Do We Want Christian Morality in America For Selfish Reasons?
Aug 23
I grew up a pagan. I went to church but my home was far from Christian. Such lack of morality resulted in my life being saturated with sin by 12. Sex, drug use, drug selling, pornography, fighting, carrying a firearm, drinking and partying with adults were a regular part of my diet before I hit 16. I knew people who were the exact opposite. They went to church, the were fairly moral people, they didn’t steal, sell drugs or have sex. They weren’t high or hanging out at parties with me. But neither were they Christians. Let me ask a question. Who did God receive more? Which one of us were closer to God? If your answer isn’t neither, you may want to visit a Christianity 101 course and go see your pastor immediately.
That leads to the question of this post. Why do we want Christian morality to be the standard of law for nonbelievers? As believers what do we get from that? But even more importantly what value does such morality add to God? The answer is no value. It is false worship, it is of no value to God and none to the person. Their abode will still be hell regardless if they are moral or immoral. So that leads back to the question of why?
I believe it is for selfish reasons. It gives us a since of either victory or comfort that our children and we will not have the pagans rubbing their lifestyles in our faces. Many Christians would be comfortable with laws preventing homosexuality. If you have read the Manhattan Declaration they are concerned about the good values and morals which seem to be decaying, yet this only a symptom of a problem, this would be like a guy walking into an emergency room and being upset because all the people had runny noses and upset that the hospital isn’t handing out more Kleenex. Any good doctor would respond “sir, we don’t treat symptoms, we are here to make people better”. And this should also be the mindset of the Christian. We should say “sir or madam, we don’t want your morality, being good is not good enough, following Christian morality without submission to Christ is worthless, turn to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and then fruit will blossom”.
I am extremely uncomfortable with attempting to conform nonbelievers to some type of pseudo-moral agent. Now don’t go to the extreme please. Most people will say “well why not murder or stealing or rape…”. I am not saying we should have a moral-less society, such a society would be chaotic. But it seems that Paul and Peter both deal with this in their writings. We have government, and government is used by God to curtail chaos; however, Christians ought to be very careful of using government for their own selfish purposes. I wrote in the past that I believe a pluralistic society is the best society. And by best I mean best for the Christian. We get to express our disdain for sin and proclaim the good news for its cure, while allowing others the freedom God has given them to rebel against Him. God Himself dismantled a theocratic nation why are we going to attempt to reestablish one?
Listen very carefully. God knew then that a morality outside of ones heart is insufficient. And either men will rebel against such law or they will become self-righteous under such law. However, an inward motivation by the new heart (Ezekiel 36, Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8-9) will be the only thing that can both cause a man to be upright morally and made right before a Holy God. So again the only reason I can see that American Christians want Christian morality is for their own selfish reasons. It does no good for the person who is attempting to live by such law and it does nothing for God. I honestly believe it is wasted time and energy and resources.
Interesting position. I agree with you to a certain degree. I fully agree that we should not be trying to set up a theocratic government. I always tell people that God is not in the business of trying to establish a “secular” Christian nation. That this is not a Christian nation, it’s only a nation with Christian’s living in it and will only be as Christian as the people that live in it are. However I wouldn’t go to the extreme of of saying that we shouldn’t push for our morals to be reflected in the law of the land. I just don’t think we should do so under a banner of Christianity, but rather that these are the most ideal modes for a society to operate under.
I think we do Christianity a diservice if we try to force people to our Chrisitan lifestyle for any other reason than God moving on their heart. However I don’t think we do people a disservice by pushing for laws that line up with moral codes of conduct that God has designed, because I do believe that they are optimal. I know it’s a hard thing to do, to seperate our Christianity from our morals but when it comes to the laws of the land I think that is a place where we can do it. It just simply has to be under the reasoning that this is the most ideal way that we should operate. For every law that we argue over, for the most part, there is a logical reasoning that can be made beyond “God said so” and I think that is the reasoning that must be put into play rather than because the Bible says.
I do agree that many are pushing for these things for selfish reasons though. They would rather have the 10 commandments posted on the wall of city hall rather than have the law written on their hearts and be living epistles. This I do understand, but I don’t think that is cause for us not looking to establish the most optimal form of governance for people just because it also happens to be a Christian form.
Detroit,
Let me ask which laws would you want that are not currently there? I would also think the most optimal form of government would be Socialism/Communalism but the problem is in the hand of humans it never works.
I don’t know if I would say specifically there are more that need to be added rather than those that need to be protected. And I think that any of the major forms of government that have been employed over the course of history in theory could work, whether it is Socialism, Democracy, Monarchy Theocracy or whatever. But the hearts of human beings spoil all of them. And to me that is the issue at hand when it comes the the governance and laws of this land. The destruction of any of these forms of government comes when the personal interests of those who are in charge come before the good of the people. And this is the problem that we are running into now is that laws are being based on personal preference of some rather than what is optimal for the larger body. This will ultimately lead not just to the destruction of individuals but to the destruction of the nation. There has to be a moral authority above interests of a few, or even many and to me the moral authority that is outlined in our Bible is the best even if not given under the banner of Christianity.