The Government Is Not to Be a Nanny

If governmental institutions are constructed in a way that allow people to transfer the costs of their behavior, then immorality can spread as the less principled people among us seek to impose the costs of their immorality upon others.  This fact gives us a framework for the purpose of government.  That purpose is limited.  As the apostle Paul said in Romans 13, the aim of government is to punish wrongdoers who directly transgress against others in an effort to limit the infliction of pain.  It cannot, however, right all wrongs or eliminate all suffering.  In fact, the effort to do so might well result in institutional structures that allow the greater part of suffering to be shifted onto those who were not responsible for the action.

For instance, the poor suffer.  But why do they suffer?  There are many reasons.  If government aimed to eliminate all poverty through programs of income redistribution it would inflict the negative consequences of sloth, negligence, improvidence, and dissipation on those who had no hand in the imprudence.  Essentially, it says to folly that you may continue on your way unhindered by God’s law because you are relieved of having to bear the hardship promoted by your own behavior.  To be sure, poverty comes upon people for more reasons than these, but the alleviation of this suffering is best left in private hands by private choices by people who can assess firsthand the reason for the hardship.

Paul Cleveland, On Limited Government, “Worldviews” newsletter by the Apologetics Resource Center, Winter 2014, p.2