Morality Cannot be Enforced

"Morality cannot be enforced." This statement seems to many as either a truism or obviously false. Many people are not clear in their thinking about this subject. Thus, we must carefully define what we mean, as we justify the truth of this claim.

First we will state that BEHAVIOR can be enforced. This is to say that you CAN force a person to DO what you want. While it is true that not everyone can be forced, at least the statement is true that many can be forced and so it is true that, in a general sense, behavior can be forced. Consider that every law of every nation depends upon the notion that behavior can be enforced. All laws of every nation have enforcement at their very foundation: "if you break this law, here is the penalty." If you don't want someone to steal, just make the penalty for stealing severe enough and you will markedly decrease the incidence of stealing. The incidence of first degree murder in this nation decreases in every state that adopts the death penalty--as long as it is shown that the chance of getting caught is high and, if it is known that once caught, the penalty WILL be enforced. (This is not an effort to advocate the death penalty, simply an example of enforced behavior.) So we see that all man-made law depends upon the concept that human behavior can indeed and effectively be enforced.

Morality, however, is a different realm entirely. While a man's behavior is what he DOES--that outward demonstration of inner man--morality is what he IS--what he thinks and believes, that inner awareness of right and wrong. Nazi, and modern Eastern Bloc, prison camps show clearly that man can force his fellow man to DO what he wants him to without changing the deeper convictions of what the man IS. Of course, people with deep convictions cannot be forced to go against those convictions. Morality utterly governs their behavior. Examples are Christian martyrs and those who were shot rather than submit to turn on the gas nozzles during the Nazi holocaust.

And this is the very point. You cannot force a person to go against their deep inner convictions--their own understanding of what is right and wrong. That conviction of right and wrong defines morality for each person. Some people have little conviction of right and wrong. The conscience is so blunted that we say they are "immoral". But most people are deeply moral. They do most things from a sense of right and wrong. In order to move them to action, you must either convince them that what you wish them to do is "right," or you must bring enough force to bear that you override their sense of morality.

Now, let's get specific to our subject. We are talking about the enforcement of Sunday observance laws. The basic premise of the Sunday law advocates is that God will be pleased by our efforts in forcing people to keep Sunday holy. For the moment we are going to set aside the rightness or wrongness of Sunday itself as a day of worship. That is covered adequately in other places on this web site. For now we will focus our attention on the question of whether or not someone can be forced to keep Sunday holy to the glory of God.

We must understand God's perspective on the subject of holy days, since it is He we are trying to impress with our efforts to enforce Sunday worship. Clearly, finding that He is not impressed by our efforts, we would do well to apply our efforts to some prospect by which we can impress Him. Now, God has said that He has a holy day, the Sabbath. We decide that He really means Sunday. We further decide that He is unhappy with our nation because we are not keeping His day holy. We must remedy that situation. How will we go about getting back into God's good graces? We are confronted with two choices in solving this nationwide problem. Both depend upon a different perspective of God. Our first choice is to go about educating people to what we believe is the truth and try to CONVINCE them that they should worship as we do. The second choice is to simply make a law and FORCE people to worship as we do.

The first choice acknowledges that people are moved by conviction, and that God only accepts the service of convicted heart. It realizes that God can see the heart and knows the difference between outward behavior and true inner morality. The first choice recognizes that a person may act good as long as it is expedient for him to do so--without any underlying morality that convicts him--yet, God is only interested in behavior that is motivated by this underlying moral conviction. Only a heart-righteous, or MORAL, person truly fits in the kingdom of Heaven. The first choice sees God as a Sovereign who is interested in heart-righteousness rather than merely outward behavior: "God looketh upon the heart…." So, the first choice recognizes that God finds no pleasure in some outward fakery of "worship" that is forced from a person who does not believe in his/her heart.

The second choice perceives that people are moved by force and assumes that God accepts this forced service--even without any change of heart. It assumes that, if God can see the heart, He is unperturbed by the evil He sees lurking there under the cover of outwardly good behavior. The second choice is founded upon the idea that it is unimportant WHY a person acts properly--just so long as he DOES what is right,.that God overlooks the evils of the heart as long as the person acts right. The second choice supposes that anybody with correct behavior is safe in the kingdom of Heaven--as long as enough appropriate force can be administered there. So, the second choice sees God as a Sovereign of force and posits that God will have to exercise force throughout eternity in order to keep His subjects under His thumb.

