Can we legislate religion? Should we?

                What I have seen on both sides of the aisle is for people to legislate religion in the United States, or the lack thereof. I have seen people who want to create a theocracy for Christianity or Islam (which has been done and we see how well that works), or banish religion entirely. All of these views are flawed in my opinion. What I would like to do is to explore the idea of a theocracy, and what it would mean to try and legislate Christian values.

                A theocracy would mean that the church is practically in charge of the government. The Webster’s definition also includes God or deities as the head of government, which Israel had at first, but they went the way of judges and eventually kings. At first thought, one might now think that it wouldn’t be that bad, but I can see some problems, even as a Christian myself. This theocracy would have to rely on a person or people in charge, and if that person or group decided to use religion to progress his or her own agenda or to line their pockets, we wouldn’t get anything done. A lot of Christians that I know have a tendency to cherry pick scripture to feel good in some flawed decisions, and I don’t want a leader that can do that. Furthermore, scripture says that those who presume positions of leadership and teaching will be judged by a higher standard. Would we as Americans, want to take on that higher standard when our country is already on shaky ground as it is?

                Now we have our leadership that tries to use a religious argument to push laws through congress (looking at you Planned Parenthood de-funders). Not that I am against protecting all human life, but I think we need to have a multi-faceted approach to this. If we want to prevent abortions, we need to be funding pregnancy centers and reforming adoption policies such that children do not spend years feeling like they are not wanted. We need to be able to follow through with our scripture commandments all the way. We are too legalistic when it comes to relying on the law of scripture. Yes the law is there, but we are also called to love our fellow man. Yes homosexuality is a sin, but these are fellow men and women that we want to bring into the fold that is the family of Christ. We can tie our Bibles to sticks and beat people over the head with them, but where is the love and redemption that Christ offered us by taking those beatings for us?

                So can we legislate people to Christianity? Not even close. We are called to go forth and make disciples, not to go out and force our statesmen to do it for us. We need to show people that they have a better choice in Christianity than the hopelessness that they face in their day to day lives, not knowing where they will spend eternity. Christ came to give us that choice, coming as a servant and asking us to come and follow him, not a king demanding servitude. God bless and have a good rest of your day.