Lawmaking is a religious exercise, and government is a God-ordained institution. Yes, I know Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists and referred to separation of church and state. And properly understood, I agree; I certainly don’t want this government or any other government running the church. But laws are rooted in morality, and moral convictions are based on religious beliefs.
Believing that God created man in His image and endowed him with infinite value, we have enacted laws that protect the sanctity of human life, and we prohibit murder and punish murderers. Believing that God gave man dominion over the earth, we have enacted laws that protect property rights, and we punish those who steal, defraud, extort, or embezzle. Even tax laws involve moral considerations about who should pay taxes and how much they should pay, and who should receive financial assistance and how much they should receive. And believing that human nature is corrupted by the Fall, we understand that God has established civil government to curb the exercise of sin, and we know that government has to have enough power to preserve law and order. But we also know that those who run the government have the same sinful nature as everyone else, so we carefully check and limit government power. “Power tends to corrupt,” Lord Acton said, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men … . There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” It follows, then, that as people’s religious beliefs change, their laws change with them. And beliefs are changing rapidly today. The early explorers, settlers, and colonists who established this nation held to a Judeo-Christian consensus, but that consensus is rapidly eroding. A growing portion of the American people is unchurched, indifferent, and often hostile to traditional Christianity. And a growing portion of professing Christians are Biblically and doctrinally uninformed. It is no wonder, then, that they fail to see the relationship between God and His Law as revealed in Scripture and in nature, and civil society and civil government.
Thanks be to God, in this hour of need Samuel Smith has come forward with an antidote to ignorance and naiveté. His book, Government for the Christian, is a concise, common-sense manifesto setting forth a distinctively Biblical concept of law and government. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, Smith gives us a very readable analysis of basic questions we face today. On issue after issue, he shows us what God says in His Word, and then what man says, and then he analyzes the issue in light of the Word of God and the word of man.
In his 1796 Farewell Address that summarizes what Americans believe about law and government, our first President George Washington declared,
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensible supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
The time has come for Christians to rise up and demand that government adhere to the limitations imposed upon it by the American people when their delegates drafted the United States Constitution. And in Government for the Christian, Samuel Smith has shown us how to think, speak, and act Biblically on behalf of our nation.
John Eidsmoe, Lt. Colonel, USAF (Ret.)
John Eidsmoe John Eidsmoe is a Colonel (MS) Mississippi State Guard, ordained Pastor, Professor of Law (obcl.edu) and Apologetics, Author, Constitutional Attorney, and Senior Counsel for the Foundation for Moral Law.