So I'm still in Exodus, trying to read 20 chapters a day or so, give or take, until I catch up with a Bible-in-a-year plan that I started late on.
Today was Exodus 13-32. And at a glance, liberty is not the first thing that comes to mind. They did, indeed, achieve liberty from Pharaoh. However, as soon as they were free from his yolk, all kinds of rules and regulations were placed upon them. Many, many rules and regulations. The first 10 were the most famous, of course. But the they got into all these other things like how to handle if someone steals your slave or harms your livestock. At a glance, it hardly seems like liberty.
But liberty does not mean the right to do whatever you want. Rather, it means that you are free to live as you see fit, provided you do not harm to others. Jesus pointed out that the Law could be summed up in two commands. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. To do one is to do the other. And all of these laws in this passage deal with these two commands -- follow and trust in God's directions, and don't wrong your neighbor (or, if you do, here is the consequence).
Also, the liberty on which our country was founded was based on the idea that every man should be free to serve his God, without government interfering and regulating it. This is an important differentiation, which becomes more clear later under Saul. God tried to talk the Israelites out of wanting a king. He said that following their God is enough without having a single human leader. They persisted, and He allowed it. But He made it clear that His preference was for a lack of human government.
Libertarianism, or at least my particular brand of it, does not mean an anarchical free-for-all. Rather, it means that each man is free to determine his own route, his own standards, etc., and to serve his own God. Some may choose to serve themselves, making themselves their own gods. They will receive appropriate consequences for their actions at the appropriate time -- it is not my place to condemn them, but only to try to teach. Others will choose to serve false gods, and they will have the same result.
But God gave us free will. He did not create robots to simply be yes-men. I don't claim to know the mind of God inside out, but I can only think that He did this so we could choose to follow Him. Our culture does not favor arranged marriages. We believe that choosing who to love is more valid than having it chosen for you. It seems that the same is true in an eternal and heavenly realm.
As such, each of us has the choice of whether to follow God's calling. In a society of liberty, we should continue to have that choice.
The first command of God that Jesus stated was this.
Then there's the second -- love your neighbor as yourself. No amount of legislation can force a person to do this. However, I believe this is the only place that government can serve a legitimate role. It can protect one person from wrongdoing by another, which is what these initial laws in the first part to the middle of Exodus do.
One more thing. I haven't a lot of John Locke's writings. I have some in my Google Books reader, but haven't gotten there yet. But I do know that he takes great care in defining property as simply being that which a man possesses as a result of his own labor. It can be money, land, other items. If he did work and earned a reward, that reward is his property. If he trades that property for something else of value to himself, then that which he traded for becomes his property in lieu of his original holdings.
Based on that definition, the stuff in Exodus is about protection of body and of property. A very libertarian idea -- and the primary difference between the basic worldview of the pure anarcho-capitalist and the libertarian, at least according to my understanding.
