Toward a Healthy National Government – The Law of God and Public Policy

Toward a Healthy National Government
The Law of God and Public Policy

Healthy government requires a different approach to public policy.

“When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose.” Deuteronomy 17:14, 15

We need a national government, to be sure, and in the divine economy national governments are no less important than local governments. However, our present experiment in ever-expanding national government has become more a burden on the nation than a boon. Government is today the largest employer, creating a burden of taxation to support itself, and an equal burden of laws and regulations to justify its existence. America needs a strong national government, but not one that, by its sheer weight and size, merely gives the appearance of strength. Strength in national government is a function of justice, not size.

We need a government more like that envisioned and established by the Founders of this country, and less like the one that presently is devoting the majority of its efforts to ensure that material prosperity is the privilege and possession of all Americans, whatever it takes.

The present course of national government in America portends ruin for the nation in the future. We need a new vision of the future—one rooted in and focused on justice, not material wealth—and a reformed national government to help us along the way to that vision.

And these will require a different approach to public policy-making than is currently in practice.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and study the question for yourself.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.