You see, the difference between these two approaches summarizes the two views of God and His gospel. The truth, as it is seen in Matthew 5-7, is that God is very much interested in a person's heart. John 4 addresses the new birth experience for the very reason that the unconverted heart is unsafe, unreliable, and really unwilling to conform to God's will. God wishes to change the heart of a man--to change his basic moral convictions--and then the right behavior will naturally follow. God's focus is on the heart, the root of man's behavior. God hopes to so change a man's heart that he will no longer be "under law" because with the "law of grace" operating in his life he will not sin against his Maker. As David said, "I have hidden thy law in my heart that I might not sin against thee." Thus, this man with a changed heart becomes truly MORAL in the sight of God and is safe to live with other holy, moral beings. Sin will be eradicated from the universe, not by force, but by true indwelling MORALITY.

God has given it into the hands of worldly governments to make laws about how people will deal with other people. But, He reserves the right for Himself to judge men in their dealings with Him. It is good that humans have made laws that enforce behavior: i.e. keeping someone who gets angry with another person from just killing them outright. Whether the decision to not kill was motivated by morality or just by a desire to stay out of the electric chair is meaningless to the one who's life is spared from the murderer. Yet, that motivation is vastly important to God, who can see that motivation, and who deeply desires to instill true MORALITY in His immoral fallen human beings.

But, when we take this same good desire to keep men from hurting each other and apply it to men's relations with God, we have put ourselves into a realm where we cannot function properly. Because MORALITY is an inner thing, we cannot see it or judge it aright. We are inclined to judge a person's morals by their behavior. Yet, frequently, there is no connection. Many times, people do what is expedient, not what is right.

This is the crux of the entire Sunday law matter: when you enforce Sunday observance, you are making people do what is expedient not what is right. Not only is Sunday the wrong day to worship God, but by forcing people to worship on any day you eliminate the basic moral foundation of true worship.

Let's examine what a worship day really involves. In order to keep a day holy, I must first understand why that is important. I must also believe in the authority of whoever is commanding that I do so. Then, I must have some conception of what holiness involves. I must be able to compare my behavior against some standard in order to see how I measure up. Finally, I must be convinced that keeping a day holy is intrinsically "right." This idea of a holy day must convict me of its basic "morality".

Any attempt to bypass this foundation of true MORAL worship--the only kind that God is satisfied with--simply eliminates the aspect of WORSHIP entirely. You may force me to go to church, but you cannot force me to WORSHIP. In fact, it is impossible that I will ever obtain a worshipful attitude under duress. So, in attempting to please God by nationwide worship, the aspect of force actually eliminates the possibility that real worship will ever take place, because WORSHIP depends upon a CONVICTION and only a MORAL person can truly worship God "in spirit and in truth." And, only true worship "in spirit and in truth" can satisfy a holy God who sees the inner heart morality of a person.

CONCLUSIONS

Force can affect behavior because people who are not moral will do what is expedient, and penalties make it expedient to obey. Yet, force cannot affect morality because morality is obtained by conviction and is only affected by conviction. Force cannot change a moral person's behavior because their behavior is motivated by morality and not by expediency. Thus, making it not-expedient or even unpleasant for a moral person to behave according to the dictates of their conscience only serves to strengthen their conviction that they are right. To change the behavior of a moral person, you must change their convictions, and thereby their understanding of what is moral. Any attempt to force a moral person to do what they deem immoral results in their conviction becoming stronger, and hence, their code of behavior becomes more rigid, and change becomes all the more unlikely.

A Sunday law can never satisfy God because He is pleased only by TRUE worship and a Sunday law cannot provide true worship. Human laws simply define what is expedient, and TRUE morality--which is what pleases God--is not affected by expediency. Any "worship" that can be coerced by law is the worship of expediency, yet ONLY worship that is based in morality is acceptable to God.

Thus, the entire premise that "we must have a Sunday law in order to regain the favor of God" falls flat before the fact that true morality--which is what God demands--cannot be created or enhanced by the laws of men. God has blessed the United States of America, and is even now blessing her--not because she has been so GOOD, but because she has been so FREE!