Religion and Government Don't Mix: A Brief Example Illustrating Why

Today's blog post will be brief and to-the-point.

I'd like to direct your attention to an article posted recently to Slate. Sanal Edamaruku, a reporter and member of an Indian skeptics' society, recently visited a Catholic shrine in Mumbai to investigate claims of miracles. Local Catholics believe that a statue of Jesus drips water.

Upon his investigation, Edamaruku concluded that there wasn't actually anything miraculous going on. Rather, a clogged pipe and resultant drainage problems made it appear as if the statue was miraculously dripping water.

Interestingly, Edamaruku is now facing prison time for his conclusions. Indian law makes it a crime to "deliberately [hurt] religious feelings and [attempt] malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments of any class or community."

While no doubt well-intentioned - after all, relations between India's religious groups can most charitably be described as "strained," - this law interferes with both freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, in ways that border on being absurd. And while Indian law is in no way accountable to the Bill of Rights, I note that there are more than a few members of the Religious Right who would be more than happy to have such a law here in the U.S. At least, if it only protected Christians, that is.

Nevertheless, this case illustrates a fundamental truth: when religion and government mix, the outcome is rarely good. If Mumbai's Catholics want to believe that a statue of Jesus miraculously drips water, good for them. If Mumbai's skeptics want to believe that faulty pipes are the cause, good for them as well. Involving the courts is only going to make matters worse.

Public Education Fail: One Size Does *NOT* Fit All

This blog is not now, nor is it ever going to be, a movie-review blog. But for the sake of this particular blog post, I'd like to take a look at a cute scene in the movie Ramona and Beezus. Ramona is a precocious nine-year-old in third grade. Ramona isn't fond of such mundane things as "rules" or "expectations," and as such, she tends to color outside the lines. In the scene in question, her parents are discussing her disappointing report card from her public school.

Ramona's teacher has observed that, first among Ramona's many shortcomings, is Ramona's tendency to make up words and to make up her own spelling of real words. Ramona's defense is at once both irresistibly cute, and a telling commentary on how her public education was already beginning to fail her: "They make us all learn the same words!"

Now, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that vocabulary and spelling are open to interpretation, as Ramona would prefer. Rather, I'm suggesting that Ramona's complaint that they all have to learn the same words is valid, and reveals a much larger problem. To assume that a classroom of  25 or 30 children of various home lives, maturity levels, intelligence levels, interests, fears, and likes & dislikes would all be equally well-served by learning the same vocabulary words is patently ludicrous. On a larger scale, the idea that the entire third grade curriculum for Ramona's school district will equally serve every child is even more ludicrous.

If you're a parent of a child in a public school, consider for a moment his or her curriculum. It was decided upon by a committee of which you were not a part and into which you probably had little to no say. As I said in this post, it was most likely developed by persons with ideology that differs from yours. It may well have been decided upon before your child was even born. It conforms to the standards of your state - standards which were developed by unaccountable bureaucrats - and developed to meet federal guidelines, under threat of the withholding of federal funds. And you can rest assured that your child was in no way considered when the curriculum was developed, and anything he or she has to say about it will be summarily ignored. Your child will be expected to learn the curriculum, or fail.

This system fails on multiple levels. Let's take a look.

1. Exceptional kids are left behind. At first glance, this claim looks ridiculous: schools across the country are full of straight-A students; your child may be one of them. The problem is that a straight-A student is excelling only within the system. Kids with exceptional talent, exceptional intelligence, exceptional imagination, or exceptional whatever, can only go so far as the system will allow them. A third grader who makes an A+ in Vocabulary may or may not have an exceptional vocabulary; it just means that she's met the government's standard of third-grader vocabulary. She may well have the vocabulary of someone twice her age (for example, when I was in third grade I was reading at a grade 9 reading level); but in the one-size-fits-all model of public education, she won't have any opportunity to exercise or expand her vocabulary because she'll spend the rest of the school year learning words she already knows.

Not all exceptional kids in public schools are readily identifiable by their excellent grades on report cards. In fact, many bright and gifted kids do poorly in school simply because they're bored. Can you expect a first-grader who has already read every book that his teacher reads to the class to pay attention? This one-size-fits-all method doesn't even consider this possibility. The problem is even more pronounced in high school, where thousands of kids across the country show up daily for no reason other than they're expected to be there. I, for one, more or less "floated" through high school simply because I found it indescribably pointless (there are other reasons for my failure in high school as well, but they're not relevant to this column). Or, consider the words of a friend on an internet message board: "I really didn't know why I was there, I wasn't clear on what the guidance counselors were for, and I just washed out." 

