126. Our obligation to secular human laws is not just secular but sacred
126. OUR OBLIGATION TO SECULAR HUMAN LAWS IS NOT JUST SECULAR BUT SACRED
If human laws are only minimal, does that mean we should not take them very seriously? Do we have a sacred, religious obligation to obey secular, pragmatic human laws?
Laws framed by man are either just or unjust. If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience, from the eternal law whence they are derived, according to Proverbs 8:15: By Me kings reign and lawgivers decree just things (I-II,96,4).
Christians are good citizens, and take human laws very seriously, for religious reasons, not just for secular reasons. That’s why they are better citizens than atheists, and certainly better citizens than moral relativists and subjectivists: they have stronger motives for obedience. The very fact that Christians relativize human society, the very fact that they believe in a higher law than human law, means not that they are traitors to secular society because they have a higher love and loyalty, but exactly the opposite: that they take civil obedience more seriously than a secularist can. It’s like the advertisement for kosher hot dogs: Jews make better hot dogs because “We answer to a higher authority.”
This religious reason for obeying secular law is based on a theological and philosophical principle of the distinction among (a) human law, (b) natural law, and (c) eternal law, and the relationship among these three kinds of law. Secular, human law (a), which stems from human reason and will, insofar as it reflects the natural moral law (b), which is based on human nature, is an actual participation in eternal law (c), i.e., God’s mind and will. For human society did not just evolve by accident; it was designed by God in accordance with human nature. Man is by nature social and political. Social justice was not merely invented by men, but is an aspect of the eternal will of God.
Therefore social justice is an aspect of the Christian religion. The “social gospel” is part of the gospel. The Christian religion is much more than just social justice (which is pretty much all it is for theological “liberals”), but it is not less. Religious “conservatives” or “traditionalists” should take social justice not less seriously but more seriously than religious “liberals” or “modernists”, for the same reason Christians and other supernaturalists can and should take social justice more seriously than naturalists and secularists can.