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The Political Order
325
to use power as an instrument of injustice. The greater the power,
the greater the possibilities of injustice become. The system of checks
and balances in the various branches of the federal government and
the division of powers between the federal and state governments
as well as the limitations upon the powers of Congress in the making
of laws are excellent examples of the kinds of restraints upon all
which are necessary both from the standpoint of democracy and from
the standpoint of a Christian understanding of the universality of
Moreover, the biblical estimate of man’s goodness by creation and
of the possibility of his redemption provides ground for belief in his
capacity to make real although tentative progress in the realization of
the welfare of the people as a whole. It is apparent that the ideals or
goals of democracy—liberty, equality, justice—have never been com
pletely achieved. But it is the democratic faith that these goals are
constantly to be striven after and that they may be more perfectly
realized for all of the people. However, the biblical estimate of man’s
sinfulness constitutes a warning against utopianism. The laws of a
state must be based upon the moral standards which most of its
citizens are prepared to accept. In this respect, the aim of democracy
is perfectly consistent with the Christian understanding of the purpose
of the state, viz., to promote the welfare of the people as a whole.
Its aim ought not to be to enact the most idealistic legislation or to
embody the highest Christian norms of personal conduct in the law of
the land. To attempt to do so is unrealistic and leads inevitably to
hypocrisy and cynicism with regard to the possibility of achieving
even more modest goals. In this sense and to this extent, “politics
is the art of the possible; it is not a science of perfection.”16 This does
not mean, of course, either that politicians should settle for what a
majority of the people actually prefer or that they should be content
with the level of justice and equality which is now possible. The
function of political leaders is to lead. But it is, nevertheless, far
better for a society to be governed by laws which can reasonably be
expected to be implemented in practice and to have these firmly en
forced than for it to have more idealistic laws which are violated with
impunity or effectively circumvented, for the failure to enforce a law
results in the undermining of the authority of all law as well as in the
encouragement of the violation of the particular perfectionistic statute.
16 Cf. Hallowell,
op. cit.,
p. 108.