No Kings Part 3
After Joshua, the story of Israel enters one of its most sobering chapters. The promises of the conquest give way—not to flourishing, but to fracture. With no central authority and a generation’s memory of faith and miracles fading, Israel plunges into a cycle of discord and decline. The Book of Judges, one of scripture’s most unflinching testaments to the perils of unfinished civic work, captures this paradox in a haunting refrain: “In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)
When All Authority Fades
On the surface, this is radical freedom—a society without king, central committee, or continual oversight. But the aftermath is not harmony; it is lawlessness. Judges reads at times like a cautionary parable against the perils of atomized liberty and the decay that comes when principle is unmoored from action.
The pattern repeats: The people turn away from the stewardship they were given, chaos erupts, foreign oppressors invade, and in desperation the Israelites cry out. In answer, God raises up a Judge—a deliverer, temporary and often flawed—to restore order. Yet with each turn of the cycle, the repair is more fleeting, the unity more fragile.
The Double-Edged Sword of Liberty
It is tempting to romanticize “no king” as the zenith of freedom. But when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes,” the collective vision dissolves. Rather than the bold independence God sought to foster—a people governed by internalized law, compassion, and responsibility—the narrative records moral confusion, violence, and the disintegration of shared life. The absence of rulers did not produce virtue, only uncertainty. When no one is accountable to a higher standard, all are vulnerable to the worst in themselves and others.
Yearning for Security
It is in this crucible of insecurity and fear that the people’s cry for a king intensifies. Safety, predictability, and the promise of order become more compelling than self-rule or obedience to the Divine. “Make us like the nations around us,” they soon demand—not recognizing that the very difference meant to be their strength becomes unbearable in a world of threats and anxieties.
Here, the narrative tension comes into sharpest relief:
- The verdict on life without a king: Loneliness, disorder, fragmentation—yet also the danger of relief being found in any new authority, regardless of the cost.
- Samuel’s warning about kingship: That the solution may prove worse than the disease.
We stand at a paradox: ruled too little, a society dissolves; ruled too much, it ossifies or oppresses. The tension is not solved by more or fewer rules, but by something deeper—a return to what grounds law itself, and who or what it ought to serve.
“As Simple As Possible—And No Simpler”
As Einstein once advised: “Things should be made as simple as they can be, and no simpler.” The Biblical drama in Judges cannot be reduced to the case for or against monarchy, nor for anarchic freedom. It is—like Occam’s razor—a plea for clarity: that social flourishing requires a clear standard, but not a suffocating one; a shared purpose, but not endless conformity. It is the ultimate Gordian knot, cut not by brute power or by abdication, but by recommitment to a higher law.
Today’s Echoes
Modern America finds itself echoing this pattern. The yearning for leaderless consensus, for decentralized power, for radical autonomy—these pull at us. But the costs of “everyone doing what is right in their own eyes” are plain to see: polarization, estrangement, rising violence, splintered civic identity. The modern call for “No Kings” too often doubles as a protest not just against one leader, but against any claim to moral authority—religious, historical, or constitutional. The danger, as ancient Israel learned, is that the vacuum of principle does not remain empty; it is swiftly filled, often with something far less just.
The lessons of history—and of our own founding—demand humility. Madison stated unequivocally:
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.” —James Madison, Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
Franklin’s warning echoes the same theme—excessive liberty without self-control breeds new masters:
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” —Benjamin Franklin, 1787
And Edmund Burke, reflecting on revolutions that spiraled into chaos, distilled the principle:
“Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.” —Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
The Fork in the Road
Are we, like the Israelites, at the brink of calling for comfort over conviction? Will our longing for ‘no king’ prove, in the end, just a prelude to demanding a king—one who will “fight our battles” and assure us safety?
Or can we, as a people, recover a vision that holds liberty, justice, and shared restraint in creative tension—a society where virtue is not imposed nor disowned, but chosen, internalized, and lived out together?
In the next installment, we move to Samuel and the first kings of Israel. There, we will rack-and-stack the warnings about monarchic power—ancient and modern—asking pointedly how America’s own military-industrial, medical, and managerial complexes reflect the old temptation: to trade freedom for safety, or responsibility for comfort.
Preview of Part 4
In Part 4, we trace Samuel’s pivotal warning about kingship, watch Saul and David take the throne, and compare all this to America’s postwar urge for ever more protection—military, medical, economic—through centralized, kingly power. We’ll see how, throughout history and into today, this pattern threatens liberty and creativity alike, and we’ll ask: what antidote, if any, does faith and trust in the Divine have to offer individuals and nations facing the same perennial dread?
And a reminder, these articles are my views, and mine alone. Perhaps you find them useful, or a catalyst for thought and discussion. I’d love to hear what you think.
