The Drudge Report is all resounding the alarm as the Supreme Court, for once in their oppressive existence, has overturned a Federal law. Except this law was the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that effectively allowed states to not recognize marriage licenses from other states. In essence, they are forcing other states to recognize marriage licenses that some states may find offensive.
Naturally, the marriage licenses in question are same-sex unions. But this has so many far-reaching consequences. What if one state decides that polygamy is all right? Or incestuous marriages? Or child brides?
As a Christian, I do not recognize same-sex marriages as real marriage, but a cheap imitation. You have to understand, though, that I do not recognize State-sanctioned marriages as nothing more than a cheap way for the State to claim some kind of moral authority.
This is generally where I break with many of my fellow captive Christians, who generally view the State and God as one, even if they don’t realize it consciously. The State is not God nor any form of deity. It is simply a collection of sinners who have a monopoly on the use of force and is allowed to exist so long as enough people out there believe they are necessary.
To allow a government, at any level, to dictate morality, especially in a representative democracy, is to circumvent God’s Will. He is the only one who can tell us what is right and what is wrong because God is Right and anything evil in this world is merely a direct violation of His Will.
So many Christians argue that we have to remain obedient to the State in some fashion or another. They say that the governments of this world are allowed to exist because of God’s Will. I argue that it is not God’s Will so much as it is mankind’s. You see, God loves us so much, he has his own self-imposed restrictions when interacting with us. He allows us our own free will to do good or evil. And while he could easily destroy us all or make us all robots who do His Will, He would rather we do it of our own volition.
Our modern government is run by, as Charlie Chaplin so eloquently put it in The Great Dictator, machine men with machine minds. They have no sense of morality, no love for their neighbors, and no wisdom to speak of whatsoever. Sure there are leaders within the government who are decent, upright, and honest, but they are few and far between. No one in Congress ever asks themselves if the bills they are voting for are constitutional. No one in the Federal Court system ever really considers the original intent of the Constitution when making judicial decisions. And the executive branch now claims the right to murder people without trial.
These are not people who should be looked to for moral guidance. These are people who should be spat upon, who should be shunned and abandoned, and who should be ignored. If the world were fair, such people would be left to die in a ditch alone and unwanted, even by the most pious man. They would be a byword among the people.
I ask you as a fellow human being to ask yourself: in the wake of all the laws that I could run afoul of and all the things that are considered legal, is legality really morality? Or is the true morality, the one that comes from God alone, what I should follow?