Conscience or Sword?

                                                                                                                                    Vol. XIX, No. 6, August 2006

In any society, only two forces hold the sinful nature in check: the restraint of conscience or the restraint of the sword. The less that citizens have of the former, the more the state must employ the latter. A society that fails to keep order by an appeal to civic duty and moral responsibility must resort to coercion either open coercion, as practiced by totalitarian states, or covert coercion, where citizens are wooed into voluntarily giving up their freedom. Given the examples cited at the beginning of this chapter, it's not much of a stretch to imagine Americans eventually so frightened of their own children that they will welcome protection by ever greater govern control. That's why utopianism always leads to the loss of liberty.

The only alternative to increased state control is a return to biblical realism about the human potential for evil, a bracing willingness to look evil in the eye and not flinch. Sociologists are constantly searching for the causes of crime and other dysfunctions in society. But the root cause has not changed since the temptation in the Garden. It is sin.

Human beings have revolted against God and his created order, throwing the entire creation out of joint. Everything is distorted by sin. Nothing is free from its effects. This is not merely a "religious" message, limited to some "private" realm of faith. It is the truth about ultimate reality.

[Chuck Colson & Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live, (Tyndale House, 1999) pp. 191-2]