We’re coming into another political year, where voting decisions are causing high tension for many of us. One thing I continue to see play out this year, as four years ago, is the right-wing decision to play morality as a votable choice. The right takes a so-called “moral high ground” with issues like gay marriage, the practice of other faiths, and abortion. Expecting government to enforce moral decision, takes away moral choice, and thereby negates the benefit of action.
Consider the stories about “Vlad the impaler.” It is said he wished to create a culture so obedient to moral law that one could leave a purse of gold in a public courtyard, and none would dare steal from it. To create such a world, Vlad the Impaler is said to have gone at great lengths to torture and kill people for the most infinitesimal of issues. One story tells how a man appeared in the court of Vlad the Impaler, and Vlad looked at his tattered clothes. “Why do you come to me in such poor attire,” asks the tyrant. “My wife hasn’t donned my clothing,” the scared beggar retorts. To which Vlad has the man’s wife brought before him, and thereby orders her to be skinned alive as punishment.
In such a world as Vlad the Impaler, people did obey. The punishments were far too extreme and the people lived in abject fear. But their obedience, their moral conduct, does it count towards one’s spiritual reward? A robot can be programmed to “not steal” or “not cuss” but such obedience doesn’t deem it “spiritual.” Likewise a person may not steal for fear of having their arms cut off, but such obedience isn’t to God.
When we try and force morality through government, we are acting in a similar way to Vlad the Impaler. We are trying to force people into compliance with a set of rules we may personally believe in, yet who benefits? Does God look upon such a society and say, “what good believers they are?” Of course not. They aren’t free to make their moral choice. A population must be free to make their choices.
Government’s role is largely to insure the safety of its subjects. This in itself may be debatable from law to law (does building a border wall really protect?) Morality laws, based on a religious dogma, shouldn’t be attempted because they lead to massive problems in the past. The reason for separating church and state, was not due to atheism, but for the issues when governments were lead by theocracies. Consider the reign of “Bloody Marry” and her counterparts. They struck out at each other, killing thousands, because of religious ideological differences. Or consider King Henry VIII’s murder of his wives, because of the religious injunction against divorce.
Allowing ethics and morality to be the center of the religious and government to focus on fiscal and policies of protection, allows each to work in their own wheelhouse.
Keep in mind, America was never a “Christian nation,” as some would have you believe – as the Bible was against rebellion in any way whatsoever, issuing the decree, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.” The nation established by the early Americans was born of that “sin of witchcraft.” It was blood on the hands of people who simply didn’t want to pay taxes to a government they felt didn’t fully represent them. How Godly is that? It’s born of the loins of materialism.
I know it’s hard to see the light, when one has been forced to see the false light of fake Christianity for so long, yet it is vital that we each investigate the depths of our being and know what is real and what is true. God is not wanting a nation enforcing its moral laws. Such activities create automatons who obey without any choice, and thereby do not find freedom through their respective faiths. Such is the work of tyranny.
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