2. Special-needs kids are left behind. The debate continues to rage: should kids with special needs be mainstreamed into the classroom with the rest of the students, or should they be segregated to learn on their own? The sad fact is, within the one-size-fits-all public education model, both methods have extreme disadvantages. Mainstreaming special-needs kids may lead to disruptions in the classroom, and a disproportionate amount of the teacher's time being spent on them, to the neglect of the other kids in the classroom. Segregating special-needs kids draws attention to them and quickly makes them targets of derision from the other kids. Needless to say, in the public education model there seems to be no right answer.

But what about bright, or even average, kids who struggle in one or two areas? For example: I was an exceptionally bright and gifted kid in almost all areas, except math. As the school years marched ahead, I continued to struggle with math, getting worse and worse grades and getting more and more frustrated and bogged down in concepts that I simply could not understand. Special tutoring? There was no money in the budget. Special attention? There was no time. The expectation was that I would learn the exact same amount of math as every other kid in my grade year, or I would fail; there were no other options. To this day I can barely do simple calculations such as balancing my checkbook. Or consider a friend from church, whose son struggles with reading. In most areas of his education he does as well as can be expected, but in reading he lags behind the other kids. While his peers will progress through their educational careers, my friend's son will be left behind unless and until someone comes up with a way to get him caught up. It won't happen; there is neither money nor time, in the one-size-fits-all public model.

3. Average kids are homogenized. I considered long and hard what word I wanted to use in the headline to this paragraph, and with much regret I settled on "average." "Average" is a loaded word: no one wants to hear that their son or daughter is "average." And in reality, no one child is average! Where one child may be exceptionally bright, another may have average intelligence but have a knack for art. Another child may struggle with math or science but may have a knack for reading or vocabulary. One child may struggle academically but be an exceptionally talented singer.

By design, the one-size-fits-all method of public education ignores those differences, insisting instead that every child must meet the same standards in the same subjects in order to advance. So a child who is interested in caring for farm animals is going to learn about the Bay of Pigs Invasion, regardless of how much or how little she cares about it, because someone she's never met has decided that she needs to know about it. A teenager who is interested in building machines and computers is going to learn about Byzantine art because someone he's never met has decided that he needs to know about it. The interests and skills of the kids are ignored in the name of making sure they meet arbitrary "standards" set by people who have never met them, who don't know them and most likely don't care about them.

Homeschooling, un-schooling, and private education continue to offer far superior alternatives to public education. The way to assure that your child receives the best education possible is to build an educational plan around their needs, desires, interests and goals, in concert with your goals as well; instead of one designed by bureaucrats who have never met you or your kids. This can't, and won't, be done in a public school.

Relations With the Police

One complaint that observers have about liberty activism is that it is antagonistic toward the police. This is somewhat disturbing to me. First, because it's not true; and second, because as a Christians I'm expected to reject hate (Eph. 4:31).

The reality is that the liberty mindset is not about rejecting (and therefore, hating and antagonizing) the police; it's about rejecting intrusive government. The police force is merely the most visible face of intrusive government. This is regrettable, but it's also an undeniable fact.

Before I get into a deeper explanation of why liberty activism really isn't about hating or badmouthing cops, I'd like to take a look at some of the ways outside observers have reacted to attempts at holding the police accountable. Here is Glenn Beck going on a six-minute rant against what he calls a "police setup." If you don't want to listen to Glenn Beck going on a six-minute rant (and really, who does?), here's the TLDR version: In response to what some local blacks in Indianapolis considered a racially-motivated incident involving a cop and a mixed-race youth, a group contrives an altercation to see how the police react. It doesn't go well. Beck uses this as an excuse to launch a tirade against all people who would attempt to hold police accountable as cop-hating leftists. Thanks, Glenn Beck. If I ever feel like I'm running low on ignorance, all I need to do is look for some clips of you on Youtube.

