Use Your Opportunities! – The Law of God and Public Policy

Use Your Opportunities!
The Law of God and Public Policy

Public policy is shaped first of all in everyday conversation.

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Deuteronomy 6:6, 7

If believers will not use daily conversation—in our homes, places of employment, among our friends, with our neighbors—we can expect the media and special interest groups to set the public policy agenda.

The Christian population of our nation numbers in the scores of millions. Public policy over the past generation, however, has not reflected considered and consistent input from the Christian worldview perspective. It’s not that Christians have not augured for their views in one or another of the public policy arenas. It is rather that, at this most fundamental level of conversation, we have been neither consistent, nor vigorous, nor convincing in arguing the case for the goodness and wisdom of the Biblical perspective on a wide range of public-policy issues.

But imagine a nation of scores of millions of people, deeply conversant with God’s holy and righteous and good Law, eager to discuss and able to defend the kinds of public policies it presents. There is more power in conversation than in either or both of the other loci of public policy-making. Believers in Christ must learn to make the most of this opportunity.

Let us study and prepare and work together to make the best use of conversation as the fundamental locus, the framework and foundation, for this important work.

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.