Is Religion Necessary?

I was checking out some of the blogs I subscribe to.

One of them is The American Thinker which has various people writing commentaries. I read one recently that really got me to thinking.

It was "Is Religion Necessary?" by Joseph Ashby. The article seemed to revolve around whether the Constitution really was founded on religious principles.

I suppose one reason it struck me so forcibly was because so many of the messages in our Fellowship Meeting brought out that salvation is not accomplished by adhering to rules and regulations. It's a work done in the heart. God changes the heart and after that heart change, His Spirit and His word are there to guide us to do things the way our heart wants to go. We may have to make the flesh come along, but we have the heart condition to want to obey and walk in the Spirit.

So I had all of that on my mind already when I was reading this article on "Is Religion Necessary?"

You can read it and you may come up with some conclusions I didn't but it struck me forcibly that when the Constitution was written it was written for a society, a group of people, who were moral people. The Founding Fathers knew that. And as long as people remained basicly moral, the Constitution has continued to work well. It got the job done because it gave basic guidelines for a MORAL people to follow.

The reason it has been able to accomplish success for such a long period of time has been because it did not have to spell out specifics. Most people had a heart condition that did not require every act to be legislated. One example was that people could own guns because, as a rule, they would not be using them for unlawful reasons.

"The immoral use of rights is a precursor to laws that infringe upon [everyone's] rights."

Once you begin to legislate morality, you will begin the process of encroaching upon the liberties of those who do not misuse the liberty.

So the more immoral our society becomes, the more people will misuse the liberties we have to accomplish immoral purposes. The end result will be that laws made to stop the abusers will take away freedom from those who did not abuse the law.

There are all kinds of examples of this in our society today but one that comes to my mind immediately is the laws that have been made to try to stop child abuse. When many in society actually began to abuse their children, laws were created to try to stop that abuse. The laws end up affecting not just those who are actually abusing children, but also people who are using the age old method of corporal punishment to correct children.

My conclusion after reading this article was that the reason we are losing more and more of our individual liberties is because our society is rapidly departing from its moral base. Laws are being made to require people to do what they should be doing without a law.

Also, the article raises the issue that it was not so much what any one of these Founding Fathers personally believed religiously that made the Constitution a success, but what was important to its success was that those who wrote it knew they were writing for a people who were moral-- and most of them were moral because of their religion. I add this because so many people nowadays try to tear down the idea that this nation was founded on religious principles by digging into the personal beliefs of some of those who wrote the Constitution. It really doesn't matter what their personal beliefs were. They were creating guidelines for a moral society, a religious society.

John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Just as those without the heart to obey get around the Bible, so people without morality will tear down a document that works well for those who are moral.