Australia’s New Worldview Cannot Sustain a Just Legal System

Most Australians still believe in human dignity and inalienable rights. What they’ve since abandoned is the only foundation that make those beliefs coherent.

Jesus famously contrasted two builders: one who built his house on rock and the other who built on sand. The first was wise; the second watched his come crashing down in a storm.

What if this parable proves instructive not just for individuals but whole civilisations?

I recently suggested that Australia has found itself a new god and accompanying worldview, and is now building its legal system upon that foundation.

At one level, this is an unremarkable observation. The world’s cultures have been built on a veritable pantheon of different gods and worldviews.

But it’s important to note that not all cultures have a just legal system — and the reason for this is simple: not all worldviews are able to bear the weight of a coherent and just legal system.

Australia has changed its god. But is our new god up to the task?

Meet Australia’s New God

It helps if we understand a little more about Australia’s new god.

Australia is not an atheist country. Less than 40% of Australians claimed to have “no religion” in the most recent census. Many Australians still retain a vague belief in God and vaguely Christian ideas about him.

But throughout the West — and even among people who call themselves Christians — ‘God’ has become a subjective idea that can be moulded to our preferences.

The post-Christian creed makes faith in God optional. It allows ‘God’ to be anything we like — whether a force, a feeling, non-existent, or indistinguishable from the universe itself.

The problem with a God so malleable is that he isn’t real in any objective sense. From a practical standpoint, he’s just a figment of our imagination.

The result is that we no longer have a transcendent foundation to rest our worldview or our legal system upon.

Without the Christian God — the God who is there — the only foundation Australians have to grasp at is a purely material one.

The materialist foundation says that you and I are simply a collection of DNA molecules. We’re the product of blind evolutionary processes, glued to a spinning rock somewhere on the outskirts of a vast black universe.

Sure, we can try to dress up this bleak worldview up by believing in some kind of god if we want to. But remember that belief in God is optional under the post-Christian creed.

The Conundrum Facing Modern Australians

The truth is that DNA, and time and chance, and a mostly empty universe, is hardly a foundation on which to build a coherent and just legal system.

Here is the conundrum facing modern Australians.

Most still believe that every human being has inherent worth and dignity, but they have no foundation for this belief.

Most believe that freedom of thought, speech, and religion are inalienable, but they have no foundation for believing it.

Most Australians believe that the rule of law applies equally to rulers and the ruled, but they have no foundation for believing it.

Most Australians believe that good and evil are real categories, not just cultural preferences, but they have no foundation for believing it.

The beliefs I’ve just listed — and we could add many more — where did they come from?

They came from Christianity. They were part of the Christian air that Australians used to breathe. They rested on a transcendent foundation in the God who is actually there, not a god we made up in our imaginations.

Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi explains the problem well: “’Unalienable human rights’ make no sense without the biblical principle of the unique worth granted to all individuals by their Creator.”

Without a transcendent foundation, all we’re left with is consensus. And consensus is very different from truth.

Another philosopher, Francis Schaeffer, put it like this:

“If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong… If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.”

Or in the words of Psalm 11:3, “When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

Returning to the Rock

We still use the language of human rights. But under the post-Christian creed, they’re not really rights, and they’re certainly not inalienable. They’re just agreed upon. For now. By the people currently in power. Which means they can be revoked when it’s convenient.

It’s no wonder that we’re seeing exactly this play out in modern Australia. Last month, we released the Australian Christian Freedom Index, the first comprehensive audit of Christian freedom in Australia’s history. Among the cases we profiled in that report were:

• A doctor investigated for social media posts made outside clinical settings

• A rugby player sacked for posting a Bible verse about sin and hell

• A uni student suspended for offering to pray for a distressed peer

• A couple rejected as foster carers for holding longstanding Christian views on sexuality

• A charity denied government funds unless its chairperson publicly changed her beliefs

• A Christian uni group threatened with deregistration for requiring its members to be Christian

• Seven NRL players forced to miss a match for declining to wear a pride jersey

• A Catholic hospital compulsorily seized by the ACT government for failing to provide abortions

When the law no longer has a transcendent foundation, rights can be extended to some and withheld from others. A person’s conscience can be trumped by the state. The legal system, which was designed to enact justice, can easily be manipulated by people with power. The unborn and the elderly can be deemed non-persons and disposed of.

Very simply, without the God who is there, there is no foundation for human dignity and a just legal system.

Jesus’ warnings were apt. We need to abandon the sinking sand and return to the rock — to Jesus himself.

