Posted on 08/15/2002 12:34:27 PM PDT by CubicleGuy
(Delivered at the World Conference of the International Society for Individual Liberty in San Jose, Costa Rica, August 24, 1999)
Earlier this summer, our Southern Baptist Pastor and I were playing golf. In our usual discussion of the freedom Christians have in Christ, we turned our attention to the troubling and divisive issue of abortion. Almost in the middle of my backswing-which should tell you how seriously we take our golf-he stated that, in his opinion, government was an agent of immorality by allowing abortions to happen. I stopped my backswing, turned to him, and asked a question that he has still not answered. If that is true, I said, is God also an agent of immorality because He too allows abortions to happen?
That simple encounter, involving one of the most grace-oriented, non-legalistic pastors I have ever known, captures the essence of what Linda and I want to discuss today, the reconciliation of our Christian and libertarian principles. While the logic of this reconciliation is abundantly clear to us, we are motivated to share it with you by two separate but connected concepts prevalent in the world today.
The first is the unfortunately large and vastly increasing use by Christians of the force of government to promote their Christian ideals. Thus, the religious left, driven by Christ's request to feed the hungry, uses the coercive power of government to redistribute wealth, to take property by force from those who have to give it to those who have not. By the same token, the religious right, equally driven by Christ's admonition to "go and sin no more," uses the force of government to define and, then, dictate morality. Force is, of course, completely anathema to the understanding libertarian, and it is not our purpose to convince libertarians that the use of force for either of these purposes is wrong. You already get it. But it is our purpose to help Christians understand that the use of force, even in the name of Christ, is contrary to the teachings of Christ and, ultimately, contrary to God's greatest gift to Man: freedom.
Second, we have, sadly, discovered that there is a great deal of fear and dread surrounding the interconnectiveness of these two groups. Christians, who do not understand the freedom they have in and because of Christ, reject libertarianism as the instrument of immorality. Meanwhile, libertarians frequently reject Christianity as an inflexible set of rules and regulations that stifle and destroy the human spirit, crushing all human freedom beneath its heel of intolerance. Members of each group frequently view the principles of the other as inconsistent and incompatible with their own views.
Properly understood, nothing is further from the truth. And, since both libertarians and Christians seek the truth, our mission is to convince the world that both groups seek and serve the same truth: freedom. While we do not and never would contend that all libertarians must be Christians, we do believe that all Christians can and should be libertarians.
Interestingly, if we were a group of Christians, establishing the baseline of understanding would be much more difficult and take much more time. The diversity of opinion within the Christian body, even on core principles, is great. That is not the case, however, with libertarians. There is an almost universal appreciation and understanding of the core libertarian principles. But, so that we can be sure we are talking the same language, and so that you, as libertarians, may see that we are not watering down our libertarianism in order to make it compatible with Christianity, let us spend just a few minutes agreeing on our core principles.
Freedom and rights are inseparable. As one of America's founding fathers put it, "Liberty is the sun and rights are its beams." Rights are the implementation of freedom, yet rights decide only one issue. They decide who gets to decide. Rights do not concern themselves with the merits of the decision, whether it is good or bad, moral or immoral, appropriate or inappropriate. Rights merely tell us, in a situation where two or more individuals have competing claims to something, which of the two people gets to decide. For example, if I own a piece of jewelry (that is, I have a property right in it) and Linda wants to wear it, I possess the right so I get to decide whether she gets to wear it. The person with the right decides.
That is the power of rights. They are supreme, they are the trump card. Linda's desire to wear my jewelry must yield to my right to decide. Everything must yield to rights: desires, wants, hopes, expectations, even needs. Rights rule.
Another characteristic of rights is that they do not concern themselves with the consequences of the decision. Choices have consequences because freedom has risks. But, my recognition of someone's right to do something does not make me part of or responsible for the decision the other person makes with his right. If bad consequences flow from his decision, he and he alone is responsible. Thus, rights breed responsibility and accountability while eliminating opportunities for shifting blame. Again, a simple example.
