Part 3 The Family

I am going to start by taking a Biblical verse completely out of context.

Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and render to God what is God’s.

Or I could say you cannot legislate morality. Or can you? Or can’t you?

Let’s look at what is known by some as the The Law and more commonly in the United States as the Ten Commandments
We have made the law of the land and local law from some of the Commandments or at least there could be that perception

You cannot kill, so here you get so many years to life in murder cases

You cannot steal, depending on the amount and the severity of the crime you could get a hand slap to years in prison.

Is this legislating morality?

Think about the other commandments.

How do you legislate coveting thy neighbor’s goods? If I go over to my neighbor’s house to watch football every Sunday on his 100 inch big screen TV, am I coveting it or am I taking advantage of his so I don’t have to spend the money? Who can tell? And how would you create laws and punishment to address this as a crime?

In the United States we have already dealt with the first two commandments with separate of Church and State. So no one can force us to keep the Sabbath or choose only one God. So if we create a document that separates God from government are we now institutionalizing never being able to legislate morality?

So can you? Can’t you? And what does all this have to do with the Family?
First you have to realize or at least accept the laws against killing and theft could be considered more personal not morality laws. Our government is predicated on protecting the individual and so in doing that we protect lives and property. Well there then… we are not legislating morality……. So how about laws against harm of children, fraud, rape, burning down a house etc… these aren’t exactly in the Commandments, yet where do we get the notion to make these laws. So can we protect the individual with our laws and have a fundamental moral foundation to them?
And if we create a government that separates church from state why do we even have laws with a moral foundation? Shouldn’t all laws be based solely on the concept of protecting the individual if this is our law of the land?

So where does this leave us today? If we say all laws should be about protecting the individual then how do we choose or write laws? It creates a nice little circle. If I am protecting the individual I have to have a basis on which to determine what is the individual and what is it the individual needs for protection? Where does that come from? Morality? God?

And this is where the family can come in. Society thrives when there is a strong code of ethics and trust among the members of that society. When that trust and the ethics break down society breaks down. You do not legislate honor thy Father and Mother. That comes from a strong family bond. Loving and yes even at times stern parents can foster the mores and morals of a society in their children. This is why the family is important.
And yes a family could foster behavior that is not conducive to society, which in some ways proves the worth of the family. The behavior is learned. Yes some of a child comes from genetics and some from environment. If the environment is strong then the potential of the child (genetics) can flourish, if the environment is not strong or detrimental then the weaknesses in the genetics survive.

The family gives us the first line promoting what could be called morality. Generation after generation can create strong family values that contributes to the overall good of the society. The more the concept of family thrives and the more each generation instills these values into their youth the stronger the society becomes. And the family can be more than the nuclear family. This goes back to what I said in one of the earlier parts of this topic. A family can be built of various parts or could just be an influential adult in a child’s life. As long as the child receives a positive set of values from someone they can truly trust they will carry it forward in their lives and hopefully to their next generation.

And so why all the morality talk today, well in the next part I hope to show that you can have secular laws that strengthen the family for the benefit of the whole of society. I got a bit sidetracked today, but I wanted the reader to have my sense that it is hard to determine what can be Caesar’s and what should be God’s. And that it is okay to find the middle when it comes to making a law of the land so that all can thrive. We can educate to our youth our values, our beliefs, and our faith. That is what the family can do, but even if you do not believe in the faith you still can believe it will benefit our country and society to protect and help the family thrive in our brave new world. So you have to have secular laws in place to protect from harm one of our society’s greatest treasures, otherwise our society will eventually decay, decompose, and become a page of history for some unknown future.