Abstract
This paper applies the testimony of Scripture to the conduct of contemporary political, institutional, and cultural elites, treating the elite pattern of demanding deference while exempting themselves from imposed burdens, of professing care for the governed while displaying contempt for them, and of claiming competence while delivering serial failure, as a recognizable spiritual condition with a recognizable biblical diagnosis. The paper draws on the prophetic literature, the wisdom literature, the Gospels, and the apostolic writings to develop the indictment in scriptural rather than merely sociological terms. It examines the specific judgments Scripture pronounces on rulers, teachers, shepherds, and judges who behave in the manner now observable, and considers the remedy Scripture prescribes for those under such conduct as well as for those who engage in it.
1. Introduction: The Scriptural Framework for Judging Authority
Scripture is not silent on the conduct of those who govern, teach, judge, and lead. It addresses the matter from Genesis to Revelation, in passages of considerable specificity, and it does so with a consistency across the canon that permits a coherent indictment to be developed from the texts themselves. The framework Scripture provides is not the framework of contemporary political theory, which evaluates rulers principally by their efficiency, their popularity, or their conformity to procedural norms. It is rather the framework of covenant accountability, in which those granted authority over others are held to a standard intensified rather than relaxed by their station, and in which the failure to meet that standard is treated as a spiritual condition with spiritual consequences, not merely as a political failure with political consequences.
Three principles undergird the scriptural approach to elite conduct, and they will recur throughout this examination. The first is that authority is delegated rather than inherent, given by God to particular persons for particular purposes, and accountable to the One who delegated it. Daniel makes this explicit when he tells Nebuchadnezzar that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever He will, and Paul makes it explicit when he says that the powers that be are ordained of God. The implication is that no human authority is autonomous; all are stewards rather than owners, and stewards face accounting.
The second principle is that the measure of authority is the welfare of those over whom it is exercised, not the welfare of those exercising it. Ezekiel 34 develops this at length in its denunciation of the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves rather than the flock, and the principle is implicit throughout the law and the prophets. Authority is given for the protection and provision of the governed; authority exercised for the benefit of the governing is by that fact a corruption of its purpose.
The third principle is that the standard of judgment applied to those in authority is stricter than that applied to ordinary people, not looser. James states this directly when he warns that not many should become teachers, knowing that they will receive the stricter judgment. Christ states it when He declares that to whom much is given, of him shall much be required. The intuitive elite supposition, that station permits relaxation of the rules, is precisely inverted in the biblical framework, where station intensifies them.
With these principles established, the indictment of contemporary elites can be developed by reference to the specific patterns Scripture identifies and condemns.
2. The Pattern of Heavy Burdens: Matthew 23 and Its Application
The most direct scriptural treatment of the asymmetric burden pattern is found in Matthew 23, where Christ pronounces a series of woes upon the scribes and Pharisees. The opening characterization, in verses 2 through 4, identifies precisely the pattern under examination. The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, which is to say they occupy positions of legitimate teaching authority. Christ does not deny their authority; He instructs the people to do what they say. But He immediately distinguishes what they say from what they do, warning the people not to do after their works, for they say and do not. He then specifies the pattern in language that admits of no ambiguity: they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
The pattern Christ identifies is not generalized hypocrisy but a specific institutional behavior, in which those occupying seats of authority devise demands they impose on the governed while contriving exemptions for themselves. This is the precise pattern now observable in contemporary elite conduct, and the scriptural judgment on it is unambiguous. Christ does not call for the heavy burdens to be moderated; He calls for the discrepancy between the imposers and the imposed to be ended. The teachers retain their seat in Moses’ chair; what they forfeit is the standing to be imitated, and what they incur is the woe pronounced upon them in the verses that follow.
Several features of the Matthew 23 indictment merit particular attention because they map directly onto contemporary conditions. The scribes and Pharisees love the uppermost rooms at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues, and they love greetings in the markets and to be called of men rabbi. The contemporary elite preoccupation with status, with the visible markers of professional achievement, with the deference signaled by professional titles, and with the segregated spaces in which elites encounter only one another, is recognizably the same pattern. Christ continues by denouncing their proselytizing zeal, which produces converts who become twofold more the children of hell than themselves. The contemporary expansion of credentialing systems, which reproduces the elite pattern in successive generations while intensifying its pathologies, is recognizable in this denunciation.