If Linda owns a spring and Bill needs some of her water to live, she has the right to decide whether to let Bill have any of her water. If I do nothing while Linda chooses to withhold her water from Bill, neither Bill nor I are responsible for Bill's ensuing death. We merely honored Linda's right to decide and she alone bears the responsibility for her decision. Rights did not kill Bill and neither did my respect for and honoring of Linda's right. Her decision killed Bill, not her right to decide.
But, says the non-libertarian, what of Bill's right to life? Didn't Linda's refusal to give Bill water deprive Bill of his right to life? The answer is yes, but for a very important reason. Once Linda exercised her right to decide by refusing to give Bill water, the only way Bill or I or anyone else can get Bill the water he needs to maintain his life is to use force against Linda. And libertarians abhor the initiation of force even more than they abhor Bill's death. Let there be no mistake: force can and does overcome rights. But, force should never be initiated to implement rights. Thus, while Bill had a right to life, his right to that life can not be fulfilled by violating Linda's right to decide and forcing her to give him water any more than force can be used to take one of Linda's kidneys because Bill needs a kidney transplant. Admittedly, force can be used to protect and preserve the right to decide from force, but force can never be used to fulfill rights.
Unfortunately, in today's world, where the currency of rights has been devalued by the creation of positive rights, all systems of governments in the world are premised upon the use of force to deprive one person of a negative right (the right to decide) in order to supply another person with a positive right (the right to a thing). Thus, returning to our first example, my right to decide how and when my piece of jewelry is used is violated in order to fulfill Linda's positive right to a certain minimum standard of jewelry-enhanced beauty. On a more realistic level, your positive right to food deprives me of my negative right to decide how my crop (or my money) is utilized while my positive right to health care deprives you of your negative right to decide how, when and for what purpose your property is used. Positive rights destroy negative rights.
Positive rights depend upon force for their fulfillment and are, therefore, not real rights. Negative rights do not depend upon the initiation of force; they depend merely upon others respecting and honoring the right to decide. The rise of positive rights has cheapened negative rights, making the real rights harder to identify and defend. The creation of positive rights has also given rise to the most ludicrous perversion of rights: the use of force to fulfill those rights.
And, now, we reach the crux of the matter. Force is immoral. The use of force to achieve an objective, any objective, deprives the result of any morality at all. It degrades and demeans both the objective and the result. Compelled charity is no charity; coerced faith is no faith; enforced morality is no morality. The use of force is wrong, immoral and, in today's world, on the rise. And Christians are leading the charge. God help me, they are, and by doing so they are doing violence to God's plan for man, perverting the basic element of God's relationship with man, his free will.
For those who are counting, that is twice that I have suggested that freedom is the core element in God's plan for man. It is now time for me to defend that premise, and I will. But, two quick caveats are required first. This is not the speech for proving the existence of God; it assumes the existence of God. For those of you who do not share that belief, remember that this speech and our book is intended to make Christians comfortable with liberty. Critique it in that context. Second, there is a school of Christianity (and others) that believes everything is predestined. In that case, our approach has nothing to offer for neither secular freedom nor God's freedom is particularly important. We reject that theory and begin with the question, "What is the essence of Christianity?"
John 3:15-16 provides the answer: "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." Thus, we become right with God and enter into His grace when we, by faith, believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, as the Savior of the world who died on the Cross for our sins and as the one who rose from the dead in order to give us everlasting life. That is the essence of Christianity.
But, on this core function of Christian theology--who is saved and who is not--God leave the issue entirely to man. God knows that faith cannot be forced any more than love can be coerced. The single most important thing to God-that man love and believe in Him-he leaves to man, to man's choice, to man's freedom. God does not compel love or faith; He leaves man alone to come to his own conclusion, his own decision. He gives man the freedom, the right, to decide for himself. It is the ultimate personal decision.
With the single exception recounted in chapter 3 of Genesis, where God said that man must not be allowed to eat of the tree of life and He physically made it impossible for man to do so, the entire Bible is a story of God giving man freedom to decide. God set rules, yes, but he gave man the complete freedom to obey or not. Sure there were consequences for disobedience, but we already established that every choice has consequences. That is part of the essential nature of freedom. Thus, Noah could have refused to build the Ark, Abraham could have refused to circumcise his entire family, and Lot's wife could have kept looking forward. No one forced her to turn around.
