Unmasking False Righteousness: Why Conservative Laws Alone Aren’t Enough

What does righteousness in a nation look like?

Righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34 NIV).

It is not that having Christians in influence exalts a nation, or that key election results exalt a nation, but rather that righteousness brings a nation before God. How would we go about measuring this?

What is a biblical measurement of a righteous nation? What is your measurement—or perceived destination or arrival point—for your nation to be considered righteous? Of course we want righteous laws, but would these make us a righteous nation? The answer is, “No.” After all, there are a number of ultra-conservative nations in the world (usually Muslim dominant) where no abortion is allowed, no pornography is permitted, no homosexuality is tolerated, and so on. Are these “righteous” nations? No!

Fundamentally, Christianity begins with, and is measured by, the condition of people’s hearts. Your access to the Kingdom of Heaven has never been granted on the basis of your law-keeping, nor your rule-setting, or law-making. The law never saved anyone. Certainly, law-keeping is a reasonable measurement of a wholesome society, but it is not the biblical route to salvation.

Do I want abortion banned? Yes. For years I labored as a media spokesperson for the pro-life lobby, working on television and radio, putting forward the anti-abortion case. Nevertheless, if I secured an anti-abortion law, would it make my nation more righteous before God? Absolutely not!

Islam and the Christianity are opposite in how they think regarding stewarding societies. True Christianity is motivated by starting with the heart and personal transformation because of an individual belief in the lordship of Jesus Christ. When Jesus has your heart, He also has all you own, all you are, how you vote, and how you manage your money, because you willingly lay it down at His feet.

On the other hand, Islam begins with law, behavior, and territory. One of its core values must be that of an enforced takeover of all of society. A top-down setting of the cultural tone, achieved through law changes (that everyone must abide by), is inevitably regarded as a necessary and desirable result. This oppressively enforces a code of morality through submission to the ruling religious power. No one chooses—it is dictated and set by what the leaders perceive to be righteous laws that they believe will bring Islam’s version of “salvation” to the nation.

Christianity works in reverse to Islam’s top-down religious control. Because every person responds to Christ’s invitation individually, it is never about a law being thrust upon them; it is a personal heart change. From that response they, guided by the Spirit of Jesus, choose biblical morality. For example, this means that when we’re talking about abortion, any anti-abortion law would become obsolete through no one needing it. Through faith in Jesus, not through legislation, a wave of individuals will choose to reject the murder of innocents and pursue life. Ultimately, that is a sign of a “righteous nation”—that its laws may change in time because they become unnecessary due to a massive change in hearts.

Prophets Give an Alternative Narrative

You absolutely do need lobbyists in the political arena who speak a plumbline of righteousness, but you must also steward the responsibility of teaching the church how Christianity (the Kingdom of God) actually works—which means not just influencing, but also building an alternative narrative to the one we have right now.

Case Study: Teen Pregnancy in Hawaii

I once heard Landa Cope, the brilliant YWAM scholar and teacher, recounting a story from Hawaii that illustrates the inherent complexities of relying on the law to institute moral change at a societal level, and the need for us to be more holistic and less single-issue focused as a church. At one time Hawaii had one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the United State—hundreds

and hundreds of teen pregnancies. A concerted campaign managed to significantly address this issue and the teenage pregnancy rate began to drop. Incredibly, teen pregnancy was reduced by nearly 80 percent between 1991 and 2020 and the number of abortions in Hawaii were halved. However, the community was shocked to discover that the rates for child abuse went up by 300 percent in the following years. Cope remarked that, “the issue is not just saving the baby—the baby may be dead from child abuse if you don’t somehow change the culture, the culture of violence, of incest (which is rampant), absent husbands, powerless women…”

Don’t misunderstand the point that Landa Cope is making. Reducing teen pregnancies and abortion statistics is of course encouraging, but we may be sweeping a whole lot of other problems under the rug if we don’t also model a different culture and think about cultural change, more than simply political change. To change the culture of violence, of absent fathers, of disempowered mothers, is the role of a church who understands heart transformation.

By all means, it is a positive thing to have a flag that you’re carrying, waving, and working on—in other words, to have an issue that drives and motivates you—but understand it in the context of Scripture. For example, if you do manage to repeal the abortion laws, you have not made your nation more righteous or more acceptable to God, because you didn’t change a single heart in the process. In fact, the reality may well actually turn out to be that you, by using law to enforce one issue, you have merely shifted a set of horrendous issues to somewhere else—and in doing so have angered and shut down the love of Jesus Christ to the very sector of society you were hoping to win.

Perhaps we are happy to be militant, political lobbyists because we are enamored with heavy-handed domination (which panders to our empire, territorial ego) and, on some days, to our love of justice and righteousness. Has angry protest at a distance become easier than the effort of vulnerability required in the conversations that move people to choose Christ? If our love of righteousness and justice is outworked in a brutal way toward our fellow citizens, do we really know what righteousness and justice are? Are we enraging people by only being known for what we are against, rather than winning them with the limitless possibilities of transformation that are available in the Kingdom of God?

I strongly suggest that if the unborn baby really means something to you, then law change will be quite far down your personal list of priorities to action. Don’t tell me that the unborn baby means anything to you if your only activity on it has been your vote.