A Free and Just Society Needs This. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Rod Eccles is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Rod Eccles Show, and we are most happy to have Rod as an extended member of our growing BCN family.

    There is a time to be accepting of just about anything that is moral and ethical. I know, you think I forgot legal. But what is legal? What was once legal is now illegal because someone in power decided that you and I would be better off with that once legal thing now being illegal.

    But I am talking about things that are beyond our definition of what is legal and illegal and that is a higher power. That higher power has set forth what is moral and ethical and tries as we might as humans; those "laws" do not change. We also know these things to be principles. I often say methods are many; principles are few because methods often change, but principles never do.

    Indeed, if you look at what basic principles man has, you will notice they are the same today as they were 5,000 years ago. Modern man, as we like to call ourselves, often makes the mistake of substituting laws for principles. There are only two kinds of basic laws and they are as follows: First there is societal law which is the law that allows us to interact with each other on a daily basis safely. Laws against murder, rape, burglary, etc, are laws in which principles are attached. Murder has always been illegal and that will never change. However, you can say that human life and the right to life is a principle.

    Second there are the self-preservation or self-protection laws which we also call lifestyle laws. Examples of these laws are seat belt laws and limits on how big your soft drink can be but if you notice these laws have nothing to do with principles at all. These laws are arbitrary and made up by one human who thinks he knows better than every other human out there and thus needs to prove it by putting it into law.

    These are the kinds of laws that will destroy a just society because what these laws do is attempt, in no small way, to usurp the authority of God and His principles of basic human life. God said you were born with "free speech" yet a government official decides that only certain kinds of speech are good for you and your neighbors.

    God said you have a right to life yet a government lackey will tell you that you are only human if you are born alive. And even then, we have some folks in government that believe even after you are born alive you still are not fully human until you reach a certain age. You may say that is nothing but pure evil and you would be correct.

    However, these very same people will rule in favor of laws that cheapen human life and even allow it to be snuffed out without just cause simply because the mother in question doesn't want to carry the child to full term. When you have non-principled, manmade laws, that begin to usurp the principles and laws of God, you will find you have a society that is not free, that is in steep decline, and there will be a severe lack of respect for human life.

    Look around you because have more laws on the books than at any time in human history. Yet we still complain that many kinds of crimes are on the rise. People are not feeling safe in their own neighborhoods, in their own homes. We have more police than ever before yet crime in many areas is on the rise.

    This is due to the fact that we have allowed man's laws to usurp God's laws. In other words, we have abandoned principle for a feeling of progress and safety. Today we have a society that does not care about its fellow man or God and has given man's changing morals more sway than the proven morals of God.

    So you have to ask yourself, will making and implementing even more laws make you safer or will going back and adopting principles like respect and responsibility be better? We have tried the more and more laws approach and it is a total and complete failure.

    What we need is to teach principles and morals because when you have a moral and just and principled people, then you will have a moral, just, and principled nation. And when you have a moral, just, and principled nation, you will have true freedom without the need for an abundance of laws.