assertive political action because of how the liberals might weaponize it next time around. But on the one hand, we don’t have the luxury of worrying about what the liberals *might* do when they are already weaponizing everything against what is true, good, and beautiful. It is not weaponizing political power to actively restrain and prosecute evil men.

On the other hand, a lot depends on what it is we are talking about. I agree that expanding the Supreme Court is fraught with dangers. Do we really want to (re)start that game? At the same time, the number of Supreme Court justices is most certainly not a matter of transcendent morality or specified in the Constitution, and if that becomes the game, shrewd Christians must apply biblical virtue to the needs of the moment and not necessarily be constrained by the number nine, our venerable tradition since 1869. I say “restart the game” since history reveals that it was already a game leading up the Civil War and that Abraham Lincoln appointed a 10th justice during his presidency to ensure a repeal of the Dread Scott decision. The political polo continued with the number of justices wavering between 7 and 9 following the war. As recently as 1937, FDR only barely failed to increase the number of justices to as many as 15.

But the more I think about all of this, the more I believe that our nation is as corrupt as it is for the same reasons our churches are so corrupt and weak. Our churches are full of soft, cowardly pastors who are intemperate not only in their lusts and excessive pleasures, but perhaps even more so in their intemperate refusal to stand up to evil because of the blowback, persecution, and unpleasantness that will follow. Church leaders were intimidating and making examples of faithful men long before the FBI. J. Gresham Machen was defrocked and excommunicated in the mainline presbyterian church in the 1920s for his faithfulness. In 2020, many pastors were caught cowering before tyrannical edicts one week and then marching in BLM protests the next. The fruit of all of this is the persecution of prolife protestors and whistleblowers who expose the medical abuse of minors. 

Conclusion

I’ve often pointed to the nine and a half tribes of Israel going to war with the other two and half tribes because of the altar they had built on the other side of the Jordan in Joshua 22. When the elders of Israel heard that an unauthorized altar had been built, they gathered for war and confronted their brothers. As it turns out, it was only an altar of memorial, a testimony for their children to remind them they were truly part of Israel. And when the other elders of Israel heard this, they were satisfied and went home. This is a glorious illustration of the strength and assertiveness of temperance. And no doubt some of the sons of Belial wrote editorials about hot-headed Phinehas and the growing Nietzschean impulses on the other side of the Jordan. But temperance doesn’t care. 

Christians are required to be watchful, intense, and strong like men (1 Cor. 16:13). There is such a thing as intemperance that is drunk on power, drunk on rage, drunk on pleasures. And all of that must be utterly repudiated. Temperance puts that “old man” of the flesh to death. But there is another intemperance that is lazy, apathetic, fearful, weak, and addicted to the pleasures of comfort, respectability, and ease. We must repent of both forms of intemperance. As has been said many times, the only thing necessary for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Temperance repudiates the discomfort of obedience. Temperance despises the shame of wielding godly power. 

We still speak of a blades being tempered – the process of heating up metal in order to make it more durable. In fact, a tempered blade is made slightly less hard in order for it be made tougher. A tempered blade is less brittle in order to be stronger. We are in dire need of well-tempered men, sharp and strong men.

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Prov. 25:28). Literally, it is a man who cannot “restrain his spirit.” We are a nation without walls because we are a nation of intemperate men. The Ring of Power must always be destroyed, and it will be destroyed through the faithfulness of many playing their different parts in the great struggle. But there will be princes, senators, judges, sheriffs, pastors, and parents, and God has entrusted limited power to each of these offices, and temperance teaches us to wield that power in obedience and joy so that we may remain free.