John Adams, the second President of the United States, stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The historical context of Adams’ observation allows us to assert that by “moral” Adams means informed by the ethics of the Bible, and by “religious” he means having a belief in and reverence for the God of the Bible. These were the personal and public commitments of John Adams. I believe the reason Adams felt as he did is due to the fact that our form of government allows for a great deal of personal freedom (particularly as conceived and practiced by the framers of the Constitution), and personal freedom demands personal responsibility. Adams believed that one was ultimately answerable to God and it is that truth that keeps a soul in check, even when no one is watching, so that government need not track or control every action of its citizens.
What happens when a people loses their fear of God, when the rightness of their actions are determined by an ethical standard that has no teeth in it, no ultimate consequences? Israel of the prophet Micah’s day provides a vivid example. Israel had abandoned singular devotion of Yahweh for a polytheistic religion that lowered the status of the one, true, and living God from the heights of creator, redeemer, and heavenly judge, to just one more deity in the panoply of pagan prospects. As a result, they began to violate the ethical expectations of God’s law and lived by the law of ardent and aggressive accumulation. Fueled by an insatiable covetousness, the wealthy and powerful schemed for more wealth and power because it was “in the power of their hand” (Micah 2:1). Since they could do it, and they wanted to do it, why not do it, who was to stop them?
A reverence for the holiness (unique otherness) of Yahweh brings with it a healthy fear of his power and ability to judge all wickedness and consign the impenitent to the torments of hell. The loss of that reverence unleashes a multitude of evils that brings with it nothing but sorrow. Not a good situation for the people of God; not a good situation for the people of the United States. If Adams is correct, then we should be praying for a revival of godly fear that the wicked impulses of the powerful will be checked not just by government regulations, but by an inborn reverence of God.