Christ further denounces the pattern of straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel, of meticulous compliance with peripheral requirements while neglecting the weightier matters of judgment, mercy, and faith. This is precisely the pattern of contemporary elite moralism, which mounts elaborate campaigns about microaggressions, pronouns, and other peripheral concerns while presiding over wars, deindustrializations, and institutional failures that produce mass suffering of the kind the prophets denounced as the substantive injustice from which God’s judgment proceeds. Christ’s denunciation of those who make clean the outside of the cup and platter while the inside is full of extortion and excess applies with peculiar force to a class whose public posture is one of caring while its actual conduct is one of self-enrichment at the expense of the governed.
The woes culminate in the comparison with whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward but are within full of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. The contemporary elite’s curated public image, polished by communications professionals, transmitted through cooperative media, and protected by the assumption of professional respectability, is identifiable in this image, and Scripture’s judgment on it is that the polished exterior aggravates rather than mitigates the offense, because it conceals the corruption rather than confessing it.
3. The Shepherds Who Feed Themselves: Ezekiel 34 and Its Application
Where Matthew 23 addresses teachers, Ezekiel 34 addresses rulers, and the indictment is correspondingly comprehensive. The prophet is instructed to prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and to say to them that the Lord God is against them. The substance of the indictment is given in the opening verses: woe to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves, for the shepherds should feed the flocks. The specific failures are then enumerated. The shepherds eat the fat and clothe themselves with the wool; they kill them that are fed; but they feed not the flock. The diseased they have not strengthened, neither have they healed that which was sick, neither have they bound up that which was broken, neither have they brought again that which was driven away, neither have they sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have they ruled them.
The pattern Ezekiel identifies is the systematic inversion of the purpose for which authority is given. The flock exists to be fed, protected, healed, and gathered; the shepherds exist to perform these services. When the shepherds reverse the relationship, treating the flock as the resource from which they extract sustenance, status, and benefit while declining to perform the services for which their position was constituted, they incur the judgment that the prophet then pronounces. The Lord declares Himself against the shepherds, requires the flock at their hand, causes them to cease from feeding the flock, and delivers His flock from their mouth that they may not be meat for them.
The application to contemporary elites does not require extensive elaboration. A governing class that extracts wealth, status, and security from the populations it nominally serves, while presiding over the decline of those populations’ communities, the decay of their institutions, and the deterioration of their conditions of life, fits the Ezekiel pattern with precision. The diseased of contemporary society have not been strengthened; the broken have not been bound up; the lost have not been sought; and the ruling has been with force and with cruelty, even when the cruelty is administered through bureaucratic procedure rather than through visible violence. The judgment Ezekiel pronounces is the same that any biblicist reading of contemporary conditions must pronounce, because the conditions are recognizably the same.
Ezekiel proceeds to describe the gathering of the scattered flock by the Lord Himself, who will seek out His sheep and deliver them from all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. The implication for the failed shepherds is that their function will be removed from them; the implication for the flock is that deliverance is not contingent on the conversion of the shepherds, who in the prophecy do not repent but are simply set aside. This is a point of some importance, because it indicates that the scriptural framework does not require elites to be redeemed in order for the flock to be delivered; redemption is offered to those who repent, but deliverance proceeds whether they do or not, and the principal hope of the governed lies not in the conversion of those who have failed them but in the action of the One who appointed them.
4. The Prophetic Indictment of Unjust Rulers: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah
The prophetic literature beyond Ezekiel contains an extensive indictment of the rulers, judges, and priests of Israel and Judah whose conduct prefigures and parallels that of contemporary elites. The indictments are sufficiently consistent across the prophets that they may be treated together, with attention to the specific patterns each prophet addresses.
