Why I "Think" About Societies as a Christian: The Mind, Governance, and the Limits of Human Solutions

Loving God with my mind means wrestling with the messiness of society—without falling into the trap of utopianism.

As an evangelical Christian, I am commanded by God to love Him with my mind. Jesus makes this unmistakably clear in Matthew 22:37: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Loving God with my mind is not an option for the Christian and this compels me to engage thoughtfully with the world around me, including the difficult questions surrounding how human societies are structured.

To ignore this command or hand it off to someone on a stage with a PowerPoint clicker is to sin, deliberately.

Think about societies includes topics like governance, social order, and the differences between homogeneous and heterogeneous societies. These are not merely political questions. They are questions about human nature, justice, peace, and even discipleship. And if I claim to follow Christ, I must not outsource these issues to secular ideologies or simplistic slogans. I must reason from Scripture.

Romans 13 makes it clear that God values order. He may work through governments, but He is not endorsing every government. The real thrust of the passage is that God expects governance. That is, He expects ordered relationships among people and societies, not necessarily “government” as we moderns conceive it, with bureaucracies and state monopolies on violence, but governance: systems of accountability, justice, and stability.

As a Christian, I must aggregate the biblical witness into some coherent and cogent position on society. But - and this is vital - this aggregation must begin with a clear-eyed understanding of humankind’s fallen condition. Any theory or proposal for organizing society that does not take seriously the radical brokenness of man is, at best, naïve. At worst, it is spiritually dangerous.

We are not evolving toward perfection. We are not on the verge of utopia. We are not going to “save the world” through better policies or smarter systems. That is the lie of modernity, the same lie whispered to Eve in the garden: You can be like God.

No, the restoration of the world will require an external force. It will require the return of Jesus Christ. Only He can do what man cannot. To pretend otherwise is the height of arrogance. It is a form of hubris that has destroyed empires, corrupted churches, and filled cemeteries. Every time man imagines he can perfect society, he builds another Babel.

Think of AI today - another Tower of Babel, only a much more dangerous one this time!

So when I raise questions about the strengths and weaknesses of heterogeneous societies versus homogeneous ones, I do so as a Christian. That means I do so within the constraints of realism, not idealism. The goal is not perfection, but betterment; provisional order in a fallen world, not ultimate redemption.

Now, to be clear, by “homogeneous” societies I do not necessarily mean ethnically homogeneous. Though ethnic homogeneity can be a component of social stability, that is not the Christian starting point. As a follower of Jesus, my interest lies in cultural homogeneity; shared values, shared assumptions, shared moral frameworks. Without a shared culture, there can be no true governance, only power struggles, forced toleration, or eventual fragmentation.

A culturally homogeneous society, even if ethnically diverse, can achieve relative peace because its people share core moral commitments. A culturally heterogeneous society, by contrast, will eventually pull itself apart unless it is bound together by either 1) overwhelming coercion or 2) true conversion. And true conversion is rare. It cannot be manufactured by legislation, nor engineered by bureaucrats nor is there a legitimate “conversion by the sword.”

In short, if a society is made up of people who fundamentally disagree about what is good, true, and beautiful—then that society is not long for this world unless it is ruled by force. And America is at this pivot point, right now. Will we move towards a culturally homogeneous society? Maybe, but not in its current configuration. What is more likely is a growing use of force and as long as Christians are deluded by the idea that a heterogenous society can be “forced” together, well, that is what Christians will get; more force against them. And as long as “their” guy is in power, they will like the use of force. But what happens when a Neo-Marxist like Harris, or Newsom, or Buttigieg gets control??

This is why governance matters. It is also why culture matters even more. Without agreement on the basics; what is a man? what is a woman? what is a family? what is justice? - no amount of civic language or procedural fairness will preserve unity.

As Christians, we must stop thinking like secularists and start thinking like redeemed image-bearers. Our politics must be grounded in theology. Our theories of order must begin with the Cross. And our expectations must be bounded by the knowledge that this world is not yet the Kingdom.

We can make things better, but only Jesus can make them perfect. Don’t delude yourself thinking you can do what only He can.

But DO THINK!