Why Are Families… Churches… And Civil Governments In The Process of Breaking Apart?

The Social Contract… Why It Always Ends in Chaos And Then Tyranny

Most people hear the phrase “social contract” and picture something clean and reasonable… neighbors shaking hands, grown adults agreeing to play fair, a society built on mutual respect. It sounds harmless. Sensible, even.

But that’s only because nobody tells you what had to be removed first to make that story work. Long before men started congratulating themselves for inventing “consent,” they quietly shoved God out of the room.

Once that happens, law stops being something revealed by scripture and starts being something declared by men. Right and wrong don’t come down from above anymore… they get voted up from the self-seeking “below.” And when autonomous men start writing laws for themselves, those laws always end up serving whoever has the most power, the most money, the loudest voice, or the biggest stick.

This Is the Part of the Story Where Blood Shows Up

That’s when history takes its familiar turn. Promises of freedom multiply. Authority centralizes. Dissent becomes dangerous. And sooner or later… no matter the slogans, flags, or lofty intentions… the masses do some heavy bleeding. Because when men refuse covenant and crown themselves sovereign, law no longer restrains violence. It organizes it. You see…

Once upon a time… long before ballots, bureaucracies, and political theory… people understood something modern man has almost entirely forgotten: life itself was covenantal. A covenant wasn’t a casual agreement or a fragile handshake between equals. It wasn’t a deal that could be revised whenever public opinion shifted. A covenant was a sacred bond, sworn before God, binding ruler and ruled alike under a higher authority. It gave society its spine.

Then, slowly and deceptively, that foundation was replaced by a counterfeit… Rousseau’s social contract. And ever since, societies have been trying to build lasting order while pretending no one can tell anyone else what to do.

Covenant Is Not a Contract—And Never Was

To understand how deep the break really is, we have to be clear about terms. Our covenant with God is not an agreement between equals, and it is not a negotiation. It is a treaty issued by a sovereign to those under his authority. When God established His covenant with man, He did not ask for suggestions, request 51% of the participants, or invite debate. He declared His law and bound Himself to His promises by grace.

That’s the remarkable thing about covenant: law and mercy are fused together. God sets the terms, and then He supplies what man lacks to live within them. Authority flows downward, but grace flows alongside it.

The social contract begins with the opposite assumption. It teaches that men are born free, sovereign, and self-ruling. Society, in this view, is not something God establishes but something men invent. Law in Social Contract theory does not descend from heaven; it bubbles up from the lowest form of human agreement. Each man starts out as his own authority.

In plain terms, in the social contract, every man begins as his own god. (Think Judges 21:25)

That idea did not come from Scripture. It came from wholesale rebellion.

The Garden Lie, Rebranded for Philosophers

The social contract’s origin story usually starts in what Enlightenment thinkers called the “state of nature.” According to this myth, early humans lived alone… free, peaceful, and morally neutral. There were no families, no churches, no commandments, and no authority. Just individuals, unburdened and self-directed.

It sounds noble. It sounds romantic.
It should also sound familiar.

It is the same lie whispered in Eden: You do not need God to tell you what is good. You can decide that for yourself.

The serpent promised autonomy. The philosophers supplied footnotes.

In this worldview, evil does not rise from the human heart but from institutions… tradition, authority, and especially religion. God’s law is recast as oppression. Freedom is redefined as freedom from restraint.

But reality has a way of intruding on philosophy.

When “Freedom” Becomes Dangerous

Eventually, even social-contract thinkers had to admit the obvious. Human beings left entirely to themselves do not produce a whole lot of peace. They produce violence. So the story adjusts. Men, realizing that total independence is dangerous, agree to surrender a portion of their liberty in exchange for security and order. They form governments… not under God, but under mutual self-interest.

This is the turning point.

God’s covenant is quietly replaced by man’s social contract.

Authority no longer comes from above but from the collective. Law no longer restrains desire; it manages it. Justice ceases to be fixed and becomes negotiable. Once that shift occurs, everything else follows naturally.