Isaiah’s opening chapters indict the rulers of Sodom and the people of Gomorrah, by which he means the rulers and people of Jerusalem whose conduct merits the comparison. The princes are rebellious, companions of thieves; every one loves gifts and follows after rewards; they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them. The indictment is of a ruling class whose decisions are for sale, whose attention is captured by those who can pay for it, and whose neglect of the powerless is systemic rather than incidental. Isaiah continues with the famous indictment of those who decree unrighteous decrees and write grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy from judgment and to take away the right from the poor of the people. The use of legal forms to accomplish unjust ends, the construction of regulatory and procedural apparatus that systematically advantages the powerful at the expense of the weak, is identified by the prophet as a particular and aggravated form of elite corruption, because it adds the abuse of legitimacy to the underlying injustice.
Jeremiah addresses the prophets and priests who deal falsely, who have healed the hurt of the daughter of His people slightly, saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. The pattern of false reassurance, in which those in positions of religious or intellectual authority issue confident pronouncements that conditions are well or improving when they are in fact deteriorating, is identified by Jeremiah as a particular offense, because the false comfort retards the response that the actual conditions require. Contemporary elites who insist that their populations are thriving when their populations are visibly declining, who pronounce confident verdicts on questions where the underlying evidence is uncertain or contested, who substitute the polished communication of comforting messages for the harder labor of telling the governed what is actually happening, are recognizable in Jeremiah’s denunciation. He continues with the indictment that they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. The capacity for shame, which presupposes the recognition that one has done something one should not have done, is precisely what is absent in contemporary elite conduct, and its absence is identified by the prophet as a particular mark of advanced corruption.
Amos addresses the comfortable elites of Samaria with particular severity. The chapter that begins with woe to them that are at ease in Zion and trust in the mountain of Samaria identifies a class that lies upon beds of ivory, stretches themselves upon their couches, eats the lambs out of the flock and the calves out of the midst of the stall, sings idle songs to the sound of the viol, drinks wine in bowls, and anoints themselves with the chief ointments, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. The indictment is of luxurious self-indulgence accompanied by indifference to the suffering of the people. The conjunction is the precise pattern of contemporary elite life, in which substantial personal consumption coexists with the moralized rhetoric of concern, and the resolution Amos pronounces is that those who lie on beds of ivory will go captive with the first that go captive. The luxury does not exempt the elite from the judgment that falls on the society; it identifies them as among the first to be caught up in it.
Micah develops the indictment in particularly direct terms with respect to the heads of the house of Jacob and princes of the house of Israel, who abhor judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money; yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us? None evil can come upon us. The indictment is of a comprehensive system in which every form of authority has been corrupted by payment, and yet the corrupt continue to claim divine protection on the basis of their formal religious affiliation. The contemporary parallel, in which institutions claim moral authority while operating on principles indistinguishable from those of the interests that fund them, is recognizable in Micah’s denunciation. The verdict the prophet pronounces is that Zion shall for their sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. The institutions in which the corrupt elites took refuge will be destroyed, and the formal religious claims will not protect the system from the judgment its conduct has earned.
5. The Wisdom Literature on Rulers and the Conduct of Authority
The wisdom literature supplements the prophetic indictment with sustained reflection on the principles by which rulers should be evaluated and the consequences of their failure. Proverbs in particular contains an extensive treatment of the matter, scattered through its chapters but consistent in its emphasis. The throne is established by righteousness, not by power or efficiency, and a ruler who removes mercy from the foundation of his rule has removed the principal support that holds it up. The king by judgment establishes the land; but he that receives gifts overthrows it. Where the indictment of the prophets is rendered in oracular form, the wisdom of Proverbs is rendered in epigrammatic form, and the cumulative effect is to specify with considerable precision the conditions under which authority is legitimate and the conditions under which its illegitimacy guarantees the eventual collapse of the system that sustained it.
Several Proverbs passages have particular contemporary application. The verse that observes that when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn, identifies a phenomenon that is empirically verifiable in any society and that explains the contemporary political mood across the developed world. The widespread popular discontent in many countries is not, on this analysis, the product of irrational populism or external manipulation; it is the natural response of populations being ruled by those whose conduct merits the condemnation Proverbs supplies. The verse that observes that as a roaring lion and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the poor people, identifies the predatory rather than protective relationship that the elite-popular relationship has become in many contemporary cases. The verse that observes that the prince that wants understanding is also a great oppressor, but he that hates covetousness shall prolong his days, identifies the linkage between incompetence and oppression that the contemporary elite class repeatedly demonstrates: rulers who cannot perform the substantive functions of rule turn to oppression as the substitute for the performance they cannot achieve.
