My Challenge to You in Post-Christian America

If we all made this commitment, we’d have a very different country.

If you’ve ever wondered how many laws are on the books in the United States, let me just tell you this — there are a lot. In 1982, the Justice Department set out to answer this question. It might interest you to know that they were able to identify “approximately” 3,000 criminal laws scattered across 23,000 pages of federal law. Unfortunately, there are so many they couldn’t say for sure. Mix in the thousands of state and local laws and regulations, and we wind up with a staggering number of laws. We’re talking tens of thousands. 

I’m just a C-plus man. But even I can see how having thousands upon thousands of laws hanging over our heads 24/7 might be a problem. If you spent too much time thinking about it, it might be the kind of thing to drive you off the deep end. With that many regulations staring us in the face, who could avoid accidently breaking the law at some point?

I suppose the point of all these laws is that we’re trying to keep people from doing wrong — from sinning. But let me ask you a very important question: How has that worked out for us? Are we better people? The problem with trying to legislate people out of sin is that mankind has an uncanny ability to do everything he can to skirt the law. We’re just simply too good at finding loopholes for our own good. As soon as we pass one law, someone finds a way to “legally” do an end-around on it, so we have to pass another one.    

Over 2,000 years ago, the Jewish leaders tried the same thing — to make man good by attaching thousands of man-made laws to the original law handed down to Moses. Like us, they were trying to legislate man into righteousness.

But they failed too because they didn’t know (or perhaps they had forgotten) how simple God’s commands were and replaced God’s law with a complicated legal code of their own — a legal code that grew larger and more burdensome every year. They thought they could improve on the simple law that God had already given them. The result? It wasn’t pretty.

A few religious leaders, who were also political leaders, boasted of their ability to keep their law (even though they didn’t keep God’s law). God intended for them to be gentle shepherds of his people, but they became callous, hateful, tyrannical leaders. Sadly, they used the law as a weapon, constantly reminding the “common folk” that they were guilty. What should have been a simple message from their heavenly Father was turned into a complicated system of laws.

THE LAW I LIVE BY? — IT’S REALLY SIMPLE

Here’s our problem: Living a good life and pleasing God isn’t really all that complicated. God gave Moses 10 simple commandments. Only 10! That shouldn’t be too hard, right? Then Jesus came along and simplified it even further. According to him, there were only two commandments that really mattered — to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. That’s it! Two commandments! According to Jesus, that’s all we need. (Matthew 22:36-40)

You might be surprised (since we live in a post-Christian America) that some of our founders agreed with Jesus on this point. John Adams, the second president of the United States, said as much:

Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God ... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.

I try to live a righteous life, but it’s not because of the thousands of federal, state, and local laws in force in 2022. Nope! I don’t need them! Not a one of them, because I strive to love God and to love my fellow man.

As a result of me loving God and my fellow man, you won’t find me stealing your vehicle or your woman. Whatever you own, no matter how valuable, is safe from me because I strive to obey these two simple laws: I love God, and I love you too much to do anything to harm you. Since I love God and my fellow man, I won’t murder you or pillage your stuff. It’s as simple as that. I make every attempt to filter all I do through those two very simple and basic principles.

The result is that I don’t walk around in a state of confusion about what is right and good. I’m clear minded about how I should live. Just love God and love my fellow man. 

A SIMPLE CHALLENGE

This is why I’m convinced that if America made a new commitment to obey God in just these two areas, we’d have a different country. No doubt about it, we’d be better than we are today. We can put our hope in politicians to lead the way, but any so-called leader who fails to point to the Greatest Command to love God and our fellow man will lead us in the wrong direction. 

That’s why I don’t put my hope in politicians. They claim they want to make things better, but they don’t really know how to be better themselves. Whenever I get a chance to speak to one of them, I remind them that we cannot just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps in order to be good. I simply point upward and remind them that only by loving God can we really be great.

You can choose to live your life in any way you please. Maybe loving God and your fellow man seems distasteful to you, but I can promise you this — I’m going with the time-tested challenge Joshua laid down before the Israelites some 3,300 years ago:

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD. (Joshua 24:15)

I made this commitment almost 50 years ago, and so far, God hasn’t let me down. So, I’m traveling with him the rest of the way, just doing my best to obey two simple laws — to love God and love my neighbor. It’s a very simple, uncomplicated life that I highly recommend. 

Image credit: Sharon Tate Soberon | CC BY-ND 2.0