Why would government have any authority in
personal areas like marriage?
Posted: Aug 28/2k
This question came in some time ago:
Dear Glenn,
My 18 year old son posed a question that I
haven't fully been able to answer. Here
it is: Why is marriage to more than one person the government's busness? He is
a Christian and knows it is morally wrong but secularly speaking (gov't) we
live in a pluralistic society where the gov't should only be involved in protecting our individual
rights so long as it does not infringe
on the rights of others. He tends to be
libertarian and is a senior in high school taking a psychology class. My
son is a deep thinker! We have interesting theology discussions and I am
teaching him about the sovereignty of God especially in salvation. Any help
would be appreciated.
I did a quick (and typically terse
and obscure) answer:
Off the top
of my head, I would point out two things:
1. Romans 13
(etc.) argues that civil govt has a 'ministry' of enforcing SOME types of
morals on its citizens [it would be worth a family study on the subject of NT
interactions with civil and religio-civil authority]
2. the 'logically
obvious' areas for this to be 'reasonable' are
those that are restricted to social fabric...in other words, in
those areas that must be "51%" okay for
community to even exist...this would certainly include aspects of
marriage and family, since all cultures depend on family and kinship ties to
exist.
this would argue
that God set up civil government 'propensities' on the part of humans, in order
to build reinforcing structures for ONLY THOSE MORALS that affect the 'social
basis' for community interaction. Thus, rules about adultery were strictly
enforced in even
the brutal and often immoral society of the Roman Empire of Paul's day.
I hope this gets
you started (does this make sense?)
glenn