Here is the late, great Paul Harvey praising the police, bringing out the old canard that a few bad apples don't spoil the bunch. While Paul raises legitimate points about the difficulties faced by police, he completely ignores the facts about why our police get put into such difficult situations in the first place. Mr. Harvey neglects to mention how it's our country's utterly ridiculous drug laws that put police in the line of fire between gangs fighting turf wars; or that municipalities' dependence on revenue from speeding and traffic tickets pit the police against motorists; or how using heavy-handed police tactics in the enforcement of matters that should easily be settled with a fine or a ticket, or better yet, be ignored entirely (see here) tends to put the police in a bad light.

But never mind all that. As I said at the beginning of this article, seeking liberty is not about hating the police. Let's look at some ways in which advocating for liberty tends to put our movement in opposition to the police.

1. Advocating against bad laws (and enforcement of bad laws) is not an act of hate. Look, I understand that cops are just "doing their jobs." All of us are required by our jobs to do things that we don't like. But when I view a law as bad, I view the enforcement of that law as bad. It's a fact of life. The fact is, I support the police in their enforcement of laws in which someone is victimized, and I feel quite strongly that there would be fewer victims (and fewer opportunities for police themselves to be victimized) if police weren't required to spend so much of their time policing for victimless crimes.

2. Advocating for Constitutional rights is not an act of hate. Whether they're doing it on their own, or by department policy, police across the country routinely violating Americans' Fourth Amendment rights. Stop-and-Frisk stops, DUI checkpoints, and random stops by VIPER Teams on Tennessee highways are all acts of government intrusion into our lives at the expense of the Constitution. I call for an end to all such tactics. This is not about the police themselves conducting these checkpoints; it's about the government allowing or requiring these intrusions in the first place.

3. Advocating for police accountability is not an act of hate. Consider for a moment the case of a Harlem couple branded "professional agitators" and placed on a Wanted poster. Their crime? Filming the police conducting stop-and-frisk stops. Some within the NYPD seem to have concluded that these people are deliberately antagonizing the cops; and maybe so - I have no claim to know their personal motives. But I strongly advocate for filming the police; not because I think every cop is going to do something bad if they're not being filmed. Rather, I fear that those cops who do act badly won't be held accountable by their own departments (based on a police culture that looks after its own). In this case, the internet and the court of public opinion are there to advocate as a voice for accountability.

4. Attempting to prevent acts of state-sponsored extortion is not an act of hate. Attempting to warn other motorists of upcoming speed traps is a First-Amendment right, as long as those who would warn are not impeding traffic or otherwise being a nuisance. It's not about hating the police; it's about rejecting state-sponsored attempts at extorting money from motorists.

5. Educating citizens about how to protect themselves from police harassment is not an act of hate. As a member of the liberty community, I support (and practice) the tactics taught by those at Flex Your Rights. It's not because I hate the cops, or feel that they're out to get everyone, or whatever. It's because citizens who don't know their rights tend to talk themselves into even more trouble than they would be in if they kept their mouths shut. It's because, as the Miranda Warning makes abundantly clear, anything you say can and will be used against you. It's because, most importantly of all, the Constitution, at least on paper, protects you from government tyranny in law enforcement, but if and only if you know your rights and invoke them.

As a Christian, I believe that all people deserve to be treated with respect and courtesy, whether they wear a badge or not. This means, among other things, that I'm not an advocate for violence (verbal or otherwise) against cops; I reject calling them "pigs," or initiating violence against them, or whatever. But in light of Luke 10:27, I also call for government to stay out of my life. If this means that I'm called to point out and decry police abuses, or to participate in activism that may make the police look bad, or to participate in activism they may result in fewer police powers (or fewer police, period), then so be it. It's not about the men and women in uniform themselves; it's about the presence of the uniform where it's neither wanted nor needed.

Sectarian Violence Is Now a Part of US Culture

Until recently I've always - perhaps naively - assumed that religious violence was a problem that existed only outside of the United States. Oh sure, there have been instances where a rogue Amish group cut the beards off of other Amish men; and incidents where pro-gay or other seemingly "anti-Christian" signs or billboards have been vandalized are too numerous to mention. But in the main, it's always been my belief that actual violence, perpetrated on a large scale by members of opposing religious groups, was not a part of the American experience.

Until now.

Recently in Dearborn, Michigan, some "Christians" felt the need to antagonize and incite their Muslim neighbors during a celebration. This lead to violent confrontation, including stones being thrown at the Christians. Interestingly enough, most of the pro-Christian and pro-Right media considers this as an act of persecution against Christians, while the mainstream media has largely ignored the matter.


