We were created in the image of God. As God is love, we were created to love God and our neighbor. To make it so that we can love God, that is turn towards God, we were also made so that we can turn away from God. Love is an act of the will and conscience or, in modern parlance, a choice. The 1st Commandment still stands, though, and so we may not turn away from God. Fortunately, even when we consciously turn away from God, we can and may still turn towards God. It is this dynamic that defines how we live on this mortal plane, both as individuals and as communities.
That we can turn from God often leads us to attitudes and behaviors that God either does not exist or matter, which in turn leads us to conflate can and may so that whatever I can do, I may do. As you may do whatever it is you can do, it will not take long until what you can do conflicts with what I can do. Because neither of us respects, perhaps, even recognize a higher authority, this conflict results in either dominance of one of us over the other or some sort of power sharing arrangement (aka win-win, lose-lose, and win-lose). Further, because these are the only options, we cannot trust each other any more than a gang of thieves evenly dividing the spoils can trust each other.
In contrast, when we both recognize a distinction between what each of us can do and what we each of us may do, we can have a foundation for trusting each other. For example, if I can trust you not to steal or to lie, we begin to have the basis for a contract. We may go further and recognize not only that there are behaviors we may not do, but that there are behaviors that we ought to do. You can trust, then, that not only will I uphold the letter of the contract, but that I will uphold its spirit because we are not only after what is mine and yours, but that the result of this contract meets a greater ought than ourselves. A community requires that we have something in common, in communion, beyond our self interest.
Gangs consist of would be bosses. Because the only barrier preventing anyone from being a boss is the ability of the other gang members to be the boss, gang members are willing to be stooges to whomever proves the most capable of being the boss in the hope of one day being the boss, or at least a boss over someone else. Or, as Lincoln might have said, “as I would be a master, I would be a slave.”
In contrast, a community is based on trust around some objective good or service. Each of us is recognized to be self-governing. Each of us has a conscience than can distinguish between what one can do and what one ought to do as well as the ability to act accordingly, or not. The purpose of any community is to some how achieve its common, higher purpose. A community of bird watchers exists to advance the understanding and appreciation of birds. The purpose of a church is to help its congregants be with God. The purpose of a nation is to help its citizens live in accordance with the Natural Law.
The nation is limited in its purpose to the natural law, because we can turn from God, but may not. Christianity is founded on love and love means that although we may not, we do turn from God. This dichotomy is the essence of liberty and liberty is the necessary basis for being able to love God and our neighbor. First, there is the commitment to love God by joining the church (baptism) and then there is the actual practice of loving God in the church.
By definition, a church can assume that all of its members want to love God. A nation, in contrast cannot.Inevitably, there will be someone who chooses not to “love God.” In a church, that person can walk away, but what about a nation. Further, even Christians have a hard time agreeing.
The Natural law, or the Tao as C.S. Lewis puts it, is the highest common denominator for founding a nation because it is discernible by reason alone. Reason, though, can only tell us that is exists. It cannot tell us why it exists. Christians respect the Natural Law because it was revealed that it is from God and that God holds us accountable to it. Those who do not accept that a higher power holds us accountable to the Natural Law can recognize it as a reasonable basis of a power sharing agreement. That is, even a gang of thieves will recognize the utility of I won’t steal from you if you won’t steal from me even if they formed gang for purpose of stealing from everyone outside of the gang.
The citizens of a natural law republic will fall into two categories: those who follow the natural law because they believe they are accountable to a higher, objective power and those who believe that Man is the measure of all things. And because liberty is at the heart of natural law republics, people will eventually coalesce into like-minded groups, otherwise known as political parties. In the U.S., those who believe that Man is the measure all things coalesced around 1828 into the Democrat party and those who believe that Man is accountable to a higher, objective power coalesced in 1856 into the Republican party. The names of each party aptly representing the different philosophies. While both democracy and republic both describe the rule of the many or people, a republic (res publica) explicitly defines its purpose by an objective standard, that is the common good. In contrast, while a gang of thieves may have a common purpose, it is not a common good