Looking over a news article about plans for a gambling casino to be built next to the historic Gettysburg battlefield site inspired me to write this post.
It seems as though we are experiencing a “second wave” of colonialism in America. The first wave was the government’s annexing Native American land for economic reasons. The courts have now allowed individuals with greater economic power than the average citizen to use “eminent domain” to move people off their property. Again, this second phase of colonialism is happening for economic reasons—supposedly “for the public good.”
But there is a spiritual component to this situation that I would like to touch on. This component has to do with values. What a country or government values most determines the directives (laws) of its land use. If “cash is king” then money becomes the value-principle that guides the law. Values penetrate all the way to the human spirit—the inner qualities of a person’s heart and mind.
In fact, our values determine how eminent domain is enacted within the invisible realm of our psycho-spiritual turf or mindscape.
Most religious people are aware that within the narratives of God’s Holy Word are numerous accounts of Jehovah allowing His “favorites” to participate in land grabs (like the land of Canaan). Few students of Scripture realize that the various turf wars and battles depicted in its pages contain a deeper level of meaning. These wars are symbolic descriptions of two opposing influences (values) battling for the human heart and mind.
The human heart and mind is the only battleground that a God of Love finds meaningful. This is where salvation truly takes place. When one chooses spiritual values (God’s tenets) over egocentric and selfish concerns, heaven begins to colonize our inner reality or spiritual landscape. This creates real inner struggle or spiritual warfare within the individual. Scripture, inwardly interpreted, presents us with the full picture and all the details of this most important struggle of the human spirit.
The Apocalypse in Revelation represents God’s victory and eminent domain with the human heart and mind. When we change the values that rule our personal spiritual property, those same values will also affect our worldly decisions about land usage and priorities on the terrestrial globe. This top-down causality is the deeper meaning behind John’s words in Scripture that he observed a “new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1) and the Lord’s own words that He will make “everything new” (Rev. 21:5).
God’s hope for the world is that we will all turn down the “gambling casino” (Tower of Babel) that some worldly influences are trying to get established and built within our hearts and minds.
TheGodGuy 
Excellent post. The challenge is that more colonialism in the form of eminent domain is on its way through many back doors. In addition to economic development takings using the “blight” approach (think the Kelo supreme court case), we are in the midst of natural resource development takings in pursuit of shale gas (as in Barnett shale, Marcellus shale, and more).
The pursuit of these gas-rich shales brings with it more pipelines and more underground gas storage fields — and that (pipelines & storage fields) always means eminent domain. And in some states, like Pennsylvania, the gas industry and some legislators are talking up “forced pooling” which will permit gas companies to seize gas under your property, even if you refuse to sign a lease.
Unfortunately, the otherwise excellent Institute for Justice of Kelo fame declines to intervene in energy/utility takings because, they told me, of the “public good” premise. Instead, the Institute should reconsider and offer support in this expanding “market” for eminent domain abuse.
But property owners can fight back. God helps those who help themselves. Our two-year battle against Houston-based Spectra Energy which seized our property rights for an underground gas storage field led to the development of a website. If you want to learn from our experience and understand this type of eminent domain, refer to this post: Spectra Energy
Or here: http://www.spectraenergywatch.com/blog/?p=616
Private property rights are so fundamental that founding fathers such as Samuel Adams described it as an “essential” right and wrote, “that no man can justly take the property of another without his consent.”
Dear MikeB,
Thanks for contributing to this discussion and offering my readers a place to go to who want to pursue this important area of concern. My main point is that this problem of “taking what is not ours” has its source in hell – where evil influences are attempting a land grab within the spiritual landscape of our hearts and minds. Fighting back will take both the court’s and God’s help!
Spiritually yours,
TheGodGuy