The Noble Savage Fantasy

From this worldview grew one of the most destructive myths of the modern age: the noble savage. According to this idea, primitive man… untouched by Christian influence… was morally pure. Sin did not originate in the human heart but entered through civilization. The closer a culture was to paganism, the more “authentic” and virtuous it was assumed to be.

This myth still shapes modern thinking. Brutal customs are excused as cultural expression. Moral judgment is dismissed as colonial arrogance. Missionaries, once seen as bearers of hope, are recast as villains for daring to introduce God’s law to those deemed “untainted.”

What passes for compassion here is actually contempt… for God, for truth, and ultimately for the people being “protected” from it.

When Man Writes the Law

The social contract reshaped politics just as thoroughly as it reshaped anthropology. Once, rulers believed they governed under God. Even when they ruled poorly, the principle remained: authority was delegated, not self-created. Kings could be judged because they were accountable to a law above themselves.

Under the social contract, sovereignty moves. First it shifts from God to kings. Then from kings to “the people.” Finally, God is removed entirely. Law becomes whatever some collective declares. Justice becomes whatever the majority… or the most powerful faction can enforce.

Every modern ideology wears a different uniform, but the logic never changes. One group claims to embody “the people.” Another is declared dangerous or illegitimate. Power is justified in the name of liberation.

Liberty always vanishes shortly after.

Covenant Law: Authority With a Ceiling

Biblical covenant works the opposite way. When God established His covenant with Israel, He bound everyone… shepherds, captains, and kings alike… under the same law. Even rulers were restrained. A king was commanded to write out God’s law by hand and read it daily, so his heart would not rise above his brothers.

Authority was real, but it was limited.

That is the genius of covenantal government. Power is checked by obedience. Authority is restrained by righteousness. Leadership is measured by faithfulness, not force. Where covenant ruled, tyranny had a ceiling. This is why the Scots under Wallace and Bruce carried banners that read “Appeal To Heaven” when they clashed with Longshanks and the English.

How Christendom Remembered—Then Forgot

For centuries, Christian civilization remembered this, even when it failed to live up to it. Kings swore oaths before God. Public office was entered with fear, not pride. Law was understood as something discovered, not invented.

But slowly, those oaths became rituals without belief. Revolutions mocked covenant. Constitutions replaced commandments. God’s law was dismissed as outdated and unnecessary.

Today, leaders still swear oaths… but to documents severed from their moral roots. Authority floats free of accountability. Power answers only to itself.

And Scripture’s warning becomes visible in real time.

The Anarchy Beneath the Order

When covenant disappears, chaos does not arrive all at once. It arrives dressed as freedom. Boundaries blur. Authority hesitates. Compassion replaces justice. Eventually, lawlessness spreads… from cities to countryside, from institutions to homes.

Everyone demands justice.
No one agrees on what justice is.

People reject authority while begging for order. And that contradiction guarantees the next step: centralized power stepping in to do what families, churches, and communities were once allowed to do.

When God is removed, the state fills the vacuum.

“Compelled to Be Free”

The social contract’s final form is not liberty but coercion. Its architects admitted this openly. If the state embodies the “general will,” then resisting it is irrational. Those who dissent must be corrected… for their own good.

Freedom, they argued, can be forced.

That is not liberty.
It’s simply bondage with better branding.

Liberty Has a Lord

So look, true freedom does not come from autonomy. It comes from having the right authority. Biblical liberty is not the absence of restraint but the presence of righteous rule. It is freedom under God, not freedom from Him.

Remove covenant, and freedom collapses into chaos. Remove God, and justice mutates into tyranny. This is the pattern history repeats because mankind refuses to learn it.

The Choice Every Society Must Make

Every civilization, whether it admits it or not, must choose its foundation. Will it live under covenant… where God defines justice and limits power? Or under contract… where man crowns himself sovereign and rewrites the rules as he goes?

One foundation humbles rulers.
The other intoxicates them.

One sustains liberty.
The other promises it… and then destroys it.

Because when men make themselves gods, they always discover, sooner or later, that they are very poor deities indeed.

Source: https://www.offthegridnews.com/religion/why-are-families-churches-and-civil-governments-in-the-process-of-breaking-apart/