Having a healthy understanding of how our faith intersects with legal and political institutions is vital. As believers, we should take responsibility for our communities and be engaged spiritually, relationally, civically, and politically. However, we look to each of those domains to accomplish different objectives. The million-dollar question is, to what degree do we assert our Christian beliefs and values upon the rest of society who don’t believe as we do?

This is a very important question. If we don’t answer it well, the results can be disastrous. I contend that the two unhealthy extremes of faith involved in government are religious/ethnic nationalism on the political right and secular democratic socialism on the left. Religious/ethnic nationalism wants to give privileges to a specific color or creed—like Christianity, for example. Islamic Shariah Law is a contemporary example of religious nationalism, state power fused with religious dogma. Secular democratic socialism does the exact opposite and oppresses religious liberties through the cult of secular beliefs. It privileges the prevailing ideas of the secular party by punishing dissenters. The effort in America to legally or economically punish anyone who dissents from transgender-affirming language is an excellent example of this today. It is, in its essence, a favoring of one person’s beliefs—transgenderism—by punishing others who don’t believe. Both religious nationalism and secular socialism are evils we want to avoid.

Evils of the Right: religious nationalism

Between the years of 1618 and 1648, religious nationalism led to the death of 5-8 million people in the Holy Roman Empire. Catholics were slaughtering Protestants. Protestants were at war with the Catholics and other Protestants that were different from themselves. Individuals were forced to “believe” what the governing power wanted them to. They didn’t have the right to believe anything they desired. By the end of the war, people were exhausted by the violence.

Evils of the Left: secular democratic socialism

The French people were so frustrated by the religious nationalism that in their populous revolution, they decapitated the head of the religious ruling structure. Upwards to 3 million people lost their lives during the Reign of Terror and the ensuing years of Empire. The Russians tried to perfect what the French could not. Then the Chinese, etc. Tens of millions of people lost their lives as the secular socialist regimes purged their populations of any free thought or religious belief that stood opposed to their secularized, cult-like domination.

Freedom of Belief, Thought, Speech

We want to avoid sliding into either of these extremes. As Christians, we shouldn't be looking to the government to control other people, to get people to do what we want them to do, or to think what we want them to think. The Church should not be looking to the government to privilege Christians, compel people to believe in Jesus, force people to pray in school, regulate doctrines, or control creeds. Religious belief is voluntary; the coercive force of the state is not. You can’t force people to follow Jesus. We don’t want others using laws to compel their Islamic beliefs, or their transgender beliefs, on our children or our freedoms of speech. So why would we seek to do the same? This principle of reciprocity underpins the equality within American legal protections. For that very reason, we should confidently push back when others try to impose laws, such as transgender-affirming ones, that actively violate the freedoms of people’s speech, thought, and conscience.

Over the last two weeks, we've built a framework for a healthy but limited understanding of government. To read, click here. The government exists to protect the common property of all its citizens: a person’s life, liberty, and possessions (property), regardless of their private thoughts and beliefs. According to the Apostle Paul, the government’s role is to restrain the evil behaviors that harm others, such as murder, theft, slander, etc. The government isn’t spreading the gospel or imposing its arbitrary will on its subjects. It should be protecting people from universally recognized injustices. The government should not be policing the thoughts and speech of a free people. It should be using laws and force to prevent violence and anarchy.

Yet, Laws Are Values

So, as Christians, we desire a limited use of the law. Yet the laws we are promoting reflect our biblical values. In the article American Law and the Bible, we discussed the idea that legislation, by its very nature, imposes a specific set of values on others. The Christian faith has given the world values that promote equal human rights to all without discriminating against peoples or creeds. Only definable, harmful actions are punishable. Here are a few examples of how our Christian values inform American Law.

• Slavery is wrong because it enslaves one man’s life to become the property of another.
  
  
• Abortion and Euthanasia are wrong because they erode the legal protection of human life through the subversion of choice.
  
  
• Islamic honor killings are wrong because they elevate the intangible feeling of shame above the tangible protection of a human life.
  
  
• Islamic law is incongruent with American law...

because it favors the testimony of men and Islamic men over women and non-Muslims.

because it elevates Islamic doctrines and passions and suppresses the freedom of religion, speech, and thought.

• Communism is incongruent with American law because it oppressively enslaves the individual’s freedoms and possessions for the use of the collective.
  
  
• Transgender protection laws are subversive because they suppress the free speech, privacy, and gender protections of others to privilege the psychological choices of a few.

As our political parties continue to stretch further to the left and right, our society must be vigilant. The answer to extreme secularism on the left is not Christian Nationalism on the right. The answer is to restrain our laws, lawmakers, and politicians within limited channels that defend the universal values of every human life, liberty, and property without discriminating against color or creed. Within that pluralism, the church can focus on its core mandate of influencing hearts and minds towards the perfect love and gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tags: values, freedom, kingdom, ethics, government, nationalism, politics, martyr, separation, america, human life, morality, legislation, laws, minds