Commentary: Rep. Dan Crenshaw is right: Religion is the bedrock of a moral society

Last Sunday, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) tweeted that religion is the "bedrock for a moral society, because it shows us that morality is absolute, not relative or subject to popular cultural whims."

And he's right.

The laws of a country that are founded on the Law of Moses and the teachings of Jesus are unshakable, but laws rooted in secularism are like quicksand and subject to fail or slip into chaos and oppression.

During its formative years, America became known for its virtue, republicanism, and unrelenting support for individual liberty, which were all based on the Laws of Moses and the teachings of Jesus beginning on Mount Sinai.

These moral laws brought down from the mountain by Moses firmly established God's expectations for humanity.

The Bible (Good News Translation) says in Proverbs 29:18 that, "A nation without God's guidance is a nation without order."

When Israel honored God, he blessed them. When they disobeyed Him, they were lost in the wilderness for 40 years. This punishment was a harsh lesson for the Israelites.

God gave us these commandments to serve as a moral framework so that his children could discern what's right and wrong.

In Romans, we are taught that not only are God's laws "holy and righteous and good," they're "spiritual."

A moral society should then aspire to follow this moral framework set forth by God because it provides us with instructions on how to exist with each other and with God.

And to deviate from them only leads to emptiness, isolation, and purposelessness.

Of course, not all the American Founding Fathers practiced a religion, some of them were deists, but they all agreed that the foundation of morality was rooted in the belief in God.

In fact, many of their early writings were brimming with spiritual overtones, i.e., The Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."

The most famous phrase being "unalienable Rights" was derived from Judeo-Christian teachings which recognizes that everyone is created equal before God.

Whether secularists choose to believe this or not, we are all created in God's image.

Religion forged Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and it was revolutionary at the time. It was also a dramatic shift for a president who historians say flirted with atheism.

The obvious contradiction when speaking of individual liberty is that this wasn't afforded to slaves or indentured servants at the time of America's founding. However, the founders knew that in order to establish the Constitution, they had to make concessions to this necessary evil or they risked losing the Constitution entirely.

We learned a harsh lesson about what happens when we defy God's laws. Slavery almost tore this country apart and we fought the bloodiest war ever wrought on American soil to end it.

The church

If you compare the American Revolution to the French Revolution, it's worth noting that Europeans, unlike the early Americans, believed that liberty was the enemy of religion.

In fact, they were astonished when they observed that one of the most enlightened societies of the 19th century was openly religious, as observed by author W. Cleon Skousen in the "Five Thousand Year Leap."

During French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville's stay in America in 1831, he noticed that freedom and religion — even amongst the differing sects — were "intimately united," which was unheard of at the time.

De Tocqueville found this marriage between the new republic and religion indispensable and so should we.

As de Tocqueville put it:

"Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom."

Former U.S. President John Adams said it best when he said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Sadly, Americans have lost faith in important institutions, churches being chief among them.

According to a Gallup poll, confidence in the church sank to an all-time low of 38 percent in 2018.

Revolution and violence

A violent period during the French Revolution (1789) serves as a grim reminder of what happens when morality is defined by man instead of God.

During the "Reign of Terror" in 1793, the French expelled thousands of priests and turned to the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason put forth by Maximilien Robespierre.

When man defined morality according to their terms as witnessed in France's reign of terror, heads literally rolled.

Irish statesman Edmund Burke, who was critical of the French Revolution, believed that God is necessary for the social fabric of a society.

In his most notable work, "Reflections on the Revolution in France," Burke asserted that the French Revolution was doomed because of its outright rejection of religion arguing that they were "against, not only our reason but our instincts."

To Burke, Christianity led society to progress and without God, it was bound to unravel.

He also foretold of the wars that would wreak havoc on Europe thanks in part to the radical changes to institutions that spawned from the French Revolution, and he was right.

The French Revolution led directly to the dictatorship of Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars that ravaged Europe, and which led (directly or indirectly) to conflict between the French and Prussians/Germans that would break out into war in 1870, World War I, and World War II.

The effects of the Chinese Communist Revolution, which required its members to pledge an oath to Marxist atheism, had negative and lasting effect on the Chinese people.

During the Great Leap Forward under former Chairman Mao Zedong, an estimated 20 to 48 million Chinese citizens were killed— more than twice as many as were killed in the Holocaust.

But unlike the Chinese Communist Revolution, what made the American Revolution different and its legacy lasting was its regard for morality derived from God and not man.

The Chinese Communist Revolution and the French Revolution was a far cry from what America witnessed because of this.

This isn't to say that if we believe in God alone, He will solve all our problems because He won't, especially if we are a society that rejects His son and His commandments.

The morality of the creator becomes embedded in its creation

God makes it very clear in the Bible that nations who turn from Him will perish.

Proverbs 14:34 (New International Version) reminds us that "Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people."

America is currently lost in the wilderness because we've rejected the idea that morality is derived from God's supreme laws (just check the comments under Crenshaw's tweet).

Instead, we've relied on our own intellect or even a political party's because it feels good and because they told us everything we want to hear. President Donald Trump isn't going to solve this nation's problems and neither is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D).

The government cannot solve your problems, only faith in God can help you.

That wilderness is the cultural whims Crenshaw referenced in his tweet last Sunday.

The belief that God is no longer needed, and that man's explanation is supreme isn't going to cut it.

The suicide rate is at its highest in half a century according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Planned Parenthood is killing up to 332,757 babies a year; the divorce rate is over 50 percent, and the only thing Americans can agree on is that we're divided on virtually every issue.

We can't agree on the economy, on racial issues, climate change, abortion, and even gender.

The idea that you can murder a baby inside a mother's womb, the distorted idea that you can choose your gender, or that you can covet your neighbor's lot, is not rooted in what made this country great, it's rooted in a hollow intellect set forth and reliant upon man's meek intellect.

America can only be saved from itself by grace alone.

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson suggested that when dealing with religious problems among the various states, religious institutions of all kinds should use their influence to provide the stability needed for the benefit of the government as documented by Skousen.

Until we acknowledge that morality is objective and rooted in God, we'll continue operating on the whims of a culture that perpetuates the reductions in freedom and the inability to exist peacefully with one another.