[Vision2020] Seeking some definitions -- just what do you mean?

[Christopher Witmer]

ACS wrote:

> Chris --
>
> If laws were enacted contrary to Biblical law, should believing
> Christian leaders refuse to enforce them?

That would depend on the specifics of the law. If a law was passed requiring the male babies of a certain group to be killed (to take an actual example from history), Christian leaders should refuse to enforce such a law, because complying with it is inherently sinful. If the government taxes people's income at the rate of 20%, that is also contrary to biblical law, but there is no sin in complying with it. In the latter case, a Christian legislator should vote against the passage of such a law, and a Christian president should attempt to veto such a law, but if Congress overrides the veto and the Supreme Court finds it to be constitutional, then people can comply with it (hopefully under protest) without sinning. In the former case, no such compliance is possible. Legalization of the murder of the unborn falls somewhere in between those two examples. It is a heinous injustice that is being perpetrated on a massive scale and should be vigorously opposed by all Christians. Ho!
 wever, nobody is being forced to actually put another person to death. The law *allows* for the commission of a grievous sin that should be classified as a crime, but the law does not require the actual commission of sin. So a Christian leader does not have to refuse to enforce the laws legalizing abortion. Similar things could be said about laws legalizing suicide, etc.

> Would it be ethically
> mandatory, if it were possible, for believing Christian leaders to
> refuse duties given to them by the Constitution? Or merely to ignore
> the decisions of the Supreme Court with regard to abortion,
> homosexuality, et cetera?

Again, it depends. If a law requires you to disobey God, then you obey God rather than men. That has been the clear biblical principle since at least as early as around 1500 B.C., when the Egyptian pharaoh decreed that male Israelite babies should all be put to death. It was reaffirmed around 600 B.C. when Daniel and his friends refused to commit idolatry even though the penalty for failure to do so was death. In Egypt it was the midwives who refused to comply with the law (and who lied that their non-compliance was unintentional) but Daniel and his friends had official functions in the Babylonian government (Daniel being highly enough placed that he could help keep the empire running during the years when Nebuchadnezzar was incapacitated by insanity).

-- Chris

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