Laws of the Land or Tyranny?

Recent research by yours truly indicated that our federal government keeps around 300,000 laws on the books. No one seems to know the exact count and it depends on whether you include bureaucratic rule-making which has the same effect as law, but without all the nuisance of legislative deliberations and voting. Add to this state, county, and city laws and the absurdly high count has never been completed. We are supposed to be a free people, but that freedom has been defined into a smaller and smaller corner by the ever-growing behemoth called civil government.

I read once of a Soviet law enforcer under Stalin who bragged that given enough laws he could jail anyone since every citizen broke numerous laws every day. Under this guise law is transformed from a means of securing the liberty of the people to a means of oppressing them. The laws of the state become a lever to separate morally upright men from their liberties. This, I think, is what we are experiencing today across what was once the sweet land of liberty.

Our entire idea of what genuine God-pleasing law is has been slowly warped away from the truth. We have grown up in an era when the only law we have experienced is the statute law of modernity. We sometimes bemoan the specifics of a given law (speed cameras, handgun licensing, daycare requirements etc. etc.), but we never think to compare the present systems with God’s legal system. We assume that the current state of affairs is normal and right, and have never been taught that there is an entirely different view of things. History flows by. Scripture becomes identified with ideas out-dated, and insufficient for a more sophisticated modern time. Our heads spin with modern nonsense, while never being challenged with concepts that are common to Scripture and were normal to our forefathers.

During the early years of our national existence there were very few state or federal statutes. Our courts were common law courts patterned after the English common law system. Common law courts are not set up to pass judgments based on state or federal statutes. Rather they are set up to decide guilt or innocence based on what is commonly known to be right or wrong. The court is supposed to be upholding moral society and moral behavior instead of upholding a slavish obedience to an ever-changing set of statute laws. Actually, the common law courts did pay attention to lawful statutes but they were God’s statutes. Scripture does refer to God’s laws as statutes. His statutes were given as the eternal law of right. They defined for all men exactly what is right, moral, and just. All other law was understood to be unjust, presumptuous, arrogant, and literally fake. Man-made statutes were never to have greater respect or authority than God’s laws. That would be preposterous.

When our faith begins to lose force in our society, then our Gods’ law begins to lose respect, understanding, and obedience from the people. As in all things, when Christian influence fades, then humanistic culture begins to prosper. As humanism prospers liberty begins to evaporate. We can no longer have common law courts because Christian ideals are no longer the common culture. Humanism is now common, and so we commonly act as humanists under man made statutes designed to contain us.

God’s short law (about 630 statutes many of which have no civil penalty) always defines what is unacceptable behavior and allows for freedom in all else. Man is essentially free. Under man’s law the bumbling tyrants try to define increasingly what is allowable. Freedom is what they say it is.

This week I spoke to a geologist in our area. He was working with a small group of investors to begin drilling a few gas wells. Having obtained state permits his group was informed by the county attorney that no wells could be drilled here. The reason given was that the county has no law on the books permitting gas drilling therefore it is illegal until the county passes a law allowing gas drilling. So, it is the new county perspective that you can only do what the county specifically passes laws to allow you to do. All else is illegal. In this case the investors are being informed that their $500,000.00 in paid permits from the state are now worthless because the county has not made gas drilling legal.

Man’s violent overthrow of God’s law and its underlying principles always ends in defeat for the proud men who embrace it. We think we have a better idea but do not see the ultimate direction or injustice of our actions. In this case it is the crushing of free enterprise, destruction of hard-earned capital, and a quash on badly-needed energy creation. In other situations across the land greater foolishness and injustices are being propounded daily, hourly. When we abandon Biblical legal principle it never leads to righteousness or moral dignity. We only suffer the grinding down of our very lives.

One of the ways we can begin to recapture our liberty is to turn back to God’s statutes and principles, Biblical courts, and moral law. These define the essence of righteous society and provide the basis for successful living. This is a key to the restoration of Christian civilization.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach