No man is an island
Posted by Luke Schierer under morality/religion, politics/law | Permalink | | Leave A Comment
In some sense Mr. Cal Thomas is correct: you cannot legislate morality, or effectively use government to enforce it.[1] Government is, however, not utterly disjoint from morality, as is seen with laws against murder, which is an enforcement of morality, and yet one that no one really objects to (except perhaps murderers). While he admits that government can do some things, I wonder how much he really understands the role it plays in shaping society. Do I agree with the FCC’s attempts to regulate broadcast? No, they are not really my favorite, and we are seeing just how ineffective such regulation can be. Still, is there any doubt that the media would be worse without them? I think not, it seems to be well known that the state of European broadcast, like European culture, is filledwith even more filth. As flawed as the movie rating system is, I think that fear of increased government regulation has prevented it from being even less effective, from being dropped, and credit must be given where credit is due.
Yes, the Church would absolutely be more effective in spreading its message if each Christian household, or even a significant majority of them conformed more fully to its, their, ideals. But to try to reform just the Church going without attempting to reform the society they live in would be nearly impossible. Last night mom and I were talking about schools again, and she was saying that we need campus ministries for each of the public schools. I disagreed. The answer is not to try to bring faith into the schools, but to bring the children out of them. Let the children see that there is more to learn than the philosophies of their teachers. I said that a campus ministry would not change the fact that we now have ten year olds committing sex crimes,[2] and getting sex education. Mom responded that with what they see on TV, perhaps they need sex education. I disagree. Is the rightanswer to equip a ten year old to handle what he sees on TV and in the movies today, or to shelter him from such content? And how can we adequately do that without trying to change society? Sure, you can simply not turn on the TV much at home, but what aboutwhen he goes to a friend’s house? Are you going to regulate who he can visit to only let him go to the houses with like-minded parents? You could, but is that a reasonable approach? Is it not better forus as well as them, if the unnecessary sexual content simply is not in all the television, all the movies? And why notwork to reform the culture?
Yes, we are called to worry more about our own sins than those of our neighbors. But that does not excuse us of the need, the requirement, to be active in society. Our own imperfection does not excuse us of the need, the requirement, to decry what is wrong. Indeed, our own improvement cannot be achieved without taking our beliefs to the public square, living them, and acting on them. We must work to improve the world around us even as we work to improve ourselves.
[1] http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/ct20050620.shtml
[2] http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=qw1119357720368B256
2 Responses to “No man is an island”
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One thing is certain — legislating morality is wrong because it’s both impractical and hypocritical. If all have sinned, how could we punish sin? We’d have to punish everyone.
And you are completely backwards — you don’t reform society to reform the church, you reform the church to reform society. Or so Jesus thought. But what’d he know? ;-p
I did not say to reform the Church by reforming society. I said that attempting to reform the Church and meanwhile ignoring society would, and is, proving to be an impossible task.
You cannot ignore the larger society that we are embedded in if you want to achieve true reform of Christian lives. This does not mean that Christians are justified in doing whatever simply because it is acceptable to the larger society. We are called to a higher standard. But it does mean that we must work to bring the standards of society to be more nearly in line with our own standards.