Ecclesiastes contributes a particular passage on the corruption of judicial and administrative apparatus that bears directly on contemporary conditions. If thou see the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter; for he that is higher than the highest regards; and there be higher than they. The passage is sometimes read as an expression of resignation, but it is more precisely an observation that the hierarchy of human authorities provides no remedy when corruption has captured the system at multiple levels, because each level is observed by the one above it, and the highest authorities are themselves participants in the system whose conduct merits the denunciation. The contemporary problem of regulatory capture, in which each layer of oversight is itself captured by those it is supposed to oversee, is given precise expression in this passage, and the remedy Scripture points to is not the reform of the captured system but the recourse to the One who is higher than the highest of them.
6. The Specific Indictment of False Compassion: Self-Perception of the Elite Class
A particular feature of contemporary elite conduct that merits separate scriptural treatment is the elite class’s perception of itself as compassionate and caring, even as its actual conduct produces the suffering of those it claims to care for. This pattern is treated in Scripture under several different headings, and the cumulative judgment is severe.
The first relevant passage is Proverbs’ observation that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. The verse is sometimes treated as paradoxical, but it is in fact precise: the apparent mercies extended by those whose underlying disposition is corrupt are themselves instruments of cruelty, because they substitute for the genuine mercy the situation requires, mislead the recipient about the disposition of the giver, and protect the corrupt system from the recognition that would otherwise force its reform. Contemporary elite philanthropy, which redistributes a small fraction of the wealth extracted by elite arrangements while leaving those arrangements intact, fits this pattern. Contemporary elite moralism, which speaks tenderly of distant and abstract victims while presiding over the concrete and proximate victimization of the governed, fits it as well. The tenderness expressed is not the contradiction of the cruelty; it is the form the cruelty takes when its perpetrators retain the self-conception of compassionate persons.
The second relevant passage is Christ’s address to the church at Laodicea, which says, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knows not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. The self-perception of the Laodicean church is that it is in excellent condition; the actual condition disclosed by Christ is one of comprehensive failure that the Laodiceans themselves cannot perceive. The discrepancy between self-perception and actual condition is the diagnostic feature of the Laodicean state, and it is precisely the diagnostic feature of contemporary elite consciousness. The members of the elite class do not generally perceive themselves as cruel, incompetent, or self-serving; they perceive themselves as caring, competent, and devoted to the public good, and the persistence of this self-perception in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence is itself a feature requiring scriptural diagnosis. Christ’s counsel to Laodicea is that they buy of Him gold tried in the fire, that they may be rich, and white raiment, that they may be clothed, and anoint their eyes with eyesalve, that they may see. The remedy is not the renunciation of the self-perception in favor of accurate self-knowledge by their own effort, which they are constitutionally incapable of, but the receipt from Christ of the resources that would permit such accurate self-knowledge to be acquired.
The third relevant passage is the Lord’s instruction through Isaiah that the fast He has chosen is not the ostentatious religious observance the people are performing but the loosing of the bands of wickedness, the undoing of heavy burdens, the letting of the oppressed go free, and the breaking of every yoke. The substance of the religious observance the elites of Isaiah’s day are performing is then exposed: they fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. The performance of religious or moral activity does not, in itself, constitute the substance of righteousness; if the underlying conduct contradicts what the religious activity is supposed to express, the religious activity becomes itself an additional offense rather than a mitigation of the conduct. Contemporary elite moral activity, which expresses concern through professional and institutional channels while the underlying conduct produces the conditions of suffering the concern claims to address, falls under the Isaiah indictment. The elites in question are fasting for strife and debate; their public expressions of concern are not the contradiction of their underlying conduct but its accompaniment, and the scriptural judgment on the conjunction is severe.
7. The Pattern of Demanded Deference: Pride, Self-Exaltation, and Their Consequences
A further feature of contemporary elite conduct requiring scriptural treatment is the demand for deference, which is to say the insistence that the elite be granted authority, respect, and benefit of the doubt by those over whom they are placed, even when their conduct has not earned and does not justify such treatment. Scripture treats this pattern under the heading of pride, and the treatment is unambiguous.
