When I was a college student, in a course on ethics or philosophy some fellow students naively declared, “You can’t legislate morality!” That notion once occasionally affirmed among intellectuals is now assumed everywhere to be established and irrevocable. So, when someone argues against behavior once universally condemned as immoral, a voice retorts, “You can’t legislate morality!” Heads solemnly nod with unthinking approval and applause. The conversation abruptly ends.
However, the conversation-stopping declaration is no truism at all. It is false. Either naïveté or moral relativism declares, “You cannot legislate morality!” Anyone who offers such a proclamation is ingenuous and marked by unaffected simplicity. Morality can be legislated. This is what both God’s laws and human laws do. Thus, people at every level of authority legislate what they deem to be morally acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Yes, even atheists uphold some form of morality and expect the same from others. Even for them, truth and morality impel them to hate being lied to. Parents legislate what is morally permissible in their homes. Educators do the same. Governmental officials do likewise over whole societies.
Most people who insist that morality cannot be legislated believe and act on the premise that morality is relative. They have accepted the false belief that truth and morality are relative–you have your truth and morality and I have my own truth and morality. Hence, when they declare, “You can’t legislate morality,” what they really mean is, “You shouldn’t make laws based on your morality which is different from mine.” But, of course, there are no versions of truth or morality.
On the other hand, if we assume that the protestation of legislating morality arises from naïveté and not moral turpitude, we properly grant the benefit of the doubt. Someone who naively formulates and expresses the warrantless edict perhaps means that legislated laws concerning morality do not and cannot compel obedience. This, of course, is true. Legislated morality only draws the legal boundaries of what constitutes moral and immoral conduct. By definition, forcible constraint to obey is immoral; it violates moral law. Not even God compels obedience. God does not constrain people to obey him against their will. Rather, to secure obedience to his laws, God induces people to become willing to do his will (Exodus 23:28; Philippians 2:12-13).
All I have thus far stated guided me when I responded recently to a query from a friend–“What is the solution to all the vile corruption we observe in daily news reports but especially the corruption in Washington, D.C.?” Here is my response.
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Do we need additional legislation of morality? No. Politicians will not banish the corruption that endemically inhabits Congress, the White House, and the Courthouse. Legislation cannot banish the depravity embedded deep within the hearts of humans who populate the halls of government.
To end the rampant corruption, do our legislators need to enact additional legislation of morality? No. Politicians are powerless to put an end to their own corruption. They will not banish the endemic corruption by legislating morality. Corruption fills the halls of government because a preponderance of our legislators is immoral. Legislation cannot banish the depravity embedded deep within the hearts of humans who populate the halls of government. Corruption derives from their depraved hearts. Thus, it is plainly evident that corruption will not be banished by more legislation. Those who have the authority to enforce longstanding policies, established customs, and engraved laws that govern the ethics and morality of government officials refuse to enforce the standards. They refuse to enforce policies, customs, and laws on others because they are equally guilty. They refuse to govern themselves in keeping with the law. Thus they refuse to enforce the array of laws that govern the land. Criminals–citizens, residents, and aliens–rule the streets. At best, a two-tier system of justice now prevails. Justice by the book for people who do not subscribe to or endorse the reigning ideology and justice by whim for the Ruling Class and all their devious allies.
There is a solution to all this corruption of society and government, but it cannot be found in human government but in the the message concerning God’s governance found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. But, even as I say this, I am morally bound by God’s good news to speak truthfully concerning the church of the living God, which he is pleased to call his “household . . . the pillar and foundation of the truth” to which the Lord entrusted the care of the message of his Kingship (1 Timothy 3:15; 6:20). The church itself needs purging.
Evangelicals, especially ministers who have preaching or teaching roles, need to stop behaving as wimpish boys imitating emasculated Republican males, elected to serve as our State and Federal Representatives and Senators. Have you never wondered why elected female Republicans tend to be more outspoken and unwavering than their male counterparts? Like Republican politicians, many men who fill church pulpits have become sissified, feminized, and essentially emasculated.
Evangelicals need to take the comprehensive message of the Holy Scriptures to the culture and proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord. Openly preach repentance. Openly call for submission to the Lordship of Christ Jesus. Openly rebuke sins. Openly and plainly rebuke the corruption, the sins, and the lies of the Ruling Class first in local churches and denominational organizations and institutions, then to the halls of government, locally and nationally, but also address all who traverse the public square. Candidly rebuke the willing compliance of the masses to accept falsehoods as truths. Rebuke all who choose to live in unreality, whether it entails their (1) rejection of the Creator’s assignment of their sex, (2) denial of the binary male-female nature of sexuality, (3) wicked endorsement of the murder of unborn infants, (4) misrepresentation concerning the real status of our economy whether flourishing or languishing, (5) clinging to bitter resentments as they pretend to be systemically oppressed, (6) ideological perversions taught to children in government and private schools, (7) the defiant and arrogant insistence that humans, not the Creator, control the atmosphere’s climate, and many more God-hating beliefs and acts of defiance.
Stated bluntly, what is needed is a massive Great Awakening like the First Great Awakening. And this will not come to pass unless preachers boldly and forthrightly confront the wickedness that dominates from the White House all the way down to the pews in churches. What I have in mind are such things as this: it is common knowledge, now, that students who get engaged, even at Christian colleges and universities, cohabit. They are not rebuked. They are not disciplined. Such people populate our evangelical churches. They will hold positions of leadership. Unless we rebuke them and they repent, they will perpetuate the corruption that now persists at every level of our culture.
Expect nothing to change apart from widespread repentance among church members and attenders. Unless the Spirit of God stirs our congregations to repentance, to live godly lives in Christ Jesus, to rear godly children in the gospel, to obey Christ as Lord, to saturate our culture with the message of Christ’s Lordship, which is at the core of the good news as it is in Jesus, we will continue to observe corruption in our churches and church-affiliated organizations and schools, in the public square, and our governmental institutions.
We need a Massive Awakening. Pray that the Lord God will bring about a Third Great Awakening.
(The masthead photo is one I took when my wife and I took a Reformation 500 tour in 2017. Pictured is the rostrum, a raised pulpit, in the church at Eisleben from which Martin Luther proclaimed his final sermon.)