How Christianity Prospers a Nation and Why It Is Our Best Hope
Part 1: Christian Morality
An Indian scholar tells of his first trip to England.[1] His host took him to buy some milk. There was nobody there, and they filled their
containers with milk from a dispenser.
There was also a bowl of money there.
The man put in his money and took out his change. And they left.
The guest was astounded.
He said that in India, everyone would have taken both the milk and the
money. He told this story in another
country, and they said that they would have taken the milk, the money, and the
cows.
But if the customers are not honest, then the farmer would need
to hire a cashier. And who would pay for
that? The consumer.
And if the consumers can be dishonest, then so can the
farmers. They might water down the
milk. So we need inspectors to check the
milk. And who pays for that? Again, the consumer, through higher taxes.
But if the consumers can be dishonest, and the farmers can
be dishonest, then so can the inspectors.
They can be bought off or they could insist on a little something to
overlook something. And who would pay
for that? Again, the consumer.
So the price of milk went up three times because of a lack
of honesty, a sense of right and wrong, what used to be called morality. But we don’t talk about morality
anymore. That was in the old days when
we thought religion had a place in public life, when we thought religion had a
place in saying how we lived in our country.
Morality, at least as it has historically been understood,
has to do with God. God created the
world and then gave us the rules and directions on how this works and how it is
supposed to work. Without a God, you can
talk about legal and illegal, but you can’t talk about right and wrong. Right and wrong talks about a system of
morality that transcends cultures and nations, something that laws would apply
in specific ways to different situations.
Morality for most people today has come to center on the matter
of sexual issues, freedom from the historical constrains that were seen as
unnecessary and outdated hindrances to human freedom and pleasure.. But if there is no God, or at least one that
is relevant to society’s values or governmental policies, then there are no
rules regarding sex.
There are still a few carryovers from the time that we had a
common morality, like the age of consent for sexual relations, the number of
people who can be legally married to each other, and marriage with certain
blood or family ties. But those are
being challenged, and in a secular society the reasons against them will not be
strong enough to maintain the status quo.
Morality is simply the system of right and wrong. But who is to say what is right and wrong,
especially in a society and government which we are told was intended to be
secular?
Today we would say it is society, or our government, which
determines what is right and wrong.
But there are at least five problems with that kind of
thinking:
1) There are
things that are wrong that will never have laws passed against them. Gerrymandering voting districts is wrong, but
you’re not going to see a law made against it.
Why would lawmakers make laws that are not in their own self-interest? There are no laws against being unkind or
hating people, and there will never be laws against being lazy, selfish,
arrogant, or rude either.
2) People
equate right with being legal. If there
is no law against something, then it must be alright. We often hear politicians saying that they
did nothing illegal. That means that
they broke no laws as they are written, but if the facts were known, everybody would
still call their actions shady, deceptive, sneaky, or just plain wrong.
3) People will
wrangle over the letter of the law and not its intent. If a law doesn’t explicitly describe the act
in question, people feel free to do it, but they and you may well know what the
lawmakers intended by that law, but because it doesn’t spell it out in those
specific words, we are free to do a certain act.
Besides who knows what the intent was 20 years ago, but even
still, people will normally be judged by what the law says and not what people
think the originators had in mind when they passed it.
4) Laws can
change. What was right and wrong 20
years ago could be reversed today.
Remember it was the government of Germany which tried to exterminate the
Jews. What, you don’t like Jews? Someday you could be the one the government
tries to exterminate, and who will come to your defense?
5) The mere
fact of having laws isn’t enough to keep people from breaking them. The fear of punishment is often not enough to
stop people from breaking laws. It takes
a higher reason, an allegiance to a higher power, to God who sees everything
and to whom we will have to give an account of our lives at some point. The external constraints of the law can only do
so much to regulate behavior. We have
more laws today than at any time in history, and yet our jails are full.
The ethics of our country has always been that of
Christianity. But now that the country
has officially turned from that to secularism due to some rulings by that court
we call supreme, the country doesn’t have a moral foundation anymore. You can’t make enough laws to cover all the possibilities
of dishonesty, cruelty, deception, harm, evil, or exploitation.
Christianity prospers a nation by establishing a moral
framework that directs human behavior from the inside of a person, that
motivates people to a higher standard than just what is legal. Christianity makes people consider motives
and encourages sacrificial living for causes and people beyond one’s self. Christianity
provides a higher law of love for God and people that seeks to do good to
people even at one’s own expense.
Without a society where people want to do what is right or
actively seek the good of others, you need a huge government funded by people
like you to protect you from everybody else, more policemen, more judges, more
jails. Congress keeps having to pass
more and more laws and regulations to cover all the possible ways that people
can be dishonest, and businesses incur ever increasing layers of new expenses
over the cost of their goods and services to comply with them.
Prosperity isn’t just about making more and more money but
keeping more of what you already have.
If government didn’t cost so much to run, taxes would be a lot lower,
and everybody would be better off financially.
Besides, I think all of us would prefer that people didn’t
commit crimes in the first place rather than our society having to go through
the time, expense, and trouble of finding the lawbreakers, making the case
against them, and then paying to take care of them while we remove them from
public life.
[1]
Vishal Mangalwadi. The Book that Made your World: How the Bible Created the
Soul of Western Civilization. Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2011, p. 250