Christians who attempt to play the persecution card when it was they themselves who created the climate that lead to violence are being dis-ingenuous at best, and liars at worst. Compare this situation to the schoolyard bully who calls another kid names, gets punched in the nose, then runs to the principal yelling "He started it!"


Let's be clear about this: carrying a pig's head through a Muslim community, while carrying signs promising hell and damnation to Muslims, is a gross act of hate. It also goes without saying that such behavior completely ignores Luke 10:27. If a Muslim group had converged on a Christian community's parade burning Bibles and carrying upside-down crosses, pro-Christian media would be shouting about it from the rooftops. And while the Muslim community in Dearborn is not without blame in this situation (they did, after all, respond to antagonism with violence), in my view the fault for this debacle lies squarely with the Christians.


Christian and Muslim relations in the US have been strained, to say the least, since September 11th (if not before). The situation only promises to get worse as the War on Terror continues to make second-class citizens of our Muslim neighbors within, and makes enemies of Muslims without. The way to bring Muslims to Christianity is not through violence and hate, but through compassion, understanding, and friendship.

Technology Paves the Road to Liberty

If you are waiting for your government to give you back any of the rights it's taken away, you'll likely be waiting a long time. For example; the federal government's fanatical war against a harmless medicinal herb has gone on since 1937 and shows few signs of letting up. In fact, the government's war on our liberties is only escalating: consider the fact that military surveillance drones spy on citizens in civilian airspace; roving paramilitary units (known as VIPER Teams) conduct warrantless searches on the highways; and has recently been given the green light to manage our health care for us.

Nevertheless, one area in which governments are failing (though not for lack of trying) to intercept liberties is the area of technology. Thanks to the unimaginable power of the internet, to say nothing of the global free market it creates, technology is outpacing governments' ability to control it. Here are few technological developments to come out in just the past few years that are helping citizens to regain their freedoms.

1. The Ubiquity of Cameras. The early morning of March 3rd, 1991, marks the beginning of the era of police accountability vis a vis cameras. A bystander by the name of George Holliday used his camera to record the police beating Rodney King, and the rest, as they say, is history. There is a reason why Judge Andrew Napolitano calls cameras the new gun: today, the cheapest of smart-phones include video cameras, and just about anyone anywhere can record anything. Not surprisingly, these cell phone cameras (and cheap handheld video cameras) have been used multiple times to record the police abusing and harassing citizens (see http://www.copblock.org). Governments are not necessarily warm to this idea; Illinois continues to harass and threaten with imprisonment those who would record the police.

2. Instant Dissemination of Video. Many police officers and government beaureaucrats persist in the idea that free speech can be stifled simply by confiscating damning footage (see here for an example). While that tactic might have worked in the past, nowadays, thanks to apps such as Qik and livestream.com, any and all footage can be tossed into the electronic ether to be copied and re-posted well before any judge can order its confiscation or destruction. Even better, if you combine an instant video app with your own dashboard camera, all of your encounters with the police can be uploaded instantly.

3. The TOR Network. Without delving too deeply into the technological specifics of it, suffice to say that the TOR Network is a means of inserting layers of encryption between an internet user and the website to which he/she is posting/visiting. This makes it more difficult for an oppressive government (say, China or Iran) to monitor or track down people who post and/or view "objectionable" content. Using the TOR network enables any user, anywhere, to freely view any website regardless of government censorship, as well as preventing governments from monitoring or tracking anyone's internet use.

4. The Bitcoin. This is the Big Daddy of liberty-oriented technological innovations. The Bitcoin is an entirely digital currency, based on open-source, peer-to-peer technology. As such, it is outside the reach of governments, banks, hackers, and anyone else who would try to prevent, monitor, or tax monetary transactions. And while at first blush Bitcoins appear to be little more than a geeky hobby (if not a way to deal in contraband), in fact Bicoins are gaining wide acceptance. In fact, Bitcoins can be spent on Amazon, eBay, and a variety of other retailers. Blogger Xeni Jardin is on the record as saying that Bitcoins will change the world. As of now I'm inclined to agree.

