Behaviors prohibited by biblical morality cannot always wisely be incorporated into national laws in a free society. The more immoral behaviors a society wishes to prohibit via society’s legal system the less free a people become.
The Founding Fathers understood this principle for they frequently argued that the American system was established for moral people. It was not established to create moral people by law, but for a moral people who were taught how to behave in their homes, schools, and churches. Only if this network of moral instruction and adherence continued could the government function well in its objective to protect the freedom of the people.
Should this system of grassroots self-governance fail to continue or become morally bankrupt, the nation would require a greater stringency of laws and force to maintain itself. This would cause America to enter an era of the government deciding what is right and wrong for the people because the people would have given up their sovereignty by failing to uphold their responsibility.
Reality – Both conservatives and liberals want to use the laws to further their own agenda!
We look only at the results that we want rather than the means of acquiring them.
We are not paying attention when some of our desired outcomes could have repercussions because of the means in which they were attained or the imposition of government required to maintain them.
It would seem to be of greater concern to utilize the government to function as behavior monitors than it would be to make the behavior illegal. Granted there is a certain degree of necessity in a free society to have laws that protect people and law enforcement to enforce adherence to those laws. Such laws and their enforcement protect people and their property. Without these, a free society could not exist. Business, commerce, education, arts, entertainment could not develop if the people were busy about protecting their ability to exist and defend their own property.
However, the more laws that are created beyond this end the less privacy and freedom the people shall have. Often we cannot see past the issue we want the government to deal with, to see the bigger picture.
Something may be permitted legally that is not morally permissible according to the Bible.
We cannot make the determination for it to be illegal simply on the grounds of it being immoral. It is immoral to worship any other god, but God and yet a free nation cannot make this illegal. It is immoral to gossip, but we dare not create gossip police.
The more we open the door to the government deciding how we ought to be living the more governors we shall have to vie for soda fountain drink size restrictions. Once the door is open, it is difficult to shut.
Lastly, sometimes applying the pressure of fighting something with natural means can fortify a thing rather than overcome it. Focusing on eradicating bad behavior often increases bad behavior exponentially. This is why our weapons are not of this world, for neither are our enemies. If we are fighting an enemy we can see, we are fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapons.
Laws are useful in their proper place, and the only way to keep them in their proper place is to learn how to be a self-governing people. While laws will never cure lawlessness, governments must increase where the people decrease in order to maintain the nation. In so doing, America needs a people reformation before it can truly have a government reformation.