Proverbs declares that pride goes before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. The verse is sometimes treated as a moralistic observation, but it is more precisely a description of a causal sequence: pride, by closing the prideful off from the information they require to correct their course, ensures that the destruction that would otherwise be avoidable becomes inevitable. The contemporary elite class’s resistance to recognizing the conditions that have produced popular dissatisfaction, its attribution of that dissatisfaction to mass irrationality or external manipulation rather than to its own conduct, and its determination to continue the conduct that has produced the dissatisfaction while demanding renewed deference, fits the Proverbs pattern. The destruction Proverbs predicts is the destruction of those who cannot be told what they have done, and the contemporary elite arrangement has constructed elaborate institutional defenses against being told.
Isaiah’s treatment of the king of Babylon, sometimes read also as addressing the spiritual reality behind the human king, captures the inner logic of demanded deference with precision. The aspiration is to ascend into heaven, to exalt the throne above the stars of God, to sit upon the mount of the congregation, to ascend above the heights of the clouds, to be like the most High. The pattern is one of self-exaltation that aspires to displace the actual authority by which the would-be exalter was constituted. The contemporary elite pretension to authority over questions of value, meaning, and moral judgment that Scripture reserves to God, exercised through institutions that claim to speak with authority on these matters by virtue of their professional standing, is recognizable in Isaiah’s denunciation. The judgment is that the would-be exalter is brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit, and is observed by those who see him with the question, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms? The contemporary inflated self-conception of expert and professional elites is set up for precisely the deflation Isaiah describes, and the eventual recognition of the gap between the pretension and the actual standing of those exercising it.
Christ addresses the same pattern directly when He observes that the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. The Gentile pattern of authority, in which those exercising it both lord it over their subjects and arrange for themselves to be called benefactors regardless of whether they confer benefit, is identified by Christ as precisely the pattern His disciples are not to follow. The contrast He develops is that the greatest among them is to be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that does serve. The substance of authority in the kingdom Christ establishes is service rather than lordship, and the marker of that service is that it actually serves rather than that it claims to serve while extracting the deference and benefit that lordship would extract. The contemporary elite pattern, which is precisely the Gentile pattern Christ identified, does not become exempt from His denunciation by virtue of operating in formally democratic or representative systems; the substance is the same as the substance Christ rejected, and the rejection extends to it.
8. The Severity of the Judgment Pronounced
The cumulative scriptural indictment of the pattern of conduct under examination is severe, and the severity merits direct statement rather than the softening that contemporary discourse would prefer. Scripture does not treat the conduct of elites who say and do not, who feed themselves rather than the flock, who heal the hurt slightly while pronouncing peace where there is no peace, who lie on beds of ivory while indifferent to the affliction of the people, who demand deference for authority they have not earned, and who perceive themselves as caring while their conduct produces suffering, as an unfortunate political condition requiring sympathetic management. It treats it as a recognizable spiritual condition under judgment, and the judgment pronounced is comprehensive.
The judgments specified across the texts include: the withdrawal of the flock from the shepherds and the cessation of their feeding function, as in Ezekiel 34; the destruction of the institutions in which the corrupt elites took refuge, as in Micah 3; the captivity of the comfortable as among the first to go into captivity, as in Amos 6; the bringing down of the proud to the sides of the pit, as in Isaiah 14; the woe pronounced upon those who say and do not, who shut up the kingdom of heaven against men and neither enter themselves nor allow those who would, who compass sea and land to make one proselyte and make him twofold more the child of hell than themselves, as in Matthew 23; and the stricter judgment that James warns falls on teachers and that Christ specifies for those to whom much has been given. The severity is consistent across the canon, and any contemporary attempt to apply the framework Scripture provides must apply the severity that framework requires, rather than substituting a moderated version that would be more acceptable to those it indicts.
