Tytler Cycle Corollary

When Tytler posed his thoughts concerning how human beings behave as cultures, he was looking at it from a mostly secularist perspective. I believe there is a parallel religious perspective that might be productive to consider, particularly from a Judeo-Christian perspective.

Bondage is the starting point used by Tytler. Every society and culture started in bondage to some other culture, society, or monarch. In some cases, as documented in the Bible, the Jews were in and out of bondage repeatedly throughout biblical times. Remembering that Christianity grew out of Judaism. So, the Jews’ bondage is an integral part of Christian history as well.

Over time, those in bondage turned to Spiritual Faith as a device to help tolerate their suffering while in bondage to whomever were their current masters. As discomfort and dissatisfaction with bondage grew, faith grew into even greater faith.

Once discomfort and dissatisfaction grew to intolerable levels, great faith turned into Great Courage. When courage grew strong enough for those in bondage (looking for help from God), they broke free from the bondage of their masters. In the case of the United States, the escape from bondage was from the monarchies and religious persecution of Western Europe.

Once relocated to North America where there was a degree of freedom from religious persecution, a new version of bondage was established and inflicted on the North American subjects of the British Crown. This new version of bondage was found unacceptable and great courage was exploited again to establish greater Liberty, with the blessings of God.

God did, in fact, bless this North American venture. In 175 years the once collection of 13 independent colonies with the vision of 56 men became the most Abundant, most giving nation to have ever existed in human history.

However, as had happened many times in human history, the abundance was too much for people to handle and the easy life spoiled people. People forgot the lessons about bondage their forefathers had experienced and the spiritual faith that gave them the courage to seek liberty. They forgot that God’s guidance was necessary to achieve the abundance they had, and they then became Selfish. 

The worship of God waned, and people thought that they could do anything they wanted that didn’t harm anyone else. But being so self-focused, they didn’t understand how their actions might hurt others.

The tunnel vision of selfishness gradually morphed into Complacency and further deterioration of spiritual faith. What was going on in the world didn’t directly impact the individual, so these people assumed the world was working just fine.

This complacency worked for a period of time, but when people started to see their “don’t worry, be happy” world might be other than what they thought, Apathy set in because they were so ignorant about reality. Then, of course, things were “good enough,” after all the government is going to take care of me. For many people, God has been abandoned in favor of man, meaning the government.

The government is going to take care of me. That is Dependence and dependence works quite well until it doesn’t. It doesn’t work when the government has more people dependent on it than are available to fund the free stuff people have become dependent on.

Once the government runs out of money, a return to Bondage is inevitable. The generations that fall back into bondage will never experience liberty again. How many generations will suffer bondage before a generation will come again to experience spiritual faith and courage to break away from bondage again?

"My most cherished possession I wish I could leave you is my faith in Jesus Christ, for with Him and nothing else you can be happy, but without Him and with all else you'll never be happy." ~ Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry got it right. The most unhappy people in America are the godless Democrats and the “Christians” who have abandoned the strict biblical standards defined in the Christian bible. Those without Christ and with everything else can never be happy.

Know God and know Liberty. No God and know bondage.