Godly Lives – The Law of God and Public Policy: The Good Society (3)

Godly Lives

The Law of God and Public Policy: The Good Society (3)

Government must be on the side of godliness.

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.… 1 Timothy 1:1, 2

Government is God’s servant for good when it maintains order and civility in society and when its policies promote the practice of godliness. Governments today, at least in the West, are secular; they feel no particular compunction to pursue policies in line with the Law of God. Nevertheless, all governments are accountable to God and have been established to create and maintain just and good societies. To the extent that Christians can influence the policies of government to promote godliness, they must certainly do so.

Here is precisely where Christians may expect to hear the objection, “You can’t legislate morality.” In fact, morality is the only thing you can legislate, for all public policies are grounded in and expressive of some moral system. In our increasingly secular society, public policies increasingly reflect pragmatic and relativistic ends. This creates uncertainty (as at present in the economy) and political gridlock (again, as at present). When the only standards guiding the creation of public policy are grounded in worldly aspirations and hopes, disappointment all around will be the order of the day.

Christians must work to help government serve for a just and good society. This means we must seek to interpret the canons of godliness, revealed in God’s Law, into the public policy agenda of our nation.

But we cannot expect unbelieving magistrates and voters to embrace the Law of God in the same way we do. Keeping the Law will not save lost people. However, a society informed and shaped by God’s Law can expect to know more of His blessings than one which defies or ignores His holy standards.

How can Christians think about bringing more godliness into public policy? First, we must always oppose laws that require ungodliness. Confiscatory taxes, for example, have no basis in God’s Law. Nor do certain schemes for redistributing income. It would not be just for a community to be required to allow a porn shop to open if the council and people felt this was a compromise of the community’s moral code. Private organizations should not be compelled to meet “quotas” of any kind in hiring or other forms of representation.

Second, we must seek to encourage laws that reward godly behavior. Giving tax breaks for charitable contributions falls into this category. Community programs that foster godliness—scouting, for example, and church planting—should have the protection of the law to proceed according to their own institutional criteria.

Third, we must seek to persuade the powers-that-be to adopt policies that restrict ungodliness. Defining ungodliness will always be a challenge. But there is consensus on certain matters. Thieves should be punished, as should be those who instigate violence or riots, slander or maliciously injure others, or who are publicly obscene. As much as we can agree with the existing consensus on such laws, Christians should support keeping and enforcing them. There are areas of morality, however, where, while laws once addressed these, changing morality has set such laws aside—laws about abortion, adultery, pornography, homosexuality, gambling, and so forth. Christians do not give up on these, but we have to take a longer view in such areas. As we have seen, there will always be much work to do at lower levels of public policy-making before laws prohibiting certain forms of behavior are put on the books. We must work those levels diligently toward the time when laws can once again be crafted to promote godliness in every form.

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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.