Law, religion and morality

I just finished a great book called “Law and Liberty”, by RJ Rushdoony. I enjoyed the book so much I wanted to buy everyone a copy. Due to lack of funds I tried my hand at paraphrasing what I had read about. All credit should go to the author and not me.


People say that you can’t “legislate morality,” is this true or are all laws ,in fact, based on morality?

Should people be made to be moral “by force” or would it create some kind of social rebellion? Should the laws of morality be imposed fully or only to various degrees and, if so, how exactly would that degree be determined?

What few realize, especially those that state the above, is that upon close examination all laws are based on morality. Laws against murder, adultery, stealing, slander, perjury, traffic, police and courts are all created based on this principle. Isn’t it amazing the stark familiarity to the Ten Commandments? It is interesting considering so many today absolutely refuse to believe that religion should have anything to do with “the state?”

Law provides clear boundaries between right and wrong, it punishes what is wrong while protecting what is good. If the defining boundaries of law, of good or wrong are skewed does law, what is good and what is wrong become skewed as well? How would society appear if such words had multiple meanings or no clear definition?

It is my understanding that it is impossible to have morality in a society without religion as its foundation. “Law is based in morality and morality is based on religion and when one is weakened, it tends to weaken the others” resulting in a breakdown in society and an eventual collapse.

It is no surprise to anyone that searches for the truth to know that the American legal system was founded on Biblical law and because of this “our system was not a system to save men by the law” but to maintain and adhere to a system that mimic’s a Godly society.

American Biblical laws were not established to “save men” or to fulfill some ill concerned utopian ideology but ONLY to be grounded in faith, again, to punish wrong and protect what is right as Biblical law, the constitution, declaration and Founders “original intent” define to protect life, liberty and property and to provide justice for all, not for the government to create equality but to understand we were all Created that way.

It seems today that we have been condition to believe that it is the duty of our government to make decisions for us, as if they are more qualified, to save us from ourselves, “to save man.” Only God can do this and only through His grace. Reality is that man can only be restrained through government but cannot be saved.

It is my belief that the problem is the clash between worldviews.

First Humanism, that denies God and the reality of absolutes, that all is relative, including law, where everyone is entitled to their own version of truth of what is right and what is wrong. The problem with this theory is that it can only result in chaos, no order and instead of purely black and white, a full spectrum of grey areas which then makes law impossible to define because of its relativity and continual evolution.

The irony here is although they believe that they are free to define their own truth and what is right for them, they also believe “the state” and its increasing laws will perfect man somehow without restriction, not to mention that the simple fact that truth is not person relative.

Second, Christianity, that understands that it is absolutes that maintain order and that everything created has a purpose. Absolutes define clear boundaries of right and wrong, create strictly black and white areas with no shades of grey, that law, in fact, does not evolve but is consistent, “set in stone” because it is the law of God rather than the law of man. Law when left to be interpreted by man only leads to arbitrariness and inconsistencies which undermine the foundational purpose of law.

Christians believe God created us to be free men, as our Founding fathers agreed and the founding documents guaranteed, God has given us Rights that were inalienable, that could not be taken away by man. It is also believed that if society followed Gods law, and not that of “the state”( if contrary to it) free man would be most free without the continual increase in laws of man which have resulted in either Anarchy or some form of totalitarianism, as history has taught us.

Christians believe in “salvation by grace” through faith in Jesus Christ not by “salvation by the law” or “the state” by the continual increase of legislative enactments.

Is it possible to deny God and claim to be free? Is freedom not subject to whom you look to for it? Is it not simply that you are Created by God, with God given rights, given your freedom from Him, that cannot be taken away or you deny God, believe that you spontaneously came into existence with the understanding that your rights come from the government man created that have always been taken away?

In communicating these two theories, it should be rather obvious that there is really only one clear choice that makes logical and rational sense. The very idea that our culture today believes that God should be separated from the state, isn’t because they actually believe it, it is because they want to abandon their conscience, being held accountable and to escape the reality of judgment, after all, it isn’t really the judgment of man they are angry about or afraid of, it is the judgment of God for scripture says we all know Him.