The problem with laws

Would more regulation of the banks have prevented the financial crisis?
Will more CRB checks prevent child abuse?

The answer to both is, of course, no. Why not? Because we're all Pharisees at heart.

The Pharisees wrote laws so that everyone could be clear about how little they had to do to remain on the right side of God. That's what laws do - they say, 'If you do this much, you're OK'. So that's what the banks did - they ticked the box for each law they had obeyed, and did no more.

Moral decisions and obligations were replaced by legal requirements. Once the legal requirements were met, anything else was seen as OK.

This is increasingly true of all sectors of life. In schools and hospitals, in workplaces and voluntary organisations, people are ticking the boxes given to them by the government. Once that's done, anything goes.

The other side of this is the removal of a final moral authority - God. Jesus reserved his harshest criticism for the Pharisees because they limited people's freedom to do what was good and right. That's what much of the schools, child care, social care and child protection legislation has done: good nurseries, sports clubs, youth organisations etc. have closed because they failed to cross a 't' or dot an 'i', or because the burden of doing so was simply too great.

But more than that, it's removed a sense of duty, service, honour, trust, moral courage and responsibility from society. Surely, as Christians, we need to take a lead in demonstrating these attributes.