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Why Australia’s New Secular Worldview Cannot Sustain a Just Legal System

The concept of human rights is something most modern citizens take for granted. We speak of individual liberties, inherent human dignity, and justice under the law as if they are self-evident, permanent fixtures of modern civilization. Yet, a troubling shift is occurring beneath the surface of western democracies, particularly in Australia. While the population continues to demand the protections of a fair legal system, it has simultaneously abandoned the very foundational truths that make those rights coherent in the first place.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus shares a profound parable contrasting two builders. One builder chooses a foundation of solid rock, while the other builds directly upon loose sand. When the storms arrive, the house on the rock stands firm, while the house on the sand collapses into ruin. This timeless illustration is highly instructive not only for individual spiritual lives but for the rise and fall of entire civilizations.

Societies cannot build a lasting architecture of justice upon shifting cultural sands. Yet, a closer look at modern legal systems reveals that western nations are attempting to do exactly that—swapping out a proven, transcendent moral framework for a temporary secular consensus.

Understanding the Shift to a Secular Ideology

To understand why the current framework is failing, we must analyze the “new god” that modern secularism has established. Western societies like Australia have not entirely abandoned religion; less than forty percent of citizens claim to have absolutely no faith in recent census data. Instead, the culture has widely embraced a highly subjective, post-Christian creed. In this new framework, faith is entirely optional, and “God” is no longer an absolute, objective reality but rather a customizable concept molded to fit personal preferences, trends, or emotional experiences.

The core danger of a highly malleable deity is that it lacks objective reality. When truth becomes entirely subjective, it ceases to exist as a transcendent standard. Without a higher moral authority that sits completely outside of human governance, a culture is left with nothing but a strictly material worldview.

According to this materialist philosophy, human beings are merely accidental products of evolutionary processes—complex arrangements of DNA molecules trapped on a spinning planet in a vast, indifferent universe. While secular thinkers attempt to dress this bleak philosophy up with language about progress and equity, the hard truth remains: raw materialism provides no logical basis for the protection of human rights.

The Great Conundrum of the Post-Christian Era

This reality presents a massive intellectual dilemma for the modern world. Most people still fiercely defend the idea that every individual possesses inherent worth, that freedom of speech is essential, and that the rule of law must apply equally to the powerful and the powerless. However, they no longer have a logical foundation to justify these beliefs.

Historically, these concepts did not emerge out of a vacuum. They were developed directly from a Judeo-Christian worldview which teaches that mankind is uniquely made in the image of God. Noted Indian philosopher Vishal Mangalwadi summarizes this dilemma perfectly by pointing out that the concept of “unalienable human rights” makes absolutely no sense without the biblical principle of unique worth granted to individuals by a Creator.

When a society removes the Creator from the equation, rights cease to be inherent giftings from God. Instead, they are reduced to mere social agreements. Renowned theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer famously warned of this exact trajectory:

“If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong… If there is no absolute beyond man’s ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.”

When rights are based entirely on social consensus rather than absolute truth, they become incredibly fragile. If the majority or the ruling class decides that a certain right is no longer convenient, there is no higher moral law to stop them from changing the rules.

The Real-World Impact on Religious Liberty

This erosion of fundamental rights is no longer a hypothetical debate; it is actively manifesting across the legal and cultural landscapes. Recent comprehensive audits, such as the Australian Christian Freedom Index, have documented a sharp rise in state overreach and the penalization of traditional religious beliefs in the public square.

Consider the real-world implications occurring right now:

• Medical Professionals Censored: Doctors face formal investigations and career penalties for expressing traditional moral viewpoints on personal social media accounts outside of their clinical settings.

• Ideological Workplace Exclusion: Professional athletes and public figures face sudden termination from their careers for simply quoting biblical passages regarding sin, accountability, and salvation.

• Suppression of Campus Faith: University students face formal disciplinary suspensions for simply offering to pray with distressed peers, while Christian campus groups are threatened with deregistration unless they abandon faith requirements for their leadership teams.

• State Seizure of Faith Institutions: Government authorities have executed compulsory takeovers of faith-based medical systems, such as the forced acquisition of Catholic hospitals, to mandate procedures that directly violate the institutions’ core religious tenets.

When a legal system discards its transcendent foundations, human rights quickly become conditional. The state transforms from a protector of God-given liberties into the ultimate arbiter of who deserves protection and who does not. Conscience is systematically forced to bow to political power, and the vulnerable—particularly the unborn and the elderly—are easily reclassified as non-persons when their existence challenges the preferences of the state.

Rebuilding on a Solid Foundation

The current trajectory of western legal frameworks serves as a stark warning to the church and the broader culture. The language of human rights cannot survive long-term without the theology of human dignity. If we continue to build our legal frameworks on the shifting sands of political convenience and secular consensus, the entire structure will inevitably fracture under pressure.

As scripture asks in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer is not to retreat from the public square, but to point our communities back to the only foundation capable of bearing the weight of true justice. To preserve genuine liberty, human rights, and systemic equity, nations must abandon the sinking sand of secular materialism and return to the unshakeable rock of biblical truth.