American mistrust of government continues, prompting many voters to the desperate choice of voting for whichever party or candidate is out of power, in hopes of stumbling over change for the better. In the 2025 off-year elections, this mistrust led voters in cities like New York and Seattle to elect openly socialist candidates — a strange irony, as these candidates propose to solve voters’ problems with even more government intervention.

In America’s perplexing political situation, Christians should seek biblical wisdom. What does the Bible have to say about how government should operate?

Some readers may doubt whether the Bible says much at all. The Old and New Testaments were written in an age dominated by agrarian kingdoms and empires, which were drastically different contexts from today’s industrialized democracies. Apart from a handful of clear moral issues, such as abortion, marriage, and gender, they might say, it’s difficult to see how biblical teaching can bring much force to bear on our contemporary political debates.

Yet difficult does not mean impossible, and this is one topic where the Bible rewards close study with veins of golden wisdom.

Political Freedom

For starters, take the topic that dominates government across the Bible: the rule of kings.

When the people of Israel first demanded a king, both the Lord and his prophet disapproved. God identified the spiritual reason why this decision was wrong, “they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). But then he armed Samuel with practical reasons to dissuade the people. “He will take … he will take … he will take” — seven times Samuel told the people what their king would take from him, before concluding, “and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (1 Samuel 8:10-18).

The primary application of this warning is that Israel needs a king who will not oppress them, one who is as good and just as God himself, one after God’s own heart. Within the narrative of Samuel, this conclusion points forward to King David, but David falls short. Ultimately, this points beyond David to David’s greater Son, Jesus Christ, who is as good and just as God because he himself is God.

This warning has secondary applications as well. If kings that imitate God’s goodness and justice are vanishingly scarce … well, the standard oppression of human monarchs doesn’t seem very appealing at all. Perhaps it would be better to limit the monarch’s power so that his power to oppress would be limited. Perhaps it would help to make the ruler accountable to his subject through periodic elections. Perhaps it would even be better to distribute the powers of government among various, separate branches, which would balance and counteract one another. Thus, in 1050 B.C., Scripture was planting seeds to sprout the tree of free and limited government.

Economic Freedom

The book of Kings offers another portrait of government that has very little to do with kings as such. In 1 Kings 4, the inspired author presents an idealized picture of Israel’s happiness during the reign of Solomon, in which the king himself barely features. “And Judah and Israel lived in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of Solomon” (1 Kings 4:25).

The most interesting phrase here is “every man under his vine and under his fig tree,” an idealized picture of domestic happiness that gets repeated by later prophets. This phrase implies widespread property ownership, opportunity to work (recall the agrarian context), and time for leisure. Everyone had both the prosperity and freedom needed to direct his labor as he saw fit and take his leisure as he saw fit. These conditions were created by a Solomonic administration that provided safety from foreign foes but left people to live their own lives.

Of course, Solomon’s golden age was not perfect. The author of Kings had already hinted at the existence of “forced labor” in his realm (1 Kings 4:6), and Solomon’s later unfaithfulness led to oppression (1 Kings 12:4) and deteriorating conditions (1 Kings 11). Still, the biblical author saw fit to draw from his reign a brief snapshot of what government should aim to do: protect people as they live their own lives.

Solomon himself offers a similar reflection in Ecclesiastes. “If you see in a province the oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter,” says the preacher, “for the high official is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them” (Ecclesiastes 5:8). Sadly, injustice and oppression are no surprise under a government staffed by flawed humans who are only looking out for themselves.

However, the preacher pairs this observation with another: “But this is gain for a land in every way: a king committed to cultivated fields” (Ecclesiastes 5:9). In an agrarian society, cultivated fields is roughly synonymous with economic productivity (and too much oppression can stifle an economy, as the late Roman empire learned the hard way). Amid a government’s inevitable missteps, what keeps it aimed at the good of the whole society is creating conditions where ordinary people can still do productive work.

Religious Freedom

A New Testament cross reference raises a related topic. In 1 Timothy 2:2, Paul urges prayer “for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” How does prayer for one’s rulers result in “a peaceful and quiet life”? In the context of relations between the ruler and the ruled, individuals live a peaceful and quiet life when governing officials govern well, creating order and stability but otherwise leaving them alone.

This non-intervention could apply to economic freedom, but the concern atop Paul’s mind in this verse is more likely religious freedom, since the whole epistle is concerned with well-ordered church. This likelihood is bolstered by the verses that follow, in which Paul relates this peaceful and quiet life to God’s desire for “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Unmolested economic activity on its own does not advance the gospel, but unmolested church activity — including evangelism — does.

Paul’s prayer for government officials to refrain from intervening in church affairs is just one of many New Testament passages pressing for religious freedom — or, to put it more universally, freedom of conscience. While Christians are called to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1), they owe an even deeper allegiance to God, “for we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10). Human governments exercise delegated authority over what people do, but they are not authorized — and are in fact incompetent — to regulate or dictate a person’s thoughts, beliefs, and the words that flow from these. Thus, when rulers ordered early Christians to abandon core commands of Jesus, they responded, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

This last theme illustrates how a biblical view of government promotes broad-based freedom, but not lawless libertinism. According to the Bible, human government works best when it leaves people free to pursue the lives God created them to live. But this view of freedom should not deter government from restraining dangerous, destructive, or exploitative vices, such as pornography, gambling, hallucinogenic drugs, or even illegal street racing.

Many of the failures in American government are caused by the government deviating from these biblical principles. In various times and ways, America’s governing officials have strayed into an overly rosy view of what government can accomplish, godless views of freedom, and even old-fashioned oppression. The solution lies not in an extra helping of government intervention, as the socialists offer, nor in merely doubling down the current vices and errors. Instead, the solution lies in recapturing a biblically informed view of what real freedom looks like: one that spans across the political, economic, and religious spheres.