Dear Rep. Huizenga,

In light of the actions of the Trump Administration, the response (and often non-response of Congress to those actions) I find myself reflecting a lot on Dooyeweerd and Kuyper’s view of government. Since you are part of the Calvinist and Neo-Calvinist community, I want to share those reflections with you. I hope it will move you to greater clarity in your work of representing out district in this fraught time.

To begin, Abraham Kuyper’s context in the late 19th and 20 century in the Netherlands was distinct from ours, including a multi-party, prime minister led government. He also was a proponent of smaller government. However, the reality is that he was working from within that government, following its norms, rules and laws. His focus was on creating a nation that was a place of justice and whose government sought to establish norms of justice for all. 

In contrast to this, the present administration is ignoring both laws and norms with the appointment (it remains unclear Musk’s actual position in the government, but he did spend a lot of time addressing the cabinet) of Elon Musk. Musk’s actions show an administration that is not focused on creating a nation of justice, but instead seems focused only on the throughly ambiguous idea of efficiency. 

• This efficiency puts Musk on the CPAC stage with a chainsaw while my daughter’s friend who served in national parks for 50 summers is told they are no longer needed.
• This efficiency means the demeaning of federal workers who have served the nation well and are now being abused by Musk and other cabinet heads. This is an attack on the imagio dei ("image of God") in them, the shame of this attitude of the Trump administration and representatives such as Lauren Bobart should cause all Christ followers in Congress to cry out in lament.
• This efficiency means the dismantling of USAID with the result of thousands of children being born with AIDS, hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation, hundreds of thousands more people at risk of death from AIDs, the closure of hospitals and clinics, the closure of critical safe places for refugees and so much more.
• This efficiency means the destruction of institutional structures (that are not simple to rebuild) that serve critical needs from IRS local help offices to Social Security offices, to National parks to Veterans Affairs to ...

All of this is horrifying. More people will die during the 90-day freeze of USAID than in the Rwandan genocide that lasted 100 days (500,000 deaths) — but Congress does nothing and acts as if the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is a reasonable cost to pay for efficiency — as long as we can’t see them because they are hidden away in other countries and we don’t hear their cries. I am reminded of the words of Scrooge:

"I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

The work of efficiency seems to be the work of decreasing what this administration considers to be the surplus population.

Adding to this is the recent Republican vote for the budget resolution that outlines the way forward to fund the Trump Administration’s agenda. The sheer lack of concern for the least and the last is mind-boggling. To fund the $4.5 trillion tax cuts means deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

In a recent letter to me, you noted your commitment to those programs, however, that is simply not telling the truth. Perhaps in the past you had a commitment, but with your vote to support the budget resolution, that commitment is dead.

Republican leadership is trying to deny this reality, but the true reality is that part of the U.S. budget that is being used to cover $1 trillion to support the tax cuts can only reach that goal by cutting Medicare and SNAP. The budget has no other line items large enough to cover the tax cuts for the richest people in our nation.

Again, the work of efficiency seems to be the work of decreasing what this administration and apparently 217 of 218 Republicans consider to be surplus population both here and abroad.

And, we might add, the surplus population in the Ukraine as the Trump Administration’s eye-popping vote in the U.N. reveals and the mafia like deal for minerals shows. 

What does all this have to do with Kuyper and Dooyeweerd? Certainly neither of these men believed the government would bring in the kingdom of God, but they did give us the idea of "sphere sovereignty." Sphere sovereignty makes it clear that the government is not a business (which seems to be an idea that is painfully prevalent), nor is the government an efficiency machine. Along with this, perhaps to the surprise of many, the leading mode of the government is not economic, rather the government’s first focus is justice. It is to pursue justice, not tyranny.

The reason why the leading mode of the state is not economic is simply this: When you treat people like cogs in an economic machine, you can do anything to them in service to profit. We see that even treating people in kind and compassionate ways can be used to actually manipulate them for profit. 

This is why when called upon to support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the past four years America’s largest corporations jumped at the opportunity. They saw profit. But when they see the possibility of decreased profit under the anti-imagio dei attitude of the current administration, they abandon DEI in a heartbeat. It was never (on the whole, not in terms of individuals) about diversity, equity, and inclusion. It was about profit and power. 

When you have learned to treat people as commodities, who serve your economic agenda, appeals to treat them as what they are — human beings (or in the language of faith, people who are imbued with the imagio dei) — will always land on deaf ears. They were never really "people" in the first place, merely characters or cogs in your economic machine. 

This is why it is deeply disturbing to hear so much of the current rhetoric around the government being related to business terms. When we articulate the final goal of government to be efficient, we are missing the mark and willing to sacrifice people in the name of efficiency.

A government should seek efficiency, as efficiency is a legitimate concern (please note this is at least in part why we have inspector generals and why many agencies have people who work to make them more efficient — people who have been fired by the way in the present purge).

However, as a final goal, it is a reductionistic account of governance and people. Step back for a moment and think about those things that are not efficient:

• Caring for a sick friend (better they die and decrease the surplus population while we get on with creating more wealth).
• Creating civil dialogue in which people hear one another. 
• Creating communities with robust networks of belonging. 
• Loving another person and doing life with them. Why? Because people are inefficient as is love. 
• Building sustaining institutions that people trust.
• Caring for and supporting a person with special needs.
• Making policy changes that then need to be communicated to people to show that the institutions they rely on, but have some critiques of, are being healed and made whole again. 
• Meeting with people to persuade them of your point of view (by the way, this letter is horribly inefficient because you will not respond to it with anything more than an efficient canned response or no response at all) rather than declaring to people your point of view.

What is horrifyingly efficient is how the current administration is causing a collapse in the institutions that took decades or hundreds of years to build.  

This is why the leading mode of the state is not economic, but justice. Justice sees human beings as human beings, with inherent worth who deserve to be treated as such. The state’s role is to:

• ensure just structures for the flourishing of human life.
• to create the conditions within which human beings can live together. 

This will include caring for economics, but the end goal of the state is not profit, but thriving communities where justice is upheld. 

This is why I will continue to email and fight, not just for the Constitution which is the law of this land but also for those whom the current administration is perpetuating acts of injustice against. For those it basically tells us are the surplus population.

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I will also continue to stand up as this administration breaks the bounds of justice by stacking every level of government with people who will follow President Trump’s demands (note the applause for Musk at the recent cabinet meeting) even if they break the law. I will continue to stand up as the administration seeks to prosecute its enemies, simply because President Trump does not like them. 

I ask you to be someone in Congress who fights too — for the government to be a servant of true justice in this land (following our Kuyperian understanding). Fight against the language that treats the government like a business. Fight against Congress being a board that rubber stamps Trump’s agenda, instead carry out the role the Constitution calls you to. Fight for the least of these. 

We may not agree on many policies, but I hope that we could agree that maintaining our Constitution and seeing the government as an institution that is supposed to seek justice is worth fighting for.

— Larry Doornbos resides in Zeeland.