Papua New Guinea amended its constitution identifying itself as a Christian nation earlier this year. I’ve recently been asked what I make of this and whether or not I can commend it as a good thing.
This is really a concrete example of the hypothetical question “wouldn’t you rather have a nation that is built on God’s Word/Law than on secularism or some other religious ideology.”
This is based on a misunderstanding that can perhaps be exemplified as follows. Suppose you are planning a long journey. You might prefer to stop and eat at a good quality restaurant than grabbing something at the services. However, you won’t plan your whole journey or measure its success on where you stop off to eat. Your aim is to reach your destination. The question above confuses the common grace overflow of goodness to the people of a country with our true mission and destination.
So, I can rejoice to hear about significant growth in the number of believers in a country. I can also see it as a positive when a country benefits in that overflow of common grace if its laws and culture come under the influence of Christianity.
However, whether or not what has happened in PNG is good or not depends. There are two issues to consider here which will affect the answer.
- It is not a good thing if the application of God’s Word to a culture is based on misinterpretation of God’s Word. We need to remember that humans are fallible. So we should not confuse a nation basing its laws, customs and culture on God’s Word and God’s Law with basing it on fallible human interpretations of God’s Word.
- It is not a good thing if God’s Word is misapplied. This is particularly the case when people use political means to achieve Gospel ends. You cannot make people Christian through external applications of law. Nor can you change hearts through those political means.
For more detailed thoughts, see the video below.
Faithroots 