LAW vs VIRTUE

Cover them all you want by law.
It's what's inside that counts.

These days we have been hearing a lot about "Social Issues" as the central topic of interesting the in political skirmishes in the United States.  We all know that "Social Issues" mean that our august statesmen and women are talking about sex, women, religion and song.  They are not confronting the hard governmental issues of war, peace, domestic and international economics and perhaps maybe even a word or two about how to treat the threat of failure of the United States Postal Service.  These are things that the government should be doing.  It is not the place of the government to attempt at legislating morality.  Here's why.
When I was younger I discovered a disturbing trend in this country.  It is the attitude that a proliferation of laws, rules and regulations can solve all behavior problems.  I was in my early teens and I could see that all the laws in the world were not going to be able to make the world a morally better place in which to live.  The proof of that was even in my own personal behavior.  I did not obey the speed laws.  I was under 21, yet I was allowed to have a glass of wine at the meals when wine was available.  Despite the death penalty people still were committing murder; banks were being robbed; young people were "ditching" classes and wandering the streets; hunters and sports fishermen would bring home illegal game and over-the-limit catches.  The minor breeches of the law were fodder for family gathering stories of bravado and humorous scoff-law braggadocio.
I could never figure out why we had government because I wondered how they could spend all their time at the capitol making laws that no one would obey.  I'm serious.  I was 16, 17, 18 and I couldn't figure it out.  I still can't.
I have to admit that I have come a long way since then.  I now know that we need government.  We need someplace for all these ne'er-do-wells to go.  No matter what they do, they are not going to make anyone's life better, nor worse.  They are just going to take up space and spend time gathering more and more mug shots of George Washington for their own welfare.  Here's how I came to know this.
Start with God.  He creates people.  He gave people the Law.  The people that He makes, break His law constantly.  Have been for centuries.  I could even say, "millennia."   So what are we here trying to do?  Out-perform God?  Think about it for a minute.  PLUS, God gives us the tools we all need to not even need the law if only we would use them properly.  He endows us with a thing called "virtue."  You know what that is.  Stuff like patience, love, honesty, generosity, understanding one another, humility, justice, hope, meekness, kindness and some others that I don't have to enumerate.  With all of that inner ammunition, humans still find a way to do nasty things to one another and to themselves.  So, God went out of His way to give us external guidelines, over and above virtue, for good behavior.  God gave us these things out of the goodness of His heart.  He is the source of all goodness and sacredness.  Now, if He has a hard time with us, how are the money grubbing, arrogant, self centered, self-aggrandizing politicians ever going to be able to make things better for anybody by providing and improvising an infinity of  external rules and regulations?  If God, Who is all good and all sacred can't do it for everybody, how can we, well-practiced law breakers that we are,  pretend to be able to change our fellow humans through an infinite proliferation of more and more external guidelines?  It is insane.  
Only VIRTUE, the internal fortitude to always choose the right thing, can make things better in this world.
I finish by saying that to think that we humans can get by with virtue alone is also insane.  There is no such thing as an absolute and pure unity that is able to solve this conundrum.  It is only through judiciously applied wisdom that we can hope to make life here below better, happier and more peaceful.  Sadly, the application of that wisdom also includes the judicious use of fear.  Oh, boy, this topic can really get to you.  So I leave you with a quote on fear:  "The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom."  Some how I wish that our politicians would take that to heart.
Finally.  You now know that I haven't solved the problem I started to have at 17 years old.  I know that I will find the answer in heaven.  For that to happen, I have to die.  So, keep that in mind at my funeral and you won't cry because you'll know that I finally have an answer to this mighty tough question.