We should regard government as no more and no less important than the other institutions in our society—even when it’s a society that needs changing. When the Israelites were living in pagan Babylon, God told them to engage in all the institutions of societal life—commerce and community, marriage and family, and yes, even government, as the prophet Daniel did.

Americans—including American Christians—are a bunch of political addicts.

Every time our phone buzzes with a news or Twitter alert, we get high on excitement or outrage.

Even the Russians realized they could mess with the 2016 U.S. election by posting fake news all over Facebook and watching millions of Americans trip out in angry paroxysms.

But there is an antidote. It was brilliantly presented in a recent speech from, of all people, a rabbi from Britain’s House of Lords.

“Freedom requires not just a state, but also and even more importantly a society,” Lord Jonathan Sacks told the American Enterprise Institute in October. “A society built of strong covenantal institutions, of marriages, families, congregations, communities, charities, and voluntary associations.”

Sacks drew a useful distinction between a social contract—which emphasizes the rights citizens cede to government in exchange for certain protections—and a social covenant, which like a marriage isn’t about rights but about mutual commitment and identity.

“The social contract creates a state but the social covenant creates a society,” Sacks said. “In America,” he added, “the social contract is still there, but the social covenant is being lost.”

Sacks’ speech—filled with humor—is worth watching or reading in full.

It’s also worth quoting at length:

“And because half of America doesn’t have strong families and communities standing between the individual and the state, people begin to think that all political problems can be solved by the state. But they can’t. And when you think they can, politics begins to indulge in magical thinking. So you get the far right dreaming of a golden past that never was and the far left yearning for a utopian future that never will be. And then comes populism, the belief that a strong leader can solve all our problems for us. And that is the first step down the road to tyranny, whether of the right or of the left.

“But there is good news, which is that covenants can be renewed. That’s what happened in the Bible in the days of Joshua and Joseph and Ezekiel and Josiah and Ezra and Nehemiah. It happened in America several times. Nations with covenants can renew themselves, and that has to be our project now and for the foreseeable future. We need to renew the covenant, which means … strengthening marriage and the family. It means rebuilding communities.”

I don’t think we should draw direct parallels, as Sacks does, between America’s social covenants and the covenants of the Old Testament. That said, the Bible does show a preference—similar to Sacks’—to handle public issues with bottom-up rather than top-down approaches.

Moses addressed the laws of the Pentateuch to the people of Israel—not to judges—because justice was the duty of the community.[i] Moses also appointed judges from the people to mediate disputes, rather than centralizing everything under him.[ii] Paul encouraged Christians to settle disputes among themselves rather than going to court.[iii] Paul also encouraged families to take care of widows rather than relying on the church (let alone the government) to do so.[iv]

In short, the Bible tells us to submit to the governing authorities, but not to look to them first to solve our problems. This is a lesson Americans—including American Christians—must relearn.

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