Bureaucracy is institutionalized thanklessness. In bureaucratic communities (like ours), you can work with countless institutions and never have anybody to whom you can send a thank you card. If you qualify for the permit, then the faceless bureaucracy must grant you your rights. Check the boxes get the signatures, and you qualify. And if you can do it all over the internet, you don’t even have to talk to anyone. Bureaucracy is impersonalized, thankless, semi-meritorious mediocrity. We think that if we can check all of the boxes then we deserve what we are getting. It is our human right. But why should I thank anyone for my education, I meet all the criteria; I qualify. Why should I thank anyone for this government grant, I qualify, I deserve it. There is no one expecting a thank you card in a b bureaucratic institution, because there is no to thank.
Often times our solution can be worse than the disease. We don’t want to just get all sentimental about feudalism, or the ante-bellum south or the American war for independence. But in particular, we don’t want to just start complaining about those bureaucrats over there in the house and senate. The answer is to repent of our thankless view of God being some big bureaucrat in the sky. God does not think of us as just a number that needs to get the boxes checked. We need to stop thanking that we just need to get the boxes all checked and everything will fall into place. I have checked all the boxes, it is now my right to have believing kids. I have done what I am supposed to, it is now my right to live long and prosperous without any severe hardship. I have a Christian worldview (I took the CWVAT Christian Worldview Analysis Test), I’m postmillennial, I am classically educating my kids, I am home schooling, I am covenantal, I am reformed, I drink and smoke and don’t work on Sundays. We will use almost anything to set ourselves apart.But God is not a bureaucrat. God is not waiting to check the boxes. God gives promises. God says raise your kids to fear me and I will give you believing kids, and we say, there’s the box, got to get it checked. But God says, “believe me, trust me, quit trying to accomplish what I have told you that I will do.” Quit trying to do what God has already accomplished when Jesus Christ died on the cross for you and your children. Just say thank you. Say thank you. God is not a bureaucrat. God is a personal king who is gracious, who is full of grace, and gives wonderful gifts. He gives believing children, he gives unexpected money, he gives unexpected bills, he gives jobs, he gives cars, and car wrecks, he gives arthritis. He gives unbelieving politicians and He gives persecution and times of peace and we say thank you. We say thank you for it all because God is not a beaurocat. We do not get what we deserve, we get what is good for us, and we get what is right for us, so we need to quit whining.
