Morality, law can't be separated

You can’t legislate morality.

Maybe you’ve heard that said, or said it yourself, when a conversation turned toward a prominent moral / political / societal issue. There is a sense in which the statement is perfectly true. There is another sense in which it represents a gross failure to grasp the point.

In what sense is it true that you can’t legislate morality? It’s true that no law enacted by any government has the ability to sink down into the human heart and bring light to the darkness.

Anti-discrimination laws, for instance, have zero power to eliminate racist attitudes. They can only hope to change outward behavior by the threat of punishment. No law can turn a bad person into a good person.

However, I hear the phrase used differently. When I hear that you can’t legislate morality, it’s normally used as a substitute for, “Christianity should have no influence on civil government.” Or maybe it’s meant to signal that our laws should be as secular as possible.

What is routinely missed is that these sorts of declarations are themselves moral imperatives. To say that our laws “should” or “shouldn’t” do this or that is to make a moral claim. Suggesting that secular humanism provides a preferable basis for civil government in comparison to any particular theistic belief is a value judgment — a moral judgment.

The truth is that all legislation, every ridiculous, meticulous, tyrannical bit of it, is the product of someone’s personal beliefs about right and wrong; about how people should or shouldn’t act; and, what society ought to do about it.

Someone’s religious and moral opinions are calling the shots, at all times. This is inescapable.

The question is not whether morality should dictate what our government legislates. The question is whose morality is currently being codified into law? Is there any coherence to it, or any reason why I, as a Christian man, should think it is superior to the commands of God?

Secularism is not a philosophy of religious neutrality. It is based on positive assumptions about the nature of reality, the world, humanity, deity, and ethics. It must presuppose the non-existence of God and of objective morality. It is not neutral toward all religions, but is itself a competing worldview.

Interestingly, in the 1961 case, Torcaso v. Watkins, the Supreme Court described secular humanism as a religion.

So when someone says, “You can’t legislate morality,” as a way of commending secularism in government, it’s really an endorsement of a particular, non-theistic religious theory. There is no neutrality. All laws are written because of someone’s thoughts about right and wrong; and those sorts of thoughts are inescapably religious in nature.

Someone’s morality is definitely being legislated. If the one, true God is not our lawgiver, some false god is.

Psalm 119:97-99 says, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.”

May our hearts beat in tune with this confession.

Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:

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