Peaceful activism remains the best option for those who would seek liberty in their lifetimes. Technology does not replace peaceful activism; it merely enhances it. These new technologies should not be considered the be-all end-all of liberty activism, but rather another tool in our belts.

Public Schools: The Battleground of Ideology

Conservatives like to point to two events that marked the decline in the quality of public education in the US. The first was the Scopes Trial, which paved the way for the teaching of Evolution in the public schools; and the second was the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Engel Case, which outlawed mandated prayers in public schools. To this day, the call from Christians to "put God back into the public schools" continues, loud and clear. Consider this petition, for example, which has over 21,000 signatures as of this post. Or consider this proposal, or Pat Robertson's words on the matter before the US Senate.

Liberals, on the other hand, are equally interested in seeing to it that subjects that many consider anti-Christian are taught in the schools. Climate change; sex education that includes birth control; evolution; acceptance of GLBT lifestyles, and other topics often work their way into public school cirricula, to the consternation of vocal Christians.

Both sides claim absolute authority in their claims. Conservatives claim the holy Word of God, and this nation's supposed "Christian heritage," while liberals claim science and the needs of modern culture. And these debates continue to play out in state and local school boards across the country. Should schools teach the kids about creation, evolution, or both (see here)? Should  their Sexual Education cirriculum be based on abstinence, protection methods, or both (see here)? Should the kids be taught that a family based on a married mother and father, and children is the ideal family unit, or that the definition of "family" is fluid and may include single parents, gay parents, unmarried parents, or other arrangements (see here)?

The reality is that these debates aren't really about what is scientifically right vs. what is scientifically wrong; or what empowers the kids with knowledge vs. what burdens the kids with confusion; or what instills values in the kids vs. what leads them down the path of moral decay. Really, these debates are about which side is going to win the right to indoctrinate other peoples' kids with their own ideology, and with public tax money. These debates turn the whole concept of public education into a chess match between competing worldviews, where the schools are the chess boards and the kids are the pieces.

When a Christian high-school student wants to lead her graduating class in prayer at graduation, and an atheist enlists the ACLU help put a stop to it, both sides of the debate are bringing their ideologies to court - both the court of law and the court of public opinion - to see which side wins the right to indoctrinate kids. The kids themselves are merely pieces in the game. When a Christian student wants to wear a shirt with an anti-gay message and the courts (both of law and of public opinion) are brought in, it's just another battle for the right to indoctrinate. Every matter in which the religion or culture of one student (or her parents) in a public school butts up against the religion or culture of another student (or his parents) in a public school, and the matter is brought before the courts, it becomes just another battle for the right to indoctrinate. And the kids always lose.

The belief that we don't want anyone else deciding what our kids are taught is one of the principal reasons libertarians, minarchists, voluntaryists, and other small-government types oppose the very idea of government education. If we want to teach our kids x, and someone else wants to teach their kids y, then the way to assure they're taught what we want is to do it ourselves; not to make our local school board do it for us and bring everyone else's kids along for the ride. We need to detach ourselves from the idea that we have any say in what other peoples' kids are taught in school, just as no one else has any say in what our kids are taught in school.

So how are we to accomplish this? Let me make a few suggestions.

1. Advocate for home-schooling/un-schooling. The only way to have absolute, 100% control over the education your kids receive is to do it yourself. Homeschooling, which started out as a fringe movement (and is still regarded by some as such) has now gained grudging acceptance, and conservative parents and liberal parents alike have warmed to the idea that a child can receive a good education solely from their parents. Un-schooling takes the idea a step further, letting the kids themselves direct their own education (see here for an extreme example). The downside to this is that it requires a huge commitment, of both time and money, of one or both parents to be successful at it. In today's economy, it's simply not a workable solution for many Christian parents.

2. Advocate for educational cooperatives. If full-time homeschooling isn't workable for your family, there are likely several other families in your community in the same boat. While by yourself you may not be able to accomplish your goal, with the help of other parents you may find that, collectively, you are able to pull it off. Parents can cooperate together to see that their group of kids share in the educational experience. Where one parent can handle matters of music or art, and another can handle matters of math or science; or where one parent can facilitate the group's education on Mondays, and another can facilitate on Tuesdays; where parents cooperate with each other to achieve their goals, the government is taken out of the education equation, yet the burden doesn't fall squarely on one's own family.

