Law is most effective when it is generally understood and assented to by the preponderance of the population. That lawyers are required to interpret the law is in itself detraction from its effectiveness.

In spite of the cognitive distress it creates, our courts function under a mandate that says ignorance of the law is no excuse. It has apparently not occurred to the legal eagles that esoteric law exacerbates disobedience.

An arcane legal system supports humanism. When law is not simple and plainly written the people for whom it is written can neither know nor obey it and as a result they are thrown on the mercy of the meritocracy.

America's legal code is like shrubbery that has overgrown the house. We have more lawyers than any other nation and our legal code is so voluminous and conflicting that those who have spent years studying are unable to arrange it in any logical order.

Confusion is a major ingredient in the recipe for despotism. When law is not understood and falls under the interpretation of devious minds, everyone becomes subject to the arbitrary dictates of whoever exerts power. Those who foment revolutions are not unaware of this ploy and often work to create a chaos, which they can restore to a preplanned autocracy.

Order is of God. Confusion is of Satan.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s succeeded in tearing down most Christian sexual restraints allowing the hedonistic life style free reign. Unleashed sexuality appeared everywhere. Women began to use gutter language, co-habitation became popular, homosexuals got pride, the movies followed and often set the trend, and pornography became rampant. Grocery stores sold papers with leering pictures of immoral individuals; television began to promote "relationships" both heterosexual and homosexual; Christian churches, Christian ministers, and Christian individuals were regularly denigrated in many Hollywood movies. The only control on all this was the sanctimoniousness of the power hungry. Their particular sexual sin was acceptable but other sexual sins were not.

Senator Rick Santorum recently stated, "and if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? Since the Supreme Court consensual sex issue concerns a Texas law against the act of sodomy regardless of where it is performed, smug homosexuals with the help of a media, which they dominate, are out to get Senator Santorum. He asked the right question of the wrong people. The correct answer is, of course it undermines the fabric of our society.

Restraint is a virtue. License is a vise.

Our enlightened Supreme Court will most likely override the Texas sodomy law and add strength to the new religion of humanism by making homosexual acts legal.

Recently, a 77 year old man in Florida plea bargained a twenty year old sexual molestation case filed by a now grown woman for a five and one-half year sentence. If the case had gone to trial, he would have faced a life sentence. If sodomy is legal and pedophilia not far behind, how can we prosecute crimes of this sort?

Individuals change and when justice is delayed as it is in murder cases and in cases where the statute of limitations has been unduly extended, we are carrying out punishment on individuals who are no longer the same as they were when the crime was committed. Justice should be timely.

The legal system of the Bible is not an adversarial legal system. Neither is it geared to the arbitrary laws produced by a powerful elite. It is based on Justice and the Justice is not from the minds of men but from the mind of God.

Law is intrinsically at war with evil. A legal system, which is simple enough to be learned by every citizen, provides a hefty restraint before it becomes necessary to enforce it.

The rebels who taunt God's Laws do so to their own detriment and to the detriment of the society in which they live. America has six million citizens involved in the legal system. Every American citizen pays a hefty price to support these cases. Jails cost society somewhere near $30,000 per year per inmate and court costs for those entangled in the courts are expensive as well.

The Biblical legal system is based on restitution and execution. It is designed to slowly produce a peaceful and prosperous society. Murderers would not be released in the general population. Jails would be few and their inmates limited. Thieves would work to repay their victims three and four fold. Money acquired by business through the use of hidden costs or fine print would be repaid to the consumers in multiples of the fraud involved. Justice would be swift and compassionate. The family would be the primary government with the federal structure being restricted to defending the nation and executing the law. Yes, the death penalty would be extended to cover several additional situations but its results would bring peace and order and the enforcement of it would decrease over time as the force of the law itself became effective. Many Old Testament laws are no longer applicable to our times. The civil laws contain great wisdom, many of the moral laws are still applicable, but the ceremonial laws are no longer binding on Christians. Society ignores the God given wisdom of His legal system to their own detriment. The results of its application would be peace and prosperity such has never been know on earth.

Biblical judges were men of high integrity who knew God's Law and had enough wisdom to bring justice to complicated and seemingly intractable situations. They were Godly men. Pagans do not know justice and are thus unable to bring it to the court. Without the overarching Laws of God there is no justice. Every unregenerate man brings his own set of prejudices, which invariable taints the legal process. Yes, men can often agree on a set of ethical standards but if these standards are the standards of men what keeps another man from disagreeing with them. There is only one deterrent - power.

Rousas John Rushdoony writing in the first volume of his classic "Institutes of Biblical Law" separates power and authority. An example is given of one who becomes a father by stealing a son. He becomes a father through the exercise of power but the authority to be a father, which comes from paternity, is lacking.

This is the situation we have reached in America. The government has the power to impose humanistic chaos on our society but they do not have the authority and that authority is twice lacking; it comes neither from God nor from the people. All governments, which completely lack authority, are evil governments and evil governments always work toward death and destruction rather than peace and prosperity.


"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida. He a is regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Al Cronkrite can be reached at: fmsinfla@hotmail.com

Published in the May 9, 2003 issue of  Ether Zone.
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