Changing Hearts, One Law at a Time

The link today is a story about how new rules and proposed new legislation are being introduced following another suicide as a result of bullying.  Bullying has of course been around a long time and now, with the internet, it can be even more powerful and deadly for kids.

Now don't get me wrong as we proceed.  I'm not against laws to protect people.  Society has needed enforceable rules to try to help everyone get along.  Laws on murder, and other anti-social or detrimental activity is part of civilization.  The problem is that in this day and age, we are replacing a societal morality with law.  Much of the reason we are doing this is because, with the move away from an embrace of Biblical teaching, we have a hard time knowing how to teach morality and less agreement on what morality means.  Is morality based on Bible teaching?  Our society has said, "not anymore".  Morality has slowly, but increasingly shifted over the last 100 years to be based on freedom.  Laws based on Biblical morality were struck down as infringing on personal freedom.  Abortion became legal because a woman should be free to do whatever she wants with her body, Sunday business restrictions were struck down because business should be free to open whenever they want.  Rules and laws about what could be shown and said on tv progressively get weaker, access to porn and other adult content expanded because people have a freedom to view it.  The march continues.  Marriage needs to be redefined because people should be free to marry whoever they want.  I could go on.

I am not saying that everyone of those changes are bad, I am merely showing that a philisophical change occured on how we approach what is moral, using freedom as a ruler.  EXCEPT now there is a problem.  People are using their freedoms in ways that hurt others.  Now, if we were still teaching a Biblical morality, we would have this covered.

For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." (Galatians 5:13-14)

But as it is, we can't teach that, so back to the law we go.  We therefore have started trying to use law to regulate how nice people are.  We passed hate crimes.  If I kill you just to kill you that's bad.  If I kill you because I hate you for a particular reason, such as your race or sexual orientation, that's worse.  If I hurt your feelings or make fun of you, that needs to be criminalized.  We are passing, or trying to pass more and more laws now to govern how we relate to each other and even how we feel toward each other because we don't have any other way to use morality.  Our societal standard is now law, not Bible.

I guess what troubles me the most is not this trend by itself.  It is a troubling trend for our society and a sign of decay, but it is to be expected and was predicted in the Bible.  It is part of watching our culture move further and further away from God.  What troubles me much more is that many Christians are following this philisophical shift (Col. 2:8).  They too are turning to law to define morality.  They want to use the Bible's definitions for the law, but they are still seeking to use law.    Now I get being salt and light and perhaps there is no other option if we want to continue to try to be a good influence for our society, but I think the biggest thing we should be doing as God's people is to live the Bible and share the Bible through preaching the Gospel.  If the members of society learn the freedom of Christ, which is not about personal rights but instead about serving, then we might have an outbreak of morality that is based, not on law, but on Jesus.

In other words, while the world tries to change hearts one law at a time, we as a church will seek to change hearts one redemption at a time.