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State Law – A Christian Perspective
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Hello, Mr. Camping. I'd like your thoughts on something that I've been wondering about since I've become a born again believer.
I understand that we're subject to the laws of the land in which we live, and we should try to be good citizens. As Christians, should we attempt to bring the laws of the country into harmony with God's laws? How concerned should we be about laws condoning sinful behavior? And I'm thinking about legislating morality, and so called victimless crimes. What should the relationship be between the laws of the land and God's laws?
HC: We live in a land where we do have the privilege of having something to say about the law, inasmuch as we vote for lawmakers. That is, we vote for our senators and our congressmen, and we can initiate referendums, and so on. But once a law is on the books, once it's on the books we have to be obedient to it.
Now a law that allows sin to expand and grow, where it simply no longer calls it sin, we are not mandated to obey that law because we're not the ones who are in view in that. In other words, that's a law on the books, and it's a bad law, but it's not something that is causing us to sin because that law is on the books.
However, because of our responsibility in the world to be a witness for Christ, certainly in our voting and in our selection of lawmakers, we would try to get those who would be as moral as possible. When we pray for those who have authority over us, that we might have domestic tranquility, as God commands us to do, if we really mean business about praying for them then we ought also to try to vote as intelligently as possible, that those who can lead us aright would be voted into power.
On the other hand, in many nations the citizens do not have this freedom to vote. They simply are under a dictatorship. But they have to be just as obedient as we.
Now I haven't answered your question in the sense that I have suggested that we ought to crusade, and that we have this kind of law or that kind of law. I think that a Christian can do this. I really think that would not be contrary to the Word of God. However, we must remember that we are living in a very sinful world. And even though you might make progress with a crusade today, tomorrow you'll lose anyway, because the Bible teaches that wickedness will multiply. I don't mean that we have to be defeatist, either. But neither do we want to have rose-colored glasses, as if by crusading we will be able to have a world that is free from sin. This just won't happen.
We must recognize that most of the people of the world, and this includes most of the people of our land, are unsaved. They are not about to come under the law of God. And so while you may be very sensitive to the law of God and want to make that the law of the land, it would be very surprising if you could get a majority of the people of the land to accept that kind of morality.
CALLER: Yes, but it would be ideal if the laws of the land were in agreement with God's law.
HC: Yes, because we know that God's laws are most beneficial. They are infinite in their wisdom, and they are designed to help men the most. And so the more that the laws of the land are in harmony with the laws of God, the wiser the laws on our statute books would be.
And wonderfully, as a nation, we've been preserved for 200 years now. And as a nation, a lot of this is due to the fact that many of the laws of the land are patterned after the laws of the Bible. Although in our day the Bible no longer is the authority, and those laws are being struck down very rapidly, all over the land.
CALLER: Yes, the trend seems to be going away from the Bible.
HC: Yes. You see, man is rebelling against God. Unfortunately, it isn't just in the political arena that this is happening. This is also happening amongst the believers, isn't it? They are losing their sensitivity, increasingly, to the holiness of the Word of God. The fact that they can countenance some of the books that have been written that purport to be the Bible indicates that we have lost our sensitivity to it. And so we don't have to look very far to find where there has been this turning against God. It's right close at hand everywhere.
And I find in my life that it's a pretty full time job just to judge me. This is a perennial question that the believer faces: What is his posture toward the land in which he lives? Now if you live in a Christian community, that is, where most of the people regularly go to church, it's a very easy matter to have city laws or community laws that are very much in agreement with the Bible.
But increasingly, as you find that your fellow citizens do not accept the authority of the Bible, you find more and more frustration in your soul, as you see the laws of the land shifting. We must not be too appalled by this. It's a grievous experience, of course, but we must not be too appalled by this because the Bible indicates this will happen.
It's much like Communism, you know. It keeps coming. And even though a nation may be able to keep it out for a little while, it keeps picking on that nation and eventually a nation capitulates in one way or another, either through political overthrow or through war or through an internal coup d'etat, or whatever it may be. And so it is with sin wherever it is. It keeps picking away. And if the law was not changed this year, give it another few years and the try comes in again. And eventually you see that the forces of sin are winning.
Now the reason for this is that we are living in that time when wickedness is multiplying, when Satan has been loosed. I believe this more and more as I view the world in the light of what the Bible declares.