As Americans, we love it when the government stays out of our business. “All the government should do is make sure that I don’t harm anyone and no one harms me,” some think. But when someone asks us, “How is your neighbor’s homosexuality harming you? Why are you upset that it’s legal now?,” we might get caught flat-footed. So for all our emphasis on what isn’t the government’s business, let’s not forget what is the government’s business. Laws are not just there to penalize criminals. Laws are there to teach us right from wrong. 

The Hebrew word used for the “law” is torah. The Torah was what Moses gave to the people of Israel (see Deuteronomy 4:44). Now, the English word “law” is a good translation of the Hebrew torah—God certainly gave the Israelites many laws and rules to follow. But we shouldn’t stop there and think of this word according to the dry, modern, clinical connotation meaning “legislation.” The word torah has so much more meaning than just “rules we have to follow.” Torah carries the idea of “teachings.” God’s torah is His “teaching” to us.

Gesenius’s lexicon defines torah as either “law” or “instruction, doctrine.” The idea of teaching is baked right into the word, as its root word in Hebrew, “yarah,” means “to teach, instruct.” Now, yarah can also mean “to throw or shoot (an arrow);” the possible connection is that when we teach, we “send out” our hand to point out something to our audience. So ultimately, the law is the “pointer-outer.” It is the “teacher” that teaches us about evil.

Indeed, God sometimes uses torah to refer to things we wouldn’t even call “law” in our modern understanding. For example, Proverbs 1:8 tells us, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching” (ESV, italics added). The word “teaching” here? Torah. God isn’t telling us to hold fast to our mother’s legislation in the dry, clinical sense. He’s telling us to hold fast to her sound teachings.

Now, because God’s laws are His teachings, He commanded something that might be surprising to our modern ears. When’s the last time you meditated on U.S. Code 31–1322? But in Deuteronomy 6:6–9, God said that His commandments were to be upon our hearts, we should teach them to our children, and we should continually talk about them and keep them before our eyes. His commandments were not just rules to be followed, but teachings to be meditated upon.

This law-as-teacher theme continues over into the New Testament as well. Much of the New Testament focuses on what the law was unable to do: it could not save us. But there is one thing the law does very well: “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20, ESV). Paul says, “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law” (Romans 7:7, NASB). In other words, the law teaches us! The law imparts knowledge of sin to us, so that we can know what sin is. Paul even uses the word paidagogos (“tutor,” “instructor,” “schoolmaster”) to describe the law in Galatians 3:24—“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (KJV).

So God’s law does not consist of abstract rules or distant instructions for how society is supposed to run. God’s law is pedagogical. God’s law teaches us. When we read it, we learn what is right and wrong.

“Okay, nice devotional,” you might say. “What does the pedagogical function of the Mosaic law have to do with contemporary politics?” Well, everything, because politics is the business of figuring out how to structure human law. Since God is the One from Whom we receive our own political authority (Romans 13:1), perhaps we can learn a thing or two from the way He wields His authority. I believe that human authority is a shadowy copy of God’s authority, which means human law is a shadowy copy of God’s law. So if God’s law is pedagogical, then so is the United States Code. Human law also teaches us about right and wrong.

When we pass a law against stealing, we are not just trying to protect the gross domestic product. We are making a statement. We are communicating something profound. We are teaching society that stealing is wrong. The same goes for a law against treason. Or perjury. Or even something more “minor” like speeding. Yes, even then, we are teaching society that endangering others around us is wrong.

People like to quote the cliche, “politics is downstream from culture.” But as a mentor of mine is quick to retort, we need to move away from this whole “downstream” business. Law, culture, society—all of them form an integrated whole, mutually informing and influencing itself.

Sure, laws are affected by the culture that passes them. But culture is also affected by the laws enacted over it! This is because laws teach our culture what is right and wrong. When we legalized marijuana use, we didn’t just “let people do what they want with their own money on their own time.” We taught society that marijuana use is, at the very least, acceptable. And we wonder why all those pot shops just sprang up along the interstate.

This is also why the libertarian cry of “You should be able to do what you want as long as you don’t harm anyone else,” is woefully short-sighted. At the very least, our understanding of “harm” is far too narrow. If two men down the street get “married,” how does that harm you? It’s pretty hard to explain how. So how would legalizing homosexuality “harm” you? Again, chin-scratching silence.

So then, what’s your problem with letting consenting adults do what they want in private? The libertarian might have a point here, if it weren’t for the inconveniently inescapable pedagogical function of the law. With this in mind, we can answer their challenge: When the law allows two men to get “married,” it teaches all of society that homosexuality is acceptable. And that undermines the entire social order, because sexual order is social order. The law must always teach truth and not lies. That’s why homosexuality must be illegal.

You see, the law is not just there to “make sure we all don’t harm each other” in the libertarian sense. That would make the law some abstract social code issuing the occasional ERROR message when societal components collide with each other. Rather, the law is part of the fabric of society, teaching us about what is right and wrong. Of course, certain nuisances really should be beyond the scope of the law’s reach—like whether or not you paint your house bright orange. But in this discussion, we’re dealing with issues with deep moral import. When we legalize something, we’re saying, “such-and-such is acceptable for us as a society.”

If something isn’t acceptable, we should think twice before teaching all of society that it is.