Thursday, January 15, 2009

Legislating Morality?

“You cannot legislate morality!” It seems just about every time we have an election I hear one or two folks make this preposterous claim. Typically, what they really want to say or mean is, “You cannot legislate morality that I am either opposed to or makes me feel uncomfortable, but the ones that protect me and keep me safe are fine.” For instance, most of these folks have no problem with the laws forbidding murder, stealing or other forms of violence. We can play games with words all we want to (calling them “rights” or “civil” issues), but these are moral issues. If they are not and if they do not stem from some higher law that places great value on the sanctity of life then they make little to no sense, but rather are arbitrarily chosen because someone, somewhere simply thought it was a good idea. And who is to say that their good idea is right for me?
The simple fact of the matter is (whether we want to accept it or not) that God, in the long ago, legislated morality, regardless of which giving of the law we are under, for all of mankind. It may be correct for man to say, “We cannot legislate morality,” and in a sense it is true…it does not begin with us. On the other hand, we must uphold the things of God and find within the whole of our lives God’s legislation, mercy and graciousness. In other words, we must make active His laws in our own. This is what our founding fathers had the wisdom to do and what we have foolishly gotten away from. They knew nothing of this nonsense about how we cannot “legislate morality.” They understood that in the end, whether we make the requirement of morality real or not, the moral demand of God will be our judge. You can choose to not go along with it. God has granted you that right. We can choose not to adopt His standard. He has given us that right. However, there are consequences for our choices and upon them our eternity hangs.