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Ron Writes

Wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a better world? Wouldn’t it be nice if all our leaders were great examples of morality and virtue? As a child I memorized “righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34). What a different world we’d live in if everyone followed the “golden rule” and loved God and loved their neighbor as themselves.

There should be a law against that. There was a time in my life when I sought for moral solutions through politics. Not anymore. Laws and morality may never line up. Outlawing immorality doesn’t cause us to be moral. Just as making something legal doesn’t make it moral, ethical, or right. It still causes me to bristle when I hear a politician ask me to support something immoral or unethical. But I’ve learned that there is something more powerful than politics.

I need to remember that my commission as a Christian is not to make laws or change laws, but to change hearts. I’m to preach the gospel. The idea of using politics to accomplish spiritual change is misguided to say the least. There’s still that idea that we should be a Christian nation. There has only ever been one Christian nation and it’s the church! If we want true change, it will never happen through politics or force, but by obedience to the gospel. It is the only power that can turn hearts back to God. This doesn’t mean that we should be silent about racial discrimination, abortion, sexual sins, addiction, or the myriad of other sins that cause so much pain and human destruction. What it does mean is that we recognize the need to emphasize the love, mercy and grace of God displayed by Jesus’ death on the cross.

For example, that overwhelmed, confused, and scared woman who thinks she has solved her “problem” by abortion may at some point feel the overwhelming burden when she realizes she has destroyed the life of her unborn child. In her great guilt and sorrow, she needs to hear the message of hope in Jesus. There is forgiveness for her sin too by the blood of Jesus.

And let’s not forget that the same biblical passages that condemn sexual sins also condemns strife, enmity, bitterness divisiveness, slander, and such. These sins not only eat away at the peace of our communities but find their way into the Lord’s church and destroy its unity. It’s the change of heart brought by God’s spirit that we need. Against such there is no law.