It must also be said that the scriptural judgment is not exhausted by the temporal consequences the prophets describe. The judgment specified in the New Testament is eschatological as well as historical, and the woes pronounced by Christ on the scribes and Pharisees include the explicit warning that they shall receive the greater damnation. The contemporary inclination to treat elite failure as merely a question of political correction within history is inadequate to the scriptural framework, which treats it as a question with consequences extending beyond history into the judgment that follows it. The elite class that has failed in the manner Scripture describes is not merely facing the political consequences of its conduct within history, which may or may not arrive in any individual case; it is facing the eschatological consequences that no political arrangement can defer, and on that point the testimony of Scripture is unified and severe.
9. The Remedy Scripture Prescribes
Scripture does not pronounce judgment without also indicating the remedy by which judgment may be averted, and the framework would be incomplete without attention to it. The remedy is specified in different terms in different texts, but the substance is consistent: it is repentance, by which is meant a real and observable change of conduct, accepted at personal cost, accompanied by restitution where restitution is possible, and sustained over time.
The pattern is established in Old Testament texts that address the conduct of rulers and elites directly. The Lord’s instruction through Isaiah, that the fast He has chosen is the loosing of the bands of wickedness and the undoing of heavy burdens, specifies what repentant elite conduct would actually look like: the surrender of the apparatus by which the powerful are advantaged over the weak, the removal of the heavy burdens the elites have laid on others, the practical liberation of those who have been oppressed by elite arrangements. The instruction through Jeremiah, that the king of Judah should execute judgment and righteousness, deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, specifies the substance of what righteous rule would require. The remedy is not the moderation of unrighteous conduct but its replacement with conduct of the opposite kind.
In the New Testament, the pattern is developed further. John the Baptist, when asked by various groups what they should do, gave answers specific to the conduct of each group. To the tax collectors he said, exact no more than that which is appointed you. To the soldiers he said, do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages. To the multitudes he said, he that has two coats, let him impart to him that has none, and he that has meat, let him do likewise. The remedy specified is not generalized but specific to the conduct that needed changing in each case. Applied to contemporary elites, this would mean specific corrections to the specific patterns of conduct that have produced the credibility failure: the abandonment of self-exemption, the surrender of regulatory capture, the acceptance of personal consequences for institutional failure, the substitution of competence for credentialing, the alignment of expressed concern with demonstrated behavior, and the restoration of mediating institutions through which elites and the governed could be exposed to one another.
Christ’s instruction to Zacchaeus, or rather Zacchaeus’ own declaration of what his repentance would mean, is also instructive: behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. The substance of the repentance includes restitution at a multiple of what was wrongly taken, not merely the cessation of the wrongful taking. The contemporary elite class that has accumulated wealth, status, and power through arrangements that have damaged the populations under its rule would, under the Zacchaeus pattern, owe restitution at a multiple of what those arrangements yielded, not merely an end to the arrangements going forward. This is a severe requirement, and it is unlikely to be undertaken voluntarily, but it is the requirement Scripture establishes, and any lesser response falls short of what the framework would describe as actual repentance.
The remedy, finally, is available to particular individuals more readily than to collective elite classes. Scripture’s pattern is that repentance is undertaken by persons, who then either find others willing to undertake it with them or who, more often, find themselves separated from the unrepentant class to which they previously belonged. The contemporary application is that individual members of elite institutions may undertake the remedy Scripture prescribes, at personal cost to themselves, even when the institutions as a whole do not. Such individuals will not generally restore the credibility of the institutions to which they previously belonged; they will more likely find themselves expelled from those institutions, as has been the historical pattern when persons of conscience have departed from the conduct of the elite classes around them. But the remedy is available to them as persons, and the eschatological judgment Scripture describes attaches to persons in the end, not to institutions, so the individual remedy is the substantial one in any case.
10. The Position of Those Under Elite Conduct
A final matter requires scriptural treatment, which is the position of those who are themselves under the conduct of failed elites. Scripture addresses this position as well, and the instruction it provides differs in important respects from what contemporary political discourse would suggest.
