The town hall in Limoges stood for more than 140 years. It came through two world wars (Reuters). On October 17, it burned in a single evening.
Masked protesters set it alight as more than 550,000 people marched across France over the cost of living and the government’s proposed budget. By nightfall, police had made 1,200 arrests (Al Jazeera). Many of those families are hurting, and their anger is real. They still burned a building their great-grandparents raised.
Ask the marchers what went wrong, and you will hear different answers. Unions blame austerity. Others blame fuel and energy prices. Now notice where every complaint was sent. Lower my fuel costs. Unfreeze my benefits. Unfreeze my salary (Bernama). Whatever their politics, the marchers took their grievances to the same address. Among developed nations, only Denmark collects more in taxes as a share of its economy (OECD), and for decades the French have traded more and more of their income for the state’s care. They made the state their provider. When the provider came up short, they set fire to its house.
France is only the latest example. The pattern runs from North and South America to Asia, and it is as old as Eden. We build. We give what we build power over us. Then we tear it down. That is the bent of Adam, and it runs through every human heart, including yours and mine.
We Build
We bear the image of a God who builds. He planted a garden and placed the first man in it “to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15, ESV). So we build families, companies, markets, cities, and governments. That is good and holy work.
Then came Genesis 3, and “the creation was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20). The Greek word mataiotēs describes a thing that can no longer reach the end it was made for. The structure still stands. It has been bent, and so have the builders.
We Bow
Fallen builders do something strange with their work. They bow to it. Isaiah describes a man who cuts down a tree, burns half of it to bake his bread, and carves the rest into a god. “He falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’” (Isaiah 44:17).
Israel did it with a throne. The people demanded a king “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). God had Samuel warn them what that king would cost: “He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards,” and “you shall be his slaves” (1 Samuel 8:15, 17). Then came the sentence that should haunt every nation that makes the state its savior: “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves” (1 Samuel 8:18).
Samuel warned about a tenth. France takes more than four times that, and its people are crying out.
I spent twenty-four years as a Secret Service agent inside the most powerful government in human history, and I protected seven presidents. I would serve that country again tomorrow. I can also tell you what no government can do. It cannot love you. It cannot redeem you. It cannot carry the weight of your worship. Nothing we build can.
We Burn
Every god we build eventually fails, because it was never God. When it fails, its worshipers turn on it. Look again at Isaiah’s woodcarver. The same tree fed his fire and became his god. The builder and the burner live in the same heart.
It started in the garden. The serpent’s first move was to recast God’s boundary as oppression: “Did God actually say” (Genesis 3:1)? Adam reached for what God had withheld, and his children have been reaching ever since. The fallen heart hears every limit as a chain. The nations still cry out against the Lord and His Anointed, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3).
Then disappointment lights the match. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). The rage in France’s streets is the rage of disappointed worshipers who asked the state to give what only God can give.
The Call to Christians
Christians are not immune. The same bent runs through the church, the boardroom, and the voting booth. So how do we live in a world that builds, bows, and burns?
Build. God told the exiles to “seek the welfare of the city” (Jeremiah 29:7), and Babylon was pagan to its foundations. Your company, your team, your church, and your city are small orders entrusted to you. Nehemiah’s workers rebuilt Jerusalem’s walls with a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other (Nehemiah 4:17). Build well, and guard what you build.
Refuse to bow. Love your country, serve your company, and vote your conscience. Give none of them the trust that belongs to God alone. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). The moment you ask a human institution to save you, you have written the script for your own riot.
Put down the hammer. Before you join any movement to tear something down, ask two questions: Who ordained this structure, and what will rise in its place? “The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down” (Proverbs 14:1). Some things should come down. More often, the idol that needs to fall is standing in your own heart.
Pair grace with wisdom. Jesus sent His disciples out “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). You will extend more grace because you understand why people are the way they are. You will walk in more wisdom because you are no longer surprised when the world acts like the world.
A City With Foundations
I spent a career guarding the most powerful structures men have ever built. Every one of them will come down. Abraham lived in tents because “he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). Only one Builder deserves our worship, and His city will never burn.
Until it comes, build what you have been given. Bow to Him alone. And walk through this disordered world with open eyes and an open hand.
Christopher Simpson is President and CEO of CBMC International, a global evangelical marketplace ministry serving business and professional leaders in more than ninety nations. A former U.S. Marine Corps officer and retired Senior Special Agent of the U.S. Secret Service, he publishes the Higher Ground leadership newsletter. Learn more at cbmcint.com.
