by Norman D. Fox -
Much of the novelty and uniqueness of American government came from the Founding Fathers’ understanding that Spirit-led people could be largely self-governing and would need little external government. “Self-control” is the crowning “fruit of the Spirit” listed in Gal. 5:22-23. Self-control and Holy Spirit control are essentially synonymous in this sense.
America’s Founders had the unprecedented freedom to base a new government on this theory. No nation before or since has had such an unlimited opportunity. The authors of our Constitution developed a civil government with less power than any government in history, meaning that the individual was to be entrusted with more liberty than ever before. The aphorism “That government is best which governs least” is attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
John Adams explained, “Our Constitution was written only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” That is, if people will not conduct themselves with the self-control described in Scripture, some other (more coercive) kind of government will be required.
The American Constitution could be summarized in two words: “Limited Government.” Free, self-governed people need very little external government. Most people, for example, can pass twenty banks in a day and never be tempted to rob one of them. Such people do not “need” the law that forbids bank robbery because they exercise self-restraint. Paul, after teaching the Galatians of the law’s limitations, urges them to progress beyond law and live under grace. This is done, he says, not by breaking law, but by internalizing it and respecting it by personal faith. (See Gal. 5:1-6, 13-18.)
LIMITED GOVERNMENT AS A GOD-GIVEN RIGHT
Limited government is not just a fairly good idea competing with other fairly good philosophies of government. It is God’s specific revealed will for human government that it be limited by a recognition of His supremacy and by the natural right of the citizens to live in freedom. (See Essay #57, God’s Existence: Government’s Controlling Fact.)
Unlimited government always grows toward usurping the sovereignty and authority of God, and nothing is more frightful than seeing imperfect humans ruling as if they were the autonomous masters of the earth. The rights that America’s founders asserted, and the Constitutional limits they placed on civil government were seen as gifts from God which no generation has the right to surrender on behalf of their offspring. (See Essay #54, Unalienable Divine Rights.)
MEASURING OUR SELF-GOVERNMENT
Citizens of a nation that claims to allow maximum personal liberty should be able to measure that liberty by analyzing how much of their lives is being controlled by civil government and how much is left to their own self-government. Taking such a “liberty inventory” and updating it from time to time is the best way to detect governmental trends which tend to move in the direction of greater centralized authority. Government rarely needs encouragement to assume more power. Rather, its natural appetite for power usually needs to be restrained.
Recent generations of Americans have experienced government encroachments, and sometimes outright takeovers, in areas such as education (see Essay #24, Normal Christian Education) and the environment (see Essay #56, The Highjacking of Environmentalism) and are now witnessing similar trends in religious freedom, health care, the economy, and many other vital areas of life.
“LEGISLATING MORALITY”
This leads us to the issue of enforcing morality via law. A popular slogan says “You can’t legislate morality.” But how can you legislate anything else? To legislate (make a law) means the lawmaker pronounces that something either must be done or must not be done. And every law carries a penalty for breaking it, because keeping it is “right” and breaking it is “wrong.” Thus, keeping any legitimate law is moral (the right thing to do) and breaking it is immoral (the wrong thing to do.) All law involves legislating someone’s view of morality. “I would not have known what sin was except by the law” writes Paul (Rom 7:7), commending God’s view of morality.
Free, self-governed people would need very few laws, and most of those laws would be rather general. Individual citizens and the courts would be presumed capable of justly applying those laws to specific situations. The Ten Commandments would be the best example of such laws, and indeed, James Madison referred to the Decalogue as the basis of American law. (See Essay #27, The Foundational Ten Commandments.) He wrote, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government [but]… upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves… according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Another American statesman went further with this idea and warned, “If we will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, then we will certainly be governed by the Ten Thousand Commandments.” That is, if we will not submit to God’s time-tested standards, we will fall into our own hands, requiring thousands of our own imperfect laws, many of them designed to patch previous imperfect laws. This statement was amazingly prophetic, but vastly underestimated the number of laws we would bring down upon ourselves under man-based civil legalism.
Many secularists throw the term “legislating morality” at Christians whose only intention is to preserve the Scriptural foundations of American law. Under that theory of law, very few things are legislated against, but they include the very things (often illicit sexual behavior) that so many in our culture hold as their highest values. In reality, it is those who insist on passing thousands of human-based laws who are “legislating morality” on a grand scale.
Consider this example of how far civil legalism can penetrate into the details of life. Some jurisdictions have outlawed driving a car without a litter bag. Why? Because you just might have a scrap of paper someday, not have a litter bag to put it into, roll down your window and throw it out. Law has intruded into the slightest possibility of what you might do someday. Indeed, that estimate of “Ten Thousand Commandments” came nowhere near the real mark.
A society’s unwillingness to enforce a few laws based on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” (as the Declaration of Independence puts it) leads to lawbreaking that requires an always-growing mountain of more and more law. Our Founders understood the “law and grace” model of Galatians enough to give us a government allowing maximum liberty. Leaders since then, trying to “free” us from the “restrictions” of godly law (Ps. 2:3, see Essay #42, Psalm 2: When Nations Defy God), have led us deeper into bondage than Christian statesmen like Madison and Adams could have imagined.
Patriots long ago inscribed Lev. 25:10 on our Liberty Bell. “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.” Jesus commenced His public ministry (Luke 4:18-19) reading from Isaiah 61, saying His purpose was to proclaim liberty. Whatever else we do as Christians to proclaim liberty, we must give priority to proclaiming and living the gospel of Jesus Christ.
For further study:
Rus Walton, One Nation Under God, (chapter 1), 1975, Plymouth Rock Foundation, 120 Long Pond Rd, Plymouth, MA 02361, www.plymrock.org
David Barton, Original Intent, 1997, Wallbuilders Press, www.wallbuilders.com
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