A Small Government

The only Biblical form of government is not a democracy, but a theocracy, where God is ultimately the ruler even if the optional presence of a human monarch is included (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).  The government under Christian theonomy is indeed rather small, being focused on one thing for the most part: enacting the penalties for criminal sins, which God has affirmed is the role of political bodies (Romans 13:1-4), though these social structures must abide specifically by Yahweh's commands to be just (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Matthew 5:17-19, Acts 24:14, Romans 7:7).  The moral relativism and utterly cruel penalties (life imprisonment, for a contemporary example) even many Christians unwittingly believe in to distance themselves from Biblical justice are neither Biblical nor rational; moral relativism is logically impossible either way and only subjective preference or cultural norms would drive people to endorse something like prison altogether.

No one deserves to be punished by human governments for coveting/lust, for instance, though it is a sin (Exodus 20:17) that would still Biblically deserve the annihilation of the second death, or divine justice (2 Peter 2:6).  Not every sin is deserving of human intervention to punish the error, so this drastically limits the scope of Biblical theonomy from what some people might imagine a Christian theocracy would be like--it would absolutely not entail a government that penalizes people for things like mere lying, unjustified divorce, reading the Quran (which is not even a sin on Christianity since it can be done without ideological allegiance to Islam), and so on for various real or imagined sinful deeds.  There would also be no practice of elaborate tortures by the state in such a society.  In these regards, a truly Biblical government is already much smaller than many might assume.

Even so, having a small government only for the sake of having a small government is asinine, yet I have known many Christians who, on the basis of assumptions, think this is the chief purpose of government in itself.  As if a miniscule government could not still be unjust by what it does and does not punish or by how it does so!  Besides, if a minimal size is ideal, and the government should be as small as possible, then the optimal government would be run by a single person, who almost certainly would be exhausted and overwhelmed by all of the duties of their role as the sole leader.  I have met many proponents of "small government" that claim to be Christians, mostly conservative rather than libertarian, even as they might support government activities that ironically go beyond the Biblical scope of a just political framework.  Of course, they almost always are against actual Biblical theonomy on the basis of philosophical misunderstandings (such as that Jesus opposed Yahweh's commands), personal dislike, or simple unfamiliarity.

Any conservative who thinks they long for small government would have to be some variant of a libertarian in order to not be a hypocrite on this point alone, not that many traditions of America or other countries correspond with Biblical prescriptions anyway, and not that anything being traditional, which is a vital part of general conservatism, makes it philosophically true or morally good.  All the same, a small government is Biblical, just not in the way some Christians believe.  A Biblical government has none of the bloated departments or useless tax-absorbing programs that some countries have today or have had throughout the historical record.  Again, its purpose is to enact justice by punishing sins that qualify as crimes according to Yahweh's revelation with the right methods.

A small government is a byproduct of the Biblical structure, since many contemporary functions of government are excluded, yet a small size is not specifically the goal in itself or even one of the most important aspects of such a system.  Justice is the objective.  What is just might not always be what a person or collective culture wishes it was.  Someone might wish for their adulterous spouse or their child's murderer to be tortured for days instead of merely killed (Deuteronomy 22:22, Exodus 21:12-14).  Someone might wish for someone who robbed them of their life savings to be sexually abused in prison instead of monetarily repaying the amount lost at a fixed ratio dependent upon the situation (Exodus 22:1-4, Leviticus 6:1-5).  Someone might wish that uttering a racist comment rather than committing the likes of murder or kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) on the basis of race would deserve execution.  Someone might wish for the gratuitous and superficial trappings of modern political systems like America's to be mandatory because they are used to them.  A Biblical government is small, but its purpose is extraordinarily clear in the Bible and its exact obligations are obvious.