It irritates me whenever I hear the phrase “you can’t legislate morality.” That’s nonsense! Of course you can, and it’s done all the time. Anything can be legislated and just about everything has been over the ages.
The issue is not what man can do (for as God said at the tower of Babel, “nothing that men propose to do will be withheld from them.”), but what he should do. Most of our problems today can be traced to a very bad decision of God’s “chosen people” as recorded in 1 Samuel 8. When the ones who should have known better looked around and saw how other nations were governed and how they maintained law and order, they decided to emulate the modus operandi of the godless rather than that of the Moral-Law-Maker. To their demand, “Give us a king to judge us,” God responded with a summary list of the behaviors and appetite for power of said imperfect human leader and the negative consequences each would have on their personal lives.
Man-run governments have always made and redefined laws that run counter to the moral law of God – and the consequences for their citizens have always been and continue to be devastating. The 20th and 21st centuries’ socio-economic declines, increases in crimes of violence, and lowering of educational standards and mankind’s corresponding disinterest to grow in knowledge and things intellectual can all be directly linked back to some unprincipled, immoral or amoral decision fostered and executed by one or more of the three branches of our democratic government. Whether it be the judicial branch’s opening of the abortion-on-demand floodgates or the legislative and executive branch’s redefinition of marriage and their ever-broadening legalization of mind-altering and mind-controlling substances, we see each one’s devastating effects on today’s fractured individuals, families and society.
Unfortunately there are many so-called “liberal Christian” churches which have not only accepted these bad decisions, but have even done much to foster their expansion, totally ignoring or denying any and all obvious relationships to our nation’s decline in greatness. In contrast, many individual “Bible-believing Christians” put their heads in the sand and prefer to hold their tongues all the while their neighborhoods are burning around them. Some react this way out of fear of ostracization, others because they truly believe that even talking about the negative issues of our time represents a lack of faith in God’s Word and promises for his people.
Jesus and His disciples talked about the negative issues of their time and of the times to come. They did so not out of fear that the evil around them would overtake and destroy them, but to warn the unsaved and to provide encouragement to the followers of Christ that these events were prophetic signs of the soon return of their Lord and Savior. Wake up Church! It’s time to take a stand on these important issues. Love the one who has been dragged behind the enemy’s lines. But know that your voice is the cannon God has given you to fire the ammunition of the Good News and the Name of Jesus so others can be set as free as you.