At some point, the natural law must be made concrete, inserted into real human life in real context, and applied. This, I maintain, is impossible without some kind of discernible tradition of Christianity governing that process.

Can “Mere Christianity” stem the tide of societal dissolution?
Craig Carter (not without some impassioned campaigning by the American Reformer staff on Twitter) wrote a thoughtful piece back in November 2022 on liberal democracy vis-à-vis Christian Nationalism from a Baptist perspective. A few highlights: “But what if I told you that liberal democracy only works in nations that recognize natural law as true, which historically means almost exclusively Christian nations?” Liberal democracy has “worked” for a while, says Carter, because of the residual conditions of Christendom. “But can we not all agree on the existence of God, the existence of a moral law, and the need to base law on human nature? No? Well, we won’t be able to keep liberal democracy.”1 And so,
Liberal democracy needs Christianity, or it collapses into anarchy. The state requires a healthy Christian church that does evangelism and discipleship effectively. Only those able to control their own desires and impose discipline on themselves make adequate citizens for a liberal democratic nation. Belief in God and a moral order is necessary as the foundation of a free society.
Predictably, then, “As individuals become more atomized and less personally disciplined, the need for social controls increases.”
This is all fairly unobjectionable, as far as it goes, but also not unique to liberal democratic regimes. Any regime requires a healthy Christian church to direct men to God and virtue. And this is part of the point.
A just regime is not merely neutral or indifferent toward higher truths, toward religion. Indifference by the temporal power toward the spiritual power may actually harm true religion and religious vibrancy because indifference (neutrality) relegates religion to the sidelines. Under liberal democratic regimes with a high level of plurality—something relentlessly fostered by all western liberal democratic nations—neutrality is praised as a cure to religious conflict. But when all religions are leveled and further categorized as one among many subsidiary, voluntary associations, the persuasive, pedagogical influence of true religion, of the church, is increasingly diminished. That is, in a sense, by design.2
At the same time, the temporal power suffers for absence of a central cult. Laws, too, are supposed to lead men gradually to virtue. This is right and inevitable. But within a pluralistic playing field, what mechanism can temporal power use to select the undergirding morality to inform its laws?
Now, Carter (or Andrew Walker) will answer, “natural law, of course.” This is basically correct. The question, however, is how natural law is known and taught, especially according to secondary conclusions (i.e., specific applications) which are not immediately ascertainable to all men equally. In a sense, the natural law is known; in another sense, it is learned. John Owen and Johannes Althusius, among others, instructed that the best way to arrive at a fully-orbed understanding and use of the natural law is through the study of good human laws that already reflect higher law, through the teaching of the church, and through scripture.
The problem with regard to how natural law will determine the state’s governing morality is 1) people aren’t great at grasping and applying the natural law; and 2) the temporal power needs the church to promulgate the summary of the natural law republished in the Decalogue as scripture as well as those parts of special revelation that bolster understanding of the natural order. Positing an absolute bifurcation between church and state–far beyond a proper recognition of their separate realms of authority–usually goes hand in hand with an absolute bifurcation between scripture and natural law.3 Neither antithesis helps us faithfully apply natural law today. Also, 3) the particular instantiations of natural law are necessarily contextualized by the polity and culture in which they are applied. If said polity is not already conditioned by a central, governing morality then the extent to which natural law supplies authoritative guidance will be limited, abstract, and largely anemic.
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Scientists in Darwin’s time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together.

If you look different to your close relatives, you may have felt separate from your family. As a child, during particularly stormy fall outs you might have even hoped it was a sign that you were adopted.
As our new research shows, appearances can be deceptive when it comes to family. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.
The primates, to which humans belong, were once thought to be close relatives of bats because of some similarities in our skeletons and brains. However, DNA data now places us in a group that includes rodents (rats and mice) and rabbits. Astonishingly, bats turn out to be more closely related to cows, horses, and even rhinoceroses than they are to us.
Scientists in Darwin’s time and through most of the 20th century could only work out the branches of the evolutionary tree of life by looking at the structure and appearance of animals and plants. Life forms were grouped according to similarities thought to have evolved together.
About three decades ago, scientists started using DNA data to build “molecular trees”. Many of the first trees based on DNA data were at odds with the classical ones.
Sloths and anteaters, armadillos, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and aardvarks were once thought to belong together in a group called edentates (“no teeth”), since they share aspects of their anatomy.
Molecular trees showed that these traits evolved independently in different branches of the mammal tree. It turns out that aardvarks are more closely related to elephants while pangolins are more closely related to cats and dogs.
Coming Together
There is another important line of evidence that was familiar to Darwin and his contemporaries. Darwin noted that animals and plants that appeared to share the closest common ancestry were often found close together geographically. The location of species is another strong indicator they are related: species that live near each other are more likely to share a family tree.
For the first time, our recent paper cross-referenced location, DNA data, and appearance for a range of animals and plants. We looked at evolutionary trees based on appearance or on molecules for 48 groups of animals and plants, including bats, dogs, monkeys, lizards, and pine trees.
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We do what-if thinking so very well. We can’t just stop thinking this way; our what-ifs must be replaced by something even stronger—and the good news is that we have that in the gospel of Jesus. Look at it this way: What-if thinking consists of possibilities. It makes sense to replace possibilities with something that is for sure, always factual—the person of a Creator God.

Creativity—and imagination. Humans are blessed with these things by their Creator. It’s part of the image of God in us. He, after all, is endlessly creative.
The trouble is that our creativity, like all other good things he has given, is twisted by our fallenness; we’re very good at misusing it.
Consider our tendency to imagine the future. There’s a place for planning and organizing, but “thinking ahead” can simply mean manufacturing negative what-ifs. It can become a constant habit of borrowing trouble; it can be the incubator of false assumptions, worry, and despair. We often readily adopt those what-ifs as real possibilities, which soon develop into probabilities. Before we know it, we’re imagining them as prophecies. . . and soon, in our mind’s eye, they’re facts!
This negatively creative mindset can become our regular context of thinking and cause us to progressively doubt much of what God has told us in his Word.
It’s incredibly easy to wander into the fearsome Land of What-If and live there.
Why Is What-If Thinking So Easy?
Parents and families of sexual strugglers may ask:

What if my son marries his partner?
What if I’m the only one in the family who says this is wrong?
What if my daughter decides to do hormones or surgery?
What if the people at church shut us out because our son is gay?
What if my daughter tells the grandchildren that Uncle Jim is now Aunt Jane?
What if my son stops all communication with me because I accept Scripture?
What if my daughter’s new “friends” lead her into drugs, or worse?
What if this all goes on for years . . . and years?

We’re capable of filling our thinking with awful possibilities. But to what end? Why do we do that, especially when we don’t (and can’t) exist in the future?
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