Civil Laws and a Christian Worldview
April 18th, 2008
Should Christians seek to impose their moral values on civil laws? Joe Carter over at “the evangelical outpost” thinks we should. In a piece entitled “Rainbows and Electric Chairs: A Christian View on Capital Punishment” he addresses “the moral legitimacy of state-imposed death. Are there any legitimate reasons for supporting the death penalty?”
“Personally,” he writes, “I believe that the Bible not only should be our primary guide on such questions but that it also provides sufficient answers.” He then goes on to define for us how Christian morality should rightly be the basis for civil government.
As a Christian I believe that many human institutions, including civil government, are divinely ordained and delegated a certain degree of authority and responsibility. While ultimately under God’s control, civil government is given a degree of sovereignty over certain spheres of human existence. One of the most important areas which government is ordained is in dispensing justice.
While no government is able to carry out this task perfectly, the more it conforms its view of justice with God’s moral law the more legitimate its authority and the more just the state will be.
Did you catch that? This is essentially the point I have previously been trying to make. Apart from divine wisdom man is incapable of discerning right from wrong. As the keepers of the secrets of God, believers have the necessary wisdom to enable society to craft just laws. Without the influence of Christian morality society has no basis for righteousness and justice.
In light of the Supreme Court debate earlier this week over whether or not the rape of children should be punishable by execution, Carter goes on to establish a biblical mandate for capital punishment.
After God destroyed mankind with a flood, he established a covenant with Noah, his family, and (most importantly for us) his descendants. Along with the promise that He would never destroy the earth by water again, God included this moral command:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” ( Genesis 9:6, ESV)
This verse not only provides a moral norm for capital punishment but delegates the responsibility to mankind (i.e., government) and limits it to a particular crime (murder). This sets a very narrow range of applicability. The rape of a child is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. But in the absence of a clear Biblical mandate to expand the penalty beyond murder, I do not believe we can justify including child-rape under the crimes that deserve death.
Carter is careful to conclude, “While I think the position outlined in this post is a Christian view on the death penalty, I do not want to be so bold as to say that it must be the position on this issue.”
