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CAN CHRISTIANS LET THEIR BIBLICAL CONVICTIONS SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE NATION AS A WHOLE

 

This week’s blog post is a transcript of Albert Mohler’s weekend edition of The Briefing, a daily analysis of current news and events from a Christian worldview. This particular question and answer is very pressing and very insightful.

The Briefing

Ask Anything Weekend

4-4-2015

Albert Mohler

Question: As Christians we affirm the Bible is our standard for morality and righteousness, but as citizens, how should we decide what activities should be legal or illegal? Is it ok to say something is sinful, but it should be permissible under law, or should we always vote to make sinful activity illegal? In either case, how do we reconcile this with the religious liberty of others, we also would like for ourselves?

Answer: This is one of the most pressing questions right now in terms of the Christian conversation and Christian conscience. There are a couple things to think about. First of all, every society has laws, it has moral rules and regulations, it finds a way to arrive at those through legislative process, or a bureaucratic process, or perhaps even by kind of a monarch handing them down, an absolute monarch or a dictator. Which raises the point, only if we are living in some kind of a democratic society are we really talking about this a matter of our responsibility. And you are, I hear that. You are talking about right now, how should Christians in a democratic system of government, in terms of where you have the consent of the governed and the people involved in the making of laws and the election of legislators. Well, in that situation we have an inescapable responsibility. The second thing to note is that every society places a limitation upon the reach of its laws and its bureaucratic regulations, because it can’t regulate everything. You’ve had totalitarian societies, and the reason they are called totalitarian is because they have tried to regulate virtually every arena of life. In the Soviet revolution they made a very clear teaching and claim that the zone of privacy that had been known within the marriage and family had ceased to exist in the name of the state. But even the Soviet Union couldn’t carry that out. It lead to disastrous consequences, but the fact is no state is competent no matter how large its police force and its apparatus, no matter how intrusive it laws to actually pull that off. So eventually, every society makes some kind of decision about the reach of its laws. And that tell you a great deal about the society and its worldview.

There is no doubt that right now the issue is sexual behavior. I don’t think you would be asking that question if it were not for the fact that that is what is being pressed upon us. People aren’t asking should we legislate morality and where is the distinction between the reach of the law when it comes to homicide. We are not doing that when it comes to embezzlement. We are not doing that when it comes to assault. We are coming to that controversy over the issue of sexual behavior. And there is a history to that that is really important. That debate in the United States is very, very recent. Far more recent than most people would recognize. Its more recent than I am in one respect, cause I was born in 1959. But it wasn’t until the 1960s, the mid 1960s, that the Supreme Court actually declared that there was a so-called zone of privacy. A right of privacy that was found within the United States constitution. And that was over a Supreme Court case having to do with birth control. That was when it really kind of sounded the trumpet that the states would begin pulling back in terms of their legislative and criminal law reach when it came to matters of human sexual behavior. But, let’s just note, there hasn’t been that much of a pull back. Every society right now, every single state right now has a myriad of laws on the books and myriad of regulations and rules and statutes having to do with sexual morality. It’s just deciding which areas of sexuality will be legislated.

And this is where Christians have to step in a say that we understand that the state isn’t competent to criminalize every single act we would call a sin. The state is not competent to do that, no police force would be fully competent to do that. No almost infinite number of judges would be able to handle the reality if we criminalized every sin. But we also recognize that for the good of civilization, for human flourishing, for human health and happiness, there are certain issues that have to become matters of the law. And again, there is no great social debate about homicide. We all recognize that. Even when you have people who say you can’t legislate morality, they want to legislate the morality of homicide, or for that matter of embezzlement, or fraud, or any number of things. But right now there is a great pull back in terms of sexual morality in the law, and it is because there is a process of secularization going on in which the Christian consensus that had undergirded the law has now been replaced with an increasingly secular consensus that says when it comes to matters of sex, all that matters is personal autonomy. Until, even as our society says now, personal autonomy reaches it limits. One of the things to note, when the traditional laws regulating human society and its sexuality and individual sexual behavior, when those become undone, you don’t end up with fewer pages of rules, you end up with longer, more pages of rules. You end up with a more expansive bureaucratization of sexual morality.

So, here’s the thing. Marriage is central to human happiness and flourishing according to scripture. And so, when it comes to marriage, we should understand that every society is going to legislate marriage. Every society is going to define marriage. And we as Christians really do believe based upon the Bible, that the only way the human society can be encouraged that children and the society at large can flourish is where marriage is recognized as a union of a man and a woman. That doesn’t mean we win the argument. It does mean we have an argument to make, that is our responsibility to make. And it’s not as if on one side you have people who are making a moral argument, and people on the other side are making some kind of non-moral argument. We are all making moral arguments. Some worldview is going to become codified in the law. The question is not whether it’s going to be a worldview, but which worldview.

And the next thing I want to note, when it comes to personal autonomy and personal behavior, another big issue out there is now marijuana, very much on the horizon, and you’re hearing the same kinds of arguments. Christians should be involved in that issue because of our commitment to love of God and love of neighbor. We should contend for laws we think will lead to the greatest flourishing, the greatest happiness and health of our neighbors. And if we actually thought that legalizing marijuana would do that, we’d be for it. I don’t think we believe that. I certainly don’t believe that. Therefore, I hold a very different position. Again, we may lose the argument, but we do have an argument to make. We also understand, this is also important, not every issue has the same level of importance. That is why when it comes to marriage…marijuana is an important issue, but marriage is a far more important issue.

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