I am writing this on polling day. Long before the polls have closed. And I am going to stick my neck on the line and say we now have a Labour government. I appreciate, as you read this, I might look really stupid. We may currently be staring at another 5 years of the Tories. Or, by some bizarre twist of fate, Reform may have stormed the polls and Nigel Farage is now our Overlord Prime Minister. But I feel safe, at least as I write this on polling day, saying Labour are in government with, I imagine, a fairly sizeable majority to boot.

I was a little surprised to see somebody pronounce several days ago, to some approval and agreement, that such a result – if I am right and Labour are now in – would necessarily be a judgement from God. I’m unclear how Keir Starmer represents a judgement from God in a way that Boris Johnson didn’t. Nor, to take a wider perspective, how it is a judgement to have the Labour government we presumably now have when we compare them to any number of nations and the state of their governments. If this government is a judgement, on what basis is it a judgement? Why is this particular government (however you judge it) more or less of a judgement than any other government from any other nation who, though no doubt in different ways, nevertheless depart from Biblical orthodoxy as we understand it at least somewhere in their policy-making and manifestos?

Others, hoping to sound clever, quote John Calvin: ‘when God wants to judge a nation, he gives them wicked leaders.’ I grant this sounds about right until you reckon with the fact that every nation has wicked leaders because every nation is led by sinners. Whatever else you might say, there are vanishingly few nations with genuinely godly leaders anywhere to be found. If wicked leaders are a judgement, then God has been judging pretty much the entire world forever!

We either think that is true, in which case the comment is not notable because we are several thousand years into living with that ongoing reality now and so we are hardly in a unique moment worthy of the word judgement (if everything is a judgement, then in effect, nothing is!) Or, we think this is notable because wickedness has reached its nadir. If we really do believe things are more wicked now, can we realistically say wickedness has reached its height in the UK? Are we really more wicked than the Iranians or the Afghans or any number of other places? Regardless, the comment lacks credible historic perspective even within the UK, let alone worldwide. There have been some pretty heinous and wicked leaders of the past who it is hard to look past being considerably worse than Keir Starmer (and, to be fair and for balance, than Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak too). Quite a lot of them in fact!

Of course, few define the particular wickedness they’re talking about. I can’t help but think that is because when they do it becomes apparent this is either nothing new nor more evidently wicked than what went before. It is more a sense of vibes in which the person feels things are worse and this issue is the one on which Western civilisation will crumble without any real sense of how true that might actually be. All of which suggests the comment about this being a judgement, more than anything else before or in any other part of the world, is more vacuous than it may seem on first blush.

Why, for example, is the adulterous unfaithfulness and hypocritical partying of a Boris Johnson not a judgement evidenced by explicit wickedness? Why is a total lack of concern for the poor by billionaire leaders – a major Biblical theme and one of its main ways of identifying wickedness – not evidence of wicked leaders and judgement from God? Why are only certain culture warring issues – many of which, though the Bible does have things to say about them, are a bit more nuanced than many seem willing to admit – evidence of wicked leaders and God’s judgement but their approach to money, to their own families, to their relationship with the truth itself are not? The definitions of wickedness applied seem selective at best and the affirmation of a judgement from God seems to coincidentally line up almost exactly with the personal politics of the one making the pronouncement. Which, forgive me for saying so, makes the comment specious.

More to the point, when we look at what the scriptures actually say, it is hard to look beyond what Paul says in Romans 13:

Let everyone submit to the governing authorities, since there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are instituted by God. ² So then, the one who resists the authority is opposing God’s command, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves. ³ For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the one in authority? Do what is good, and you will have its approval. ⁴ For it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For it is God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong. ⁵ Therefore, you must submit, not only because of wrath but also because of your conscience. ⁶ And for this reason you pay taxes, since the authorities are God’s servants, continually attending to these tasks.^[a] 7 Pay your obligations to everyone: taxes to those you owe taxes, tolls to those you owe tolls, respect to those you owe respect, and honor to those you owe honor.

Two things are worth saying about this. Paul wrote this under Nero. Are we really saying Labour, and Keir Starmer in particular, is more wicked than Nero? A man who lit Christians alive, threw them to lions for the entertainment of crowds and ran one of the most brutal Empires the world has seen. Anybody even coming close to suggesting such things is simply not a serious person. Second, Paul is clear that the real judgement is not the leaders we get, but is upon those who resist their leaders. Indeed, Nero and the Roman authorities, according to Paul, were God’s servant. Not his judgement upon his people, but his servants. The same is true for any and all governments – including the particular one we have just elected – they are God’s servants, not God’s judgement. If Nero wasn’t a specific judgement of God upon his people then, we have no business claiming a Labour government (or whoever we may have) is God’s judgement on us today. It is not a serious comment and it lacks any real biblical warrant.

That, of course, doesn’t mean the government will be perfect and cannot be criticised. No government is perfect and beyond criticism. And some governments will evidently be worthy of far greater criticism than others. If even the supposedly great and godly reigns of David, Solomon, Josiah and others in the Old Testament had plenty about them worthy of criticism, no government of ours is going to far any better. But by the same token, if we look at the sin and waywardness of even some of those high points of Israel’s history – and reckon with them being deemed times of blessing and not judgement – we similarly have no business implying any less today. The fact is, every government will bless its people somehow and every government will not serve its people well. Some will serve better than others, some will be worthy of criticism more than others. They will be better than others in particular ways and worse than others in other ways. None will be perfect. Some will push into what is good, right and godly in some areas and will similarly push into sin and error in others. It has ever been thus.

Perhaps as something of an even-keeled Amillennial, I expect all this. I expect to see things in cycles. I expect to see governments rise and fall. I expect to see certain things at high points and other things at low points cycling all the way through history. I don’t think everything in the past was exclusively good or bad, just as I don’t think everything in the future will be exclusively good or bad either (at least, not until the parousia). It will all be a mixed bag, with good and bad always on show and things rising and falling so that what is good at one time may be bad at another and vice versa. Just as governments and empires rise and fall, so do moral standards and societal norms. I think such a reading of history is born out pretty clearly. There are clear and obvious examples of ways society today is better and conforms more closely to biblical norms than the past. There are clear and obvious examples where it isn’t. Such will it ever be. I don’t find this surprising, I find it to be entirely in line with what the scripture tells us.

Perhaps you voted for a Labour government or perhaps you didn’t (assuming that is what we have; I am assuming that as I write this). There will be ways in which they may just surprise you (if you have eyes to see) how closely they mirror Jesus’ commands in some areas. There will no doubt be ways where they may entirely fulfil your expectations in being some way from Christ too. But in the end, Paul says the judgement isn’t the leaders we get; judgement is brought on ourselves when we resist those placed over us. Never forget that our government is there because God has placed them there; they are his servants. If that is true – and Paul says unequivocally it is and Peter tells us we are to honour them – we need to stop using the J-word because it lacks biblical warrant and may blind us to the good and godly ways they may serve us. Ironically, insisting this is a judgement from God makes it more likely we will want to resist the government and, in so doing, bring the very judgement upon ourselves that Paul warns us about.

It is worth saying that there will be a good amount of your brothers and sisters who voted for this particular result. Some of them may consider your preferred result to be a judgment of its own. All of which is to say, bandying around the J-word just isn’t very helpful and doesn’t make us look so clever. Let’s stop it and just get on with honouring whoever the Lord has given us as he tells us we should if we love him.