After returning to the United States from many years in
India I’ve noticed some changes. One was an increase in the number of laws and
rules. Recently, a lawyer friend said, “You
get new officials elected, and they feel they have to do something. So they
make new laws. Then another group comes in, and they make more laws. We’re
getting really technical.”
With the passing of each law we lose a little bit of our
freedom. We become more “technical.”
By law, in Pennsylvania, I must stop for a pedestrian at a
crosswalk. Good law, right? Absolutely. But for me, I feel stripped of the
opportunity to do the right thing.
Now there is no virtue in stopping. It’s the law. I’m penalized if I don’t
stop. My freedom to choose to do right is now legislated.
I’m not against the law or authority. We need laws. I happily stop at
crosswalks. But more laws = less freedom and less personal responsibility. Nearly
everything in life is governed by rules, policies, regulations, and
conventions. It's the fabric of reality.
There are traffic laws. Mathematical laws. Natural laws. Football
and basketball have rules. Mom and dad usually had some do’s and don’t’s. The
state tells you what to do. The Federal government has laws. The TSA officials
have rules. Nightclubs have rules. Restaurants are regulated and their employees have
procedures. Banks have rules. There are patent laws, visa rules, and unspoken
social taboos. Prisons have rules. Schools have rules. Universities have rules.
Congress has rules. Judges have rules. The military, ditto. Even gangs have rules.
Some sort of “rule of order” seems to be constant.
Why?
Certainly the need for order is part of it. In society with
billions of free-willed people, there has to be some agreement on what is
acceptable and what is not. Even natural laws like gravity bring security to us. I can count on gravity, the freezing point of water, etc. If you try to break these, they break you. Do laws create security in us?
What’s behind it all? The Bible tells of God initiating a law to Adam and Eve. “… of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat…”[1]
That was quite possibly the first law. It forced a response by the first couple. That's what laws do.
I suggest God is the Basis of law, both moral and natural.
He had no source, outside Himself, to refer to in giving the law. His Law is based on His
own character. Has he placed that in our being too? Thousands of years later David said, “Thy Law is within my heart”[2]
Can it be that the inevitability of rules demonstrate God's character and our likeness to Him?
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