I hope your first response was, “That’s dumb!”  I hope you quickly dismissed that idea and said, “You cannot legislate morality.”  I hope you did, but I am cognizant that there are myriads of voting aged people who believe that is possible.  Millions believe the government can fix any problem existing by more legislation.  Sadly, there are scores in Congress that believe that too. 

I am going to address this from my Christian mindset, my understanding of human nature, and the outworking of government.  In Ezekiel 34, God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel and instructed him to prophesy against the spiritual leaders (shepherds) and call them out for amassing their fortunes, building their empires, and neglecting the flock of God.  That could readily be applied to members of Congress and other sectors of society.

A scathing declaration is found in (vv.3-6), “You eat the fat and clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat sheep without feeding the flock. 4 “Those who are sickly you have not strengthened, the diseased you have not healed, the broken you have not bound up, the scattered you have not brought back, nor have you sought for the lost; but with force and with severity you have dominated them. 5 “And they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field and were scattered. 6 “My flock wandered through all the mountains and on every high hill, and My flock was scattered over all the surface of the earth; and there was no one to search or seek for them.”

In the previous chapter, the LORD informed the prophet that his responsibility and calling was to be a Watchman and to sound the alarm when evil and danger approached.  In America today, the church has been fragmented and far too many shepherds have abandoned or forgotten that their call is to be watchmen and to tend the flock of God.  The watchmen are not sounding the alarm, and some are calling evil good and good evil.  Because of the silence, complicity, and deception, I believe that Judgment is either on or impending for the Church and then it will be on the world.

It is time that keepers of the flocks of God and elected officials get back to the basics.  Preachers, it is time that we return to the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ and preach the precepts and principles of God’s Word.  It is time that we recognize the Holiness of God. We must rekindle awareness of the requirement that God’s people are to live holy lives and live as examples of righteousness, rather than seeking to assimilate with the world.  We are to be salt and light not corrupted by the corruption of the world.  We are to be those with answers, not those creating problems.  We must return to ‘Seeking First, the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.’

There is no law, no legislation, no politician, and no political edict that can solve the problems in America.  The root of the problems facing our society is in the heart and the heart can only be changed by God.  Things may get better or worse, depending on one’s perspective, via the pathway of legislation, but the heart has not changed.  We may prevent someone from committing certain acts and become compliant with the demands of the law, but we have not solved the problem.  We may stop them from doing evil, but if evil is in their heart, they are still evil and given the opportunity will act out that evil.  We put a band-aid on cancer we did not bring healing. 

We cannot solve the problems of humanity by making people who are not like us the enemy.  That solves nothing.  Lamenting over the injustices existent or that we have incurred solves nothing, it only ferments in the heart and produces hate and deepens the wounds.  Only God can change the heart and until the heart is transformed the problem remains as a seething caldron.  Only as we Seek God with Our Whole Hearts can we hope to bring about the desired change in our world. 

In Romans 12 we find a powerful truth that I wish I could make all politicians, political activists, and religious leaders embrace.  I can make no one do anything but I can expound on the truth and hope it resonates.  I can sound the alarm and make the plea, hoping it takes root and produces fruit for this and future generations.

The writer, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reminds us in (v.4), that we many parts in the human body and the family of God.  He brings to mind that although there are many different parts each part has a part (function).  In the human body, each part has a role to play and beneficial to the other parts.  The feet have a role, the eyes have a function, the nose is essential, and even the armpits have a purpose.  In the human family, we are all created in the image of God and that makes us related. 

We may be of different skin pigmentation, ethnicity, religious belief, or political ideology but we are all members of the Human Family.  We can, as does the natural body, benefit from the input and function of the other members if we will allow for working together.  Legislation cannot achieve that!

The insanity of what is happening today in our American politics is beyond ridiculous.  We have opted to choose sides and make those not ascribing to our personal views the enemy.  Sadly, some not only consider those who differ their enemy by worthy of annihilation and in need of ‘deprogramming’ or ‘reprogramming’. 

We have made our personal grievances more important than the Republic.  We have lost sight of the founding principles our Republic was established upon. That being, “All are created equal and granted certain unalienable or inalienable rights by God.”  If we compared various parts of the body as ethnicities, we could possibly see how destructive segregation and isolation is.  If the feet refused to acknowledge the hands, we would become incapacitated.  The feet cannot do what the hands do nor the hands what the feet were designed to do but together they are a force to be reckoned with. If the lungs refused to cooperate with the heart, we would soon perish.  That can be applied to our ‘race relations’ in today’s America. 

The government, in the view of the founding fathers, was simply a very generalized pursuit of common security.  They even expressed that the government was, at best, a necessary evil because of the flaws of the human heart.  They distrusted anyone politician who sought power through the government, rather than serving their fellow citizens and they implicitly distrusted and rejected them.  We should do the same today.

Alexander Hamilton in a speech before Congress on June 21, 1788, said, “It has been observed by an honorable gentleman, that a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved, that no position in politics is more false than this. The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”

Thomas Jefferson declared in a letter to W.C. Jarvis  on September 28, 1820, “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them their discretion by education.”  That has been a failure on the part of modern government and education.  They have sought to indoctrinate, confuse, and control.  They have sought to take control from us and impose their will on us believing they are our benevolent benefactors.

The Human Heart is the Problem!  The need is for a return to moral principles taught in the Bible and allow God to change our hearts so that we are not selfish and self-serving but people who love life, liberty, and want everyone to enjoy happiness through their own ingenuity and accomplishments.  Divided we fall, united we stand, thrive, and survive.  What will we have?

God bless you and God bless America!