American Christians are very active participants in the American character, for both good and ill. There is no real need to rehearse the blessings which come from this because we are all probably more aware of our virtues than we need to be. But one of the problems we have is the tendency to moralize with a club, a propensity we share with most of our fellow citizens who are unbelievers. We have a deep prohibitionist streak, and no reluctance to call for stiff regulations and penalties. From the point where we find that we disapprove of something, it is a small step in our minds to the conviction that “there oughta be a law.” We appear to be constitutionally incapable of distinguishing sins and crimes.
On the contrary side, if someone is foolish enough to disapprove of any proposed restrictive measures against anything, it is routinely assumed that he lustily approves of whatever the targeted activity is. When the hounds of righteousness are in full-throated pursuit of any public sin or ickiness, it is perilous not to join in the chase. These civic bloodhounds currently have the tobacco companies up a tall pine tree, and while some aesthetic satisfaction can be gained from the spectacle of Phillip Morris staring down at us like a concerned possum, there really are some deeper issues at stake.
Do we really want to outlaw everything we don’t like? What is the end of this sort of thinking?
The Bible teaches us that when the traditions of men gain this sort of sway over our minds, we are a small step away from setting aside the commandments of God for the sake of those traditions. The anti-alcohol crusade of the temperance movement of the nineteenth century (which incidentally wasn’t really all that temperate), provides a good example of this. A willingness to turn sins into crimes will always end up with a willingness to turn not-sins into crimes. The spectacle of an ATF anti-alcohol SWAT team crashing the wedding at Cana ought to be sufficient to make the chilling point.
Civic liberty does not fall unannounced from the sky. The history of our culture since the time of the Reformation shows us repeatedly that our people learned important lessons in civil liberty in the nursery of the Church. But these lessons cannot be learned “once for all” by one generation, with no need for subsequent generations to study and learn. The loss of the reformational understanding of the law and gospel in the church created a vacuum which was quickly filled with man-made laws and gospels. The result was unvarnished moralism and ethical gnat-strangling — quite different really from the fruit of the Spirit.
One of the unintended results of this legalism and officiousness in the church has been the loss of a crucial training ground. If men and women do not learn how to live as free men and women before the Lord Jesus Christ, then where will they learn it? Certainly not from those who stand to gain enormous political power from our fussy little crusades. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. When the Spirit is grieved by elder boards packed with schoolmarms, liberty disappears along with any understanding of what true liberty even is. And when we have lost this understanding in the community of saints, we are dreaming to think we can find it anywhere else.
We like to think that what we call “Christian liberty” is important solely for the sake of personal relationships. “Don’t get on your brother for doing this and that. Your friendship might suffer if you do.” This personal element is certainly important, but far greater issues are at stake. Obedient or disobedient, the Christian church has a potent effect on the non-believing world, on our surrounding culture. Not to put too fine a point on it, we are becoming slaves of men in the political realm because we do not care enough about understanding liberty in the Church. Freedom frightens us. In our churches we have trained ourselves to submit to laws and decrees which cannot be justified from the Bible, and which in many cases are directly contrary to the Bible. Legalistic diploma in hand, we head out into the world to apply what we have learned.
Another difficulty with this whole tangle should be remembered. We all know enough of the Bible to disapprove of “legalism,” because we all know that legalism is bad. None of us got the idea while growing up through Sunday School that the Pharisees were the righteous ones. So if an article such as this one kept the issue general enough, we could easily get near universal applause from confessing Christians. Ministers know they can get a lot of preaching done if they are content to thunder vagaries. And if Jesus had only mentioned the traditions of men without getting into the particulars, He would not have generated the hostility He did.
We stumble over Christian liberty in the particulars. Do we approve of Joe Camel? Of course not. Camels stink bad enough without the tobacco smoke. The potency of modern advertising is nowhere better demonstrated than through its success making a camel an icon of worldly sophistication. (!) So why make the point? Christian liberty has been learned when a man can heartily dislike something, and yet, where the Bible is silent, refuse to legislate.