The life of Jesus is another perfect example of biblical freedom. Jesus possessed the ultimate freedom. He could have avoided the Cross. At any moment during his arrest, questioning, beating, and crucifixion, Jesus could have brought the entire process to a stop. He could have avoided it all. As he said in rebuking Peter for drawing his sword in his defense, "Do you think that I cannot call on my Father and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels." (Mt 26:53). The man who healed the sick, raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, and could call upon twelve legions of angels could have escaped, could have changed Pilate's mind, could have vanished into thin air, could have done any number of things to avoid his crucifixion. But he didn't.
We also know that he did not want to go to the Cross. He prayed for God to take that particular cup away. But, he loved God and wanted to do God's will rather than his own: thus he chose to proceed. He exercised his freedom by choosing to do as God wanted, not as He wanted. Possessing the absolute power and freedom to do whatever he wanted, Jesus Christ voluntarily and freely chose to die on the Cross for God and for man. He decided.
What role did the rules and regulations of God, the Law, play in Jesus' exercise of his freedom to decide? Jesus said in Matthew 5:7 that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. He did so, in every particular, in every way. In order for his death to be the ultimate punishment for all our sins, he had to be blameless and pure. He had to be perfect and without sin because we are neither. But, his perfect adherence to the Law earned him nothing on earth: no pardon, no stay of execution, nothing. The Law was irrelevant to Christ's freedom.
And that is why the Bible tell us that the Law was crucified on the Cross with Jesus, that Chris abolished the Law in his flesh, that the Law lacks any value, that the Law is weak and useless, that the Law is destined to perish, and that the Law is a curse. Romans 3:20 tells us that adherence to the law makes no man righteous in God's sight. Galatians 2:16 reminds us that no man is justified by observing the law. Man is reconciled to God solely by exercising his freedom to believe in a particular way. No man comes to God by adhering to God's Law.
And man's law is no more effective, especially when it is used as an instrument to force God's Law upon man. Unfortunately, that is how man's law is used most often today, especially in the States.
That was not always the case. Jefferson emphasized in the Declaration of Independence that governments are instituted among men to secure the blessings of liberty. George Will recently said that governments exist to secure our freedoms, not our happiness. In short, governments exist to protect freedoms. Included in these freedoms that government should protect is the freedom to do as God wants because we voluntarily choose to, not because we are forced.
For instance, when Jesus said to feed the hungry, he did not add that you should go to Caesar and get a law passed requiring all your neighbors to give money to the government so that the hungry could be fed. It was a personal and intimate request of you, out of love for him, to voluntarily and freely feed the hungry. How you respond is up to you. When Jesus said to the woman caught in adultery, "Go and sin no more", he did not follow that up by hiring a lobbyist to get the Roman Senate to pass a law ensuring that lady's future conduct. It was, again, an intimate and personal request, and compliance was based upon the yearnings of the heart, upon the love of Christ. How she, and we, respond is up to us. We have the freedom to decide, a very libertarian notion.
How, then, do we live? What guides our conduct? The apostle Paul provides the perfect answer in 1 Corinthians 10:23 and 31. In verse 23 he writes that all things are lawful for you. That means that nothing is unlawful, that there are no laws. Thus, there are no rules, regulations, restrictions, or prohibitions. But, he continues in verse 31, "whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." Each of us needs to have the power to decide for ourselves, for without that power of decision we can not make the decision that glorifies God. Without freedom, I can not choose to believe in God and I can not make the decision or choice that will glorify God. If I feed the hungry by paying my taxes out of fear of going to jail if I don't, there is no glory for God. There is just fear and force. If I don't commit adultery because I am afraid of going to jail rather than because God has asked me not to, there is no glory for or love of God. There is just fear and force.
