The law as teacher
You’ve heard it said, “You can’t legislate morality.” But it seems like we’ve been on a deliberate course over the past few decades to legislate immorality. It’s true that morality is a matter of the heart – what I consider moral or immoral runs much deeper than the letter of the law. And you can coerce me to do a lot by threatening me with prosecution, even when I disagree with the law. It’s why I file a tax return each year.
But the law is a teacher. We can look at the law and learn much about the values and priorities of the lawgiver. In the case of a democratic republic, the lawgivers are elected legislators, so theoretically the law represents a majority consensus of the values held in esteem by the people being governed. It then becomes the framework in which the next generation will forge their understanding of what is to be considered worthy. In other words, what constitutes morality.
“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” –Amos 8:11-12 (NIV)
Law instructs the future of morality and morality shapes the future of law. But what happens when the morality of the law is misinformed? Without an absolute standard of right and wrong, good and bad, valuable and worthless, societies don’t get better. When those definitions become malleable, cultures devolve to expediency, irresponsibility, perversion, and class warfare.
Ironically, most do not realize what’s happening until the damage is done. In principle, they may believe in a higher standard as it applies to the larger population. But since all is negotiable, the standard (such as it is) doesn’t need to apply in the present context. The problem becomes the precedence of the exception, whether taken self-servingly or granted in the name of correcting some perceived injustice. It’s the old Arab fable of the camel's nose.
“There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away.” –Hosea 4:1b-3a (NIV)
It’s not that there is no room for mercy or compassion. It’s that treating the exception as the new (now lowered) standard and codifying it as such creates a proliferation of unintended consequences. Without an absolute standard and citizens with the courage to uphold it, we get what we got. It’s why we’re so polarized on dozens of value discussions. With no shared, common understanding about the source of right, wrong, or the relative hierarchy of what is important, tribalism abounds, along with many willing to exploit those divisions for their own enrichment.
In response, I’m proposing the following. First, honor a moral standard for your own life that is defined by something beyond yourself and immune to shortsighted human reasoning. I recommend the word of God. Second, don’t expect those who don’t believe in God or the Bible to acquiesce to your standard – that’s a fool’s errand. Third, extend grace by learning to articulate for Biblical principles in respectful terms that an honest and thoughtful unbeliever (yes, they exist) can relate to. We’ll explore this further next time. That’s enough for now.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. –Micah 6:8 (NIV)