The first instruction is that the governed are not to extend deference to elite conduct that does not deserve it, but they are also not to extend their judgment of elite conduct into rebellion against the structures of authority as such. The distinction is important. Daniel’s response to Nebuchadnezzar, who was a ruler of considerable violence and idolatry, was both to give him honor as a king delegated by God and to refuse the specific commands that contradicted obedience to God. Daniel did not rebel against Nebuchadnezzar’s authority as a structure; he refused particular exercises of it that crossed the line into the demand for actions God forbade. The Hebrew children in the fiery furnace did the same, as did Daniel in the lions’ den, and as did the apostles when commanded by the Sanhedrin to cease preaching in the name of Christ, replying that they ought to obey God rather than men. The pattern is consistent: refusal of unlawful commands, accompanied by acceptance of the consequences of refusal, while continuing to honor the structure of authority as a structure even when its particular occupants are unworthy of it.
The second instruction is that those under failed elite conduct are not to suppose that their own righteousness is established by their dissatisfaction with the elites who have failed them. The contemporary inclination to identify with the populist rejection of corrupt elites carries with it the temptation to suppose that the rejection is itself a sufficient virtue. Scripture does not allow this supposition. The populations that suffered under the corrupt elites the prophets denounced were themselves often complicit in the conditions of corruption, and the prophets typically denounced both the rulers and the people in the same chapters. The contemporary application is that those dissatisfied with the conduct of elites must examine their own conduct as well, applying the same scriptural standard to themselves that they apply to those above them, and not supposing that the failures of elites license relaxation of the standards that would otherwise apply to ordinary persons.
The third instruction is that the substantial hope of those under failed elite conduct is not the conversion of those elites, which is unlikely, nor the political displacement of them, which is uncertain in its results, but the action of the One whose authority all human authority derives from and who reserves to Himself the final correction of the conditions that human authority has produced. This is the consistent testimony of the prophetic literature, which combines unflinching denunciation of present elite conduct with the assurance that God Himself will eventually intervene to correct what the human apparatus has failed to correct. The position of those under failed elite conduct is therefore one of patient endurance combined with practical faithfulness, refusing to extend deference where it has not been earned, refusing the unlawful commands that may be imposed, and waiting for the deliverance that Scripture promises will eventually arrive.
11. Conclusion
The pattern of conduct exhibited by contemporary political, institutional, and cultural elites is not a novel phenomenon requiring novel evaluation. It is a recognizable pattern that Scripture identifies, addresses, and judges in considerable detail across both Testaments. The pattern of those who say and do not, of shepherds who feed themselves rather than the flock, of those who heal the hurt slightly and pronounce peace where there is no peace, of those who lie on beds of ivory while indifferent to the affliction of the people, of those who demand deference while their conduct does not warrant it, and of those who perceive themselves as caring while their conduct produces suffering, is the pattern Scripture denounces with consistency and severity from Moses to the Apocalypse. The contemporary elite class that exhibits this pattern is under the judgment Scripture pronounces on it, and no amount of self-justification, institutional protection, or cooperative media coverage will avert that judgment in the end.
The remedy is available, but it is severe, requiring real and observable change of conduct, accepted at personal cost, accompanied by restitution, and sustained over time. The remedy is more likely to be undertaken by particular persons than by elite classes as a whole, and those persons are likely to find themselves separated from the classes they previously belonged to. The position of those under failed elite conduct is one of refused deference, refused unlawful command, patient endurance, and faithful waiting for the deliverance Scripture promises. The judgment Scripture pronounces on the unrepentant elites extends beyond history into the judgment that follows it, and on that point Scripture’s testimony is unified, severe, and not subject to softening by any contemporary discourse that would prefer to evaluate the matter on lesser terms.
The biblicist conclusion is that the present condition of elite-popular relations in the developed world is, in scriptural terms, a condition of judgment already in progress. The withdrawal of deference by ordinary people is not principally a political phenomenon to be managed but a recognition, partial and imperfect, of the conduct Scripture identifies as deserving the withdrawal. The conditions under which that deference might be restored are the conditions of genuine repentance by the elite class, which on the evidence of present conduct is not in prospect. The eventual resolution will therefore be by other means than elite repentance, whether through political displacement within history or through the eschatological correction that Scripture promises, and the present task of the biblicist observer is to identify the conduct as Scripture identifies it, to refuse the deference Scripture would not extend to it, and to wait in patient faithfulness for the deliverance that Scripture promises will arrive in its time.