When government reduces my freedoms to choose, government diminishes the opportunities I have to glorify God by voluntarily and freely choosing the option most pleasing to God. I must be free to not hire, not serve, not sell to and, even, hate a black man, a disabled person and/or a Christian. I must be free to kill myself, ingest drugs, eat red meat, and drink myself into a drunken stupor. I must be free to fornicate my brains out with as many creatures as are willing. I must be free to keep and/or spend my property, including my money, as I see fit. I must have all these freedoms so that I can decide, so that I can choose not to do these things, so that by choosing not to do these things I can honor and glorify God. Government destroys freedom of choice, and in the process, government destroys my opportunity to please God.
Let us end with one final thought. God knows we are sinners and that we will make the wrong choices many times. Returning, finally, to answer the question I asked my golfing pastor, that does not, however, make God an agent of immorality. It makes Him an agent of freedom, and if God allows each of us to be free, why can't we allow each other to be free? If freedom is good enough for God, why isn't it good enough for us?
In other words, Christians who use methods of coercion to force their fellow man to "be good" are at least as immoral as their neighbor may be assumed to be.
What a pile! This post fails to recognise that scripture clearly states that God created government. Scripture also states that government positions are created by God to punish evil doers. Is the author going to please God with more drug use?
No, the authors are going to please God by freely choosing good over evil, instead of being coerced into it, and by allowing others to freely choose good over evil, instead of coercing them into it.
Both you and the article's author are confused about this. Compulsory belief is immoral. No one can force someone else to believe something, or to say they believe something. But when a moral atrocity occurs, such as Jews being led to the gas chambers in the Holocaust, moral people are compelled to act. Activist Christians, who would like to ban abortion (because they see it as a true moral evil), are not trying to force everyone to believe as they do. They are simply trying to use the tools available to them (and everyone else), that is, the media, persuasive argument, democratic representation in the government, to ban the gruesome procedure. This is a democracy. If such a ban conforms to the rules of our democracy and the Constitution (it doesn't now, but it will in the future), then all's fair and square.
God gives man free will, and hopes that man will not use such to commit acts of great evil. Unfortunately, man does. God tries to help us come over to the right side - which is why he sent his Son to this earth.
All our prohibitionist laws are based on moral concepts (laws against murder, stealing, lying in court, rape, child abuse, etc.). Not everyone agrees on all of these. (Bill Clinton thinks it's OK to lie in court if it's about sex. - Some people feel 12-year olds should be allowed to have sex with adults.) Christians would like to add abortion to the above list. That's their right.
But He does not force us to come over to the right side.
You're right. But He expects us to fight evil.
But maybe I'm mistaken...
... so long as we do not use coercive methods in that fight. Everyone must be left free to choose.
God gave Adam and Eve the free choice to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He commanded them not to eat of it, and put a death penalty on the breaking of this command. (Gen 2:17)
God gave people the freedom to choose a righteous or a wicked lifestyle. Most chose a wicked lifestyle. God then flooded the world, killing all but Noah and his family. (Gen 7)
God repeatedly gave Israel the choice to obey Him or not. When they did not, they always suffered the consequences from His hand. (Deut 30:15 ff)
Sometimes it was a plague. More often it was the nearby nations that would be the instruments of God's divine judgement. But throughout history, it has been clear: God makes the law, and God brings His judgement down upon transgressions of that law. (It is only by His mercy that the judgement of my transgressions has been visited upon an innocent sacrifice.)
So, if you want government to deal with people the way that God deals with them, we need 1) laws that establish righteous behavior, and 2) certain punishment for transgressions of that law. If this is compulsory morality, then you'll have to take your objections to God, since that is the way He has dealt, and still deals, with people.
Or do you think that Hell is just a myth?
And if you use tradition, you can now teach child abuse.
That is correct. He told them what the consequences of a wrong choice would be, but still allowed them the freedom of making the wrong choice.
Same for the people at the time of Noah.
Same for the Israel.
I've never said that one is free to choose without the possibility of negative consequences.
But not all sins should be crimes. My church, for example, thinks that smoking tobacco and drinking coffee and tea is not a good idea. Should I be allowed to put people in jail for having a cup of coffee in the morning?
Very often, bad choices result naturally in negative consequences. If a parent leaves a child, by accident, in a closed-up car on a hot day, and the child dies, should that parent be punished in addition to suffering the death of her child?
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