January 14, 2015
For
society to function, there must be laws which allow individuals to safely
interact with others in business and personal relationships. Without those laws and the protection they
provide, opportunities for abuse run rampant.
If there cannot be trust, there must be at least some guarantee interactions
will be safeguarded in a way that allows them to continue. In other words, if I can’t trust you to keep
your word you will pay me a certain amount each month for an automobile you have
purchased from me, I will seek to guarantee that happens via a contract and
onerous penalties if you fail to do so.
Scripture
makes clear the existence of laws is certainly no compliment. In Galatians 3:19 Paul will tell us the law was
added “because of transgressions.” As he
writes to the Romans he will infer that laws were given because we love
imperfectly. “Love does no wrong to a
neighbor…” (Rom 13:10). Therefore, the
commands found within the law of Moses he cites in the previous verse were given
because human beings, not loving others as they should, forced the necessity of
regulating their behavior with law.
The
bottom line? Laws are necessary to
protect us from each other. If we truly
sought one another’s highest good as we should, there would be no need for
law. Again, citing Paul in Romans 13:10,
“…love is the fulfilling of the law.”
So, if everyone loved each other in the way they should, laws against
theft and murder would be unnecessary.
Such unloving actions would not need to be forbidden and penalized
because they would simply never take place.
It
would follow then that individuals with values rooted in Christianity would
make the existence of many laws unnecessary.
However, the higher the percentage of those who are either ignorant of,
or simply have no respect for, Christian moral principles, the more necessity
there will be for laws to regulate their behavior. Again, this will be necessary in order to
allow society to function with some semblance of order. Guarantees of at least some degree of safety
in business and personal interactions must exist or societal breakdown is
inevitable.
Remember,
law is not a compliment to human nature; it is a reproach. Laws exist because of moral failure, not
success. The more need for law, the more
clear it becomes a society is coming apart at the seams. Laws become the stitching holding a rotten
fabric together.
We
are becoming a nation of regulations and laws.
Why? While several causes could
be cited, including everything from bureaucratic overreach to power hungry
politicians, at the heart of the matter is the heart of the people. If a nation rejects a transcendent standard
of moral conduct, such as is presented in the Bible, and replaces moral
absolutes with ambivalence and tolerance, the result is moral anarchy: exactly
the situation in which we find ourselves today in this country.
If
individuals have no internal moral compass to guide them in their day to day
behaviors, then some form of external restraint must be provided. The problem is, while we can pass laws
forbidding and penalizing those who would lie, cheat, and steal, that changes
nothing about their faulty compass. This
means those without that compass will simply find more creative ways to break
laws for which they have no respect, and government will be forced to add more
regulations and laws to curb their behavior.
It is a sick and never ending cycle.
In
the name of what many progressives would call moral freedom, and I would argue
is really moral anarchy, we have placed this country on an inevitable path
toward totalitarianism. Society simply
cannot function in a democratic way without moral responsibility. When a people have lost their way morally,
the only possibility for society to function is by ruthless regulation of its
people. Those who would argue for the “freedom”
found in moral ambiguity are, in reality, sowing the seeds of what will ultimately
rob us of freedom.
Dan
Rouse
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