Our country has just been through the political process once again, and the divide between the religious and the non-religious among us is always felt during these times of decision and debate regarding our country’s direction. More and more, there are those who speak against Christians and other people of faith’s use of their religion in making their political choices. The argument goes something like this:

Religion is philosophy.

Religion is unprovable.

It is unethical to impose unprovable philosophy on others.

Therefore, it is unethical to use religion to make decisions in the political realm.

This line of reasoning is extremely popular today, and sounds quite reasonable to most people in our country. But there are two problems with this. One, all systems of thought are based on unprovable philosophy. And two, it is actually a hallmark of democracy to impose unprovable philosophy on others. It may or may not be unethical, but the practice is certainly not limited to those who hold to “religious” brands of unprovable philosophy. In fact, to single out religious unprovable philosophy as inapplicable to society at large while accepting non-religious forms of unprovable philosophy is a value judgment based in, you guessed it, more unprovable philosophy.

To illustrate what I  mean, let’s consider an issue folks in my area voted on last Tuesday. After marking our ballots for the big stuff like President and Senator and whether or not we wanted our state constitution amended to protect stem cell research, we were confronted with the decision of whether or not to continue a property tax that goes to support our county’s parks.

Now most of us have a feeling that parks are nice, even important and good for society. Someone may even be able to produce a study showing that as the number of parks increase, certain measures of happiness and well-being also increase. But it gets complicated as we explore the matter further, and eventually we are forced to resort to our own value systems to make our choices. Consider, for example, that in our semi-rural area, we don’t even really need parks to get outside and see nature. Nearly everyone in this county could go for a walk through our neighborhoods and enjoy plenty of grass and trees, hills and even (for a good number of us) farmland.

Add to all this the fact that the economy here in southeastern Michigan is one of the worst in the country. The auto industry is grossly crippled. There have been massive lay-offs, cut-backs, and plant closings. Families are struggling. People are unable to pay their bills. Are we justified in charging our neighbors more tax money in order to support our unprovable philosophical belief that parks are so nice that they should be sacrificed for?

Now imagine two voters go to the polls to vote on this issue. Charles belongs to the Church of the Celestial Hike, which teaches that natural areas are sacred and that we all have a responsibility to tend them. Molly is an avid jogger, who enjoys the nicely groomed trails down by the river and would hate to see them fall into disrepair. Charles and Molly both vote, Yes, on the tax. Charles did it for religious reasons. Molly did it for personal reasons. But both of them were relying on their own unprovable philosophies, and both of them were quite happy to impose their value judgments on their neighbors who may, or may not find it painless to pay for the tax.

Is Molly on some kind of morally higher ground than Charles because she had personal reasons for forcing her financially strapped neighbors to pay to maintain her jogging trails? Was it unethical of Charles to vote, Yes, on the tax since his vote was based on his religious belief in the sacredness of natural areas? Should he rather have voted, No, in order to refrain from imposing his religious beliefs on others?

And how can we possibly even begin to answer such questions? Without some kind of moral framework, we are in no position to even use words like “should.”

Without God, there is no “should” because there is no right and wrong. Without God, we have no choice but to become our own gods, our own standards of right and wrong. All we can possibly say is, “it’s right if I like it, and it’s wrong if I don’t.” Most people actually do think this way and yet don’t realize they’re doing it. But a great number of commonly held ideas were born of exactly this line of reasoning. People say, “I don’t like it when religious people tell me that something I like is wrong. That must be wrong for them to do. They should not ‘impose’ their beliefs on me. Therefore, people who vote, or write articles, or try to pass laws based on their religious convictions must be doing the wrong thing. I do like it when I get to have what I like, so that must be a right way to make decisions. Therefore, people who vote, or write articles, or try to pass laws based on their own sense of goodness must be doing the right thing…unless their sense of goodness requires them to do something that I don’t like such as censoring a television show that I wanted to watch. Then they must be doing the wrong thing.” This is just more unprovable philosophy.

Whether God is our standard, or whether we are our own standard, we are all, every single one of us, using unprovable philosophy in every decision. This is true of decisions about everything from parks to abortion and gay marriage. And we may feel a lot more emotionally charged about abortion than we do about parks, but we are no less justified in “imposing” our religious beliefs on pregnant women than Molly the jogger is in imposing her beliefs about parks on her neighbors.

It’s not the imposition or non-imposition of a law that makes it ethical or not. It is whether the thing that is being imposed on people is right. Consider the “imposition” of laws against rape, fraud, car-jacking, or child molestation.

The real question that we must all confront is not whether our philosophies are provable or not, but whether they are based on the truth. Is it true that there is no God? This is not a question for proof, but it is one that must be answered. Because if there is a God, then we are not the ultimate standards of right and wrong. He is the ultimate standard. If we are living our lives as if we are god when in fact there is a much bigger, all-powerful, all-knowing, unchanging, infinite, and immortal God out there, then we have really messed up. Because if there is God, then He is the standard of right and wrong, and His truth is the right philosophy for all areas of our lives, including the voting booth.

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:  That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it. Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? –Isaiah 45:5-9

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Christian Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.