By Tim Bloedow

I started to read through Exodus again last week. Part of the account of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptian Pharaoh is very instructive in light of the reports from the U.S. and from various Canadian provinces about rising taxes.

The first time Moses approached the Pharaoh (chapter 5) to tell him to let God’s people go, the Pharaoh decided that the Israelites had too much time on their hands if they had time to think about worshipping God. In response, the Pharaoh told his supervisors to send the Israelites out to find their own raw materials – straw – for manufacturing bricks on top of their production responsibilities. “That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: ‘You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota …’” (Exodus 5:6-8).

The Israelites were required to work harder to produce the same results to avoid punishment. They couldn’t produce the same results so they were punished (v. 14).

When the Canadian Pharaoh – Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, for example – increases your taxes, so that you have less money to provide for your family while working just as hard, you are facing the same situation, in principle, that the Israelites faced under the Egyptian Pharaoh. You’re a slave.

If you don’t consider yourself a slave, it’s because you’ve been conditioned to embrace your slavery by socialist cultural euphemisms and the fact that most of your neighbours have also embraced this slavery, so you fit in with your peers.

And that’s only taxation, you say.

Canadians need to get a grip on reality. A man was just jailed for 66 days in New Brunswick for refusing to file his income tax returns. His situation may not be representative because he is a pro-life activist who is refusing to pay taxes because abortion is funded with tax dollars. But the fact is that you can go to jail for refusing to pay taxes. Are you listening? You can still go to jail for not paying your taxes. That’s not theory! It’s reality!

But Canadian Christians – and probably Americans too – love their slavery. Canadians don’t think of this situation as oppression. They embrace it because it means more services provided by the state, more financial security.

“What did you say? That’s not true? Canadian Christians don’t celebrate higher taxes and smaller paycheques?”

If Canadian Christians hadn’t embraced their slavery, then they would have stood up against this slavery and idolatry and resisted it. Most Canadians, including Christians, quietly keep their heads down and go about their daily work. Most Canadian Christians refuse to become active against this slavery and oppression. Most Canadian Christians show by their actions – their lack of action; their apathy – that they prefer their slavery to the law of God, they prefer their slavery to the economy of God: self-government, individual liberty and personal responsibility.

This was the problem with the Israelites. After the Pharaoh heaped more work on them, the Israelite foremen went and found Moses and Aaron and called down God’s judgment on them: “When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, ‘May the LORD look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us’” (Ex. 5:20-21).

Keep in mind that Moses and Aaron had already met with the elders of the Israelites to discuss with them God’s plan for deliverance, and the Israelites embraced it: “Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the LORD had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped” (Exodus 4:29-31).

But 400 years of bondage and oppression had taken its toll on the spirit and confidence of the Israelites. Over that 400 years they had been beaten down and oppressed and crushed in spirit so they no longer had the will to fight. They adjusted to their circumstances. They kept their heads down. And they hoped against hope that if they did what they were told, things wouldn’t get worse.

Sounds exactly like the typical Canadian – except that our constitutions are so strong and resilient that it only took 150 years to beat us down!

Only when Canadians once again decide to believe in the importance and beauty of liberty – the Gospel, with its message of spiritual liberty COUPLED WITH Kingdom-of-God advancing civil-social liberties – will God deliver us. He will cultivate within us the stamina, the fortitude, the courage, the vision to resist the forces of oppression, the forces of tyranny, the Humanistic forces of Messianic State-ism.

It would be great to see this take place soon – but maybe today’s parents need to appreciate better the implications for this slavery for their children. Is that what they wish for their own children? Slave-lords worse than Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty, Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest and Newfoundland’s I-alone-get-good-health-care-Premier Danny Williams?

Rise up and accept the challenge of self-government and personal responsibility. Rise up and embrace the reign of King Jesus and His law. Rise up and embrace the exhilarating life of liberty with all the opportunities it unfolds for people. Rise up and win. Be a Christian. “I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

Tim Bloedow is the founder of ChristianGovernment.