The Myth of the Righteous Majority

So over the years, I have noticed the phrase "the will of the people" is often treated as a sort of "secular sacred," like a final, unassailable authority that grants moral legitimacy. The shorthand form of this is to appeal to "democracy."

The ignorance baffles me. How can one not see the flaw in this thinking with the current spiritual and moral state of our country?

In the pre-flood world, it was "the will of the people" that marriage could be redefined from the one-man, one-woman model to include more than one wife (Genesis 4:23; 6:1). God saw that "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11). Violence became the norm because it was an expression of "the will of the people." God destroyed that world.

In Sodom, the "will of the people" thought it was acceptable to engage in homosexual gang rape, for the text says that "the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded [Lot's] house" (Genesis 19:4–5) demanding that Lot turn over his guests so they could rape them. God destroyed that city.

God gave King Saul very specific instructions not to take any spoils of war when fighting the Amalekites, but Saul caved to "the will of the people" prevailed. "They spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen" (1 Samuel 15:15). God removed Saul as King for ruling by "the will of the people" rather than God's standard.

And who can forget "the will of the people" when Pilate put forward two men who could not be any more opposite each other? One was a murderer, whereas the other was a life-giver. One hurt humanity while the other healed humanity, but the "will of the people" prevailed, and they called for the release of Barabbas (Matthew 27:22) and shouted for Jesus to be crucified.

Democracy may be a way of restraining the power of a single tyrant, but what protection do we have against the tyranny of the many when the many have no moral compass?

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Genesis 6:5, ESV)