3. Advocate for educational vouchers. Private education remains an alternative for parents who want a say in what their kids are taught. The fact that it's private means that parents have the power to vote with their feet if they are not satisfied with the education their kids are receiving. Unfortunately, that power is denied to parents who cannot afford the cost of private education. For this reason, I support a system where parents are offered a refund on their tax burden that would otherwise go to public education. With a voucher system, parents are given a credit that could be applied to the cost of a private education of their choosing. This saves parents who choose private education from the financial burden of having to pay both taxes for public education and the cost of private education.

Remember, having liberty means allowing others liberty as well. My beliefs may differ from yours, sometimes in dramatic and startling ways. But I have no more right to demand that my beliefs are taught to your kids than you do to demand that your beliefs are taught to my kids. Let's stop making the schools the place where my ideology fights it out with yours. This is the only way that the kids will win.

Sin vs. Bad Ideas; What's the Difference?

I remember the sermon that was preached to me in Bible College that was delivered from the president himself. As part of a series of sermons on personal behavior in twice-weekly Chapel meetings, the president was called on to deliver a message on alcohol consumption. Not unexpectedly - considering that all of us students had signed pledges not to drink any alcohol, on-campus or not, under pain of expulsion - our president delivered an impassioned sermon arguing that teetotaling abstinence from alcohol was the only acceptable Christian approach to alcohol.


This flies in the face of 2,000 years of Christian history, to say nothing of the millions of Christians around the world who partake in alcohol as part of their worship. Mr. President's sermon, however, was based on a variety of arguments, such as: the example set for others; the appearance of wrongdoing; the potential damage done by alcohol to families and, by extension, to society at large (one of the very arguments that led to Prohibition, but I digress); and potential harm done to one's body by alcohol. Nowhere in his sermon was any mention of Biblical prohibitions against alcohol use.


That's because there aren't any. While the Bible does warn against drunkenness, the reality is that wine was a part of daily life in Bible times, and indeed it's a fair assumption that most if not all of the early Christians drank wine, and most likely Jesus himself did too (see John 2; the idea that Jesus would create wine for consumption at a wedding but then insult the host by not drinking any is patently ludicrous).


Through either a tortured reading of Scripture; or through tired and illogical arguments about the differences between ancient wine vs. modern libations; or both, millions of Christians (mostly in the US) hold to Prohibition-era notions of alcohol consumption. And while a compelling case can be made that alcohol consumption is (or at least, can be) a bad idea, there is just no evidence that's it's a sin.


When exercising Christian liberty, we need to be mindful of the differences between things that are bad ideas versus things that are sin. For example, in the main, gambling is a bad idea. The house gets a (sometimes huge) cut - and always wins - and when the house is done with their cut the state gets a cut. Gambling is essentially throwing money away, on the hopes that you'll gain some that you didn't earn. Far too many families have been impoverished by breadwinners choosing to gamble, and no one will deny that gambling addiction is a real disease. Naturally, many Christians choose not to gamble. It's a bad idea. But is it a sin? No - gambling is mentioned rarely in the Bible, and when it's mentioned, it's merely mentioned matter-of-factly (see John 19:24). It's a sin to impoverish your family by blowing your paycheck, but that can be accomplished through any number of means besides gambling. If no one depends on the money you're throwing away but you, then gambling is merely a bad idea.


This argument can be applied to any number of things that, at least in Christian culture, are considered to be sins but are actually just bad ideas. Smoking? Bad idea, not a sin. Overeating? Bad idea, not a sin. Use of hard drugs such as opiates? [Very] bad idea, but still not a sin.


And of course, all of this says nothing about the best tool available to us in matters of sin vs. bad ideas: moderation. Letting your kids go hungry this week because you blew your paycheck at the craps table is a sin. Blowing a few bucks that you've saved for a weekend at the riverboat casino is not. Drinking until you're falling-over drunk and then driving is a sin. Having an adult beverage with a meal is not.


Having Christian liberty means allowing others (Christians and non-Christians alike) to exercise their own liberty. Sometimes that means making choices that we may or may not agree with. We need to let go of our notions that, just because we regard something as harmful (even rightfully so), that we have any say in whether or not another Christian (or, more importantly, non-Christians) can participate in it. And for those matters where the harm only comes from abuse, our job is to allow others to practice their liberty, and to advocate for moderation, not only in the lives of those we care about, but in our own lives as well.