As a Modesto California SWAT team stormed through his parents’ home at 6:21 a.m., Alberto Sepulveda immediately obeyed orders to lie facedown on his bedroom floor. Thirty seconds later, eleven-year-old Alberto lay dead, struck in the back by a blast from officer David Hawn’s shotgun. A police investigation into the September 13, 2000, drug raid determined that the shooting was accidental.

Conservative supporters of the War on Drugs will argue that Alberto’s death was the unfortunate result of his father’s alleged choice to sell drugs—no drugs or weapons were found during the raid. Proponents of this view see deaths such as Alberto’s as one of the necessary costs in a campaign to protect society from the dangers of drug use.

Their liberal counterparts contend that a crusade against drugs ignores the underlying problems of poverty and social injustice—problems that can only be addressed by additional government programs and legislation. They point to Alberto’s death as a prime example of the damage caused by modern day prohibition, but remain silent about the damage caused by the tax enforcement raids and seizures necessary to ensure continued funding for the social programs they support.

For a third group, libertarians, Alberto Sepulveda’s death is yet another tragic illustration of what happens when government power is used to enforce morality.

The Choice

As with their secular counterparts, many well-meaning liberal and conservative Christians want to use government to shape society. Conservative Christians want a government opposed to gay marriage, abortion, and vice. In their eyes, church, family, and nation are all threatened by an increasingly permissive culture, and government intervention is needed to halt society’s moral free fall.

For liberal Christians, the primary problem is a world indifferent to the plight of the disadvantaged. Living wages, affirmative action, universal health care, globalization, immigration, and gay rights are among the issues that drive these self-described progressive Christians. Their form of government would correct economic and social injustices and thus fulfill Jesus’ call to minister to the poor and disenfranchised.

Christian libertarians, in contrast, see no role for government in moral affairs. Neither do they perceive any significant difference between liberal or conservative Christian platforms, each of which seeks to use government power to force its own brand of morality upon the general population. From the libertarian perspective the Christian choice is not between right and left, but rather between coercion and persuasion.

What Is Government?

To better understand the Christian libertarian position, one must first understand the nature and purpose of government:

• In a representative government, the governed are in charge: Abraham Lincoln put it best when, in his Gettysburg Address, he referred to the U.S. government as a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
• Individuals delegate to government the authority to protect their rights, and government exists solely to protect these rights: The U.S. Declaration of Independence makes this clear, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.…"
• Government is force: George Washington described government thus, "Government is not reason and it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." More recently, Washington Post columnist George Will defined the "first task of government" to be the establishment of "a monopoly on violence." To govern is not to persuade through reason, it is to ensure compliance through force or the threat of force.

When Is Violence Justified?

If government derives its authority from the "consent of the governed," it follows that government can only take those actions that the individuals it derives its authority from can take on their own behalf. An individual can delegate to another entity only those powers that the individual legitimately holds.

Since government is ultimately the use of force, and since it derives its authority to use force from the individuals that authorize it, when is an individual justified in the use of force? Individuals can use force only to protect their rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, although not at another’s expense. An individual cannot legitimately user force or the threat of force to extract funds from neighbors, even if it is to feed the hungry. An individual cannot legitimately use force or the threat of force to keep people from having sex, even if one of them will earn a fee for the act.

Just as a person lacks the individual right to force others to help the poor or to engage in violence to stop prostitution, neither can he delegate to another the authority to use force to accomplish these things for him. What is legitimate for an individual to do is legitimate for a government to do, and what is criminal for an individual to do is criminal for a government to do. Rape is rape and theft is theft, even if the majority of 290 million citizens vote to the contrary.

Let Him Without Sin Cast the First Vote

Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged a perverted legal system that compelled morality through force. Jesus rejected the right of the "morally upright" to execute a woman caught in adultery; he redefined Sabbath law in favor of man and admonished his listeners to "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7:1). Jesus’ opposition to coerced morality so disturbed the moral crusaders of the time that they killed him.

Christian libertarians understand that the fundamental manifestation of God’s love is the freedom he gave us to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes. Without the freedom to turn our backs on God, no one’s choice to follow him is legitimate.

Misguided efforts to enforce Christian morality through the coercive power of the state arrogantly elevate flawed human preference above God’s perfect judgment. To advocate coerced morality is to abandon loving persuasion and to relinquish faith in God’s power to transform. Is God’s path so unappetizing that it must be forced upon the unwilling?

What is the greater transgression, to engage in immoral behavior, or to rob another of the opportunity to choose God freely? Which is worse in God’s eyes, the businessman’s gated mansion or the do-gooder’s coercive morality?

Jesus calls us to voluntary transformation, not coerced goodness. "Here I am!" he says, "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20).

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