August 27, 2002

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  Many that live deserve death
  Many that die deserve life

  
  

  Can you give it to them?

  
  

  Gandalf to Frodo Baggins in "The Lord of the Rings"

  
  

  Oftentimes we find ourselves frightened or angry over what we see on the television, what we hear on our radio. It seems that the whole world is peopled with irrational impersonal violent enemies. Stories of children abducted from their beds, stories of horrifying disease arriving in tainted mail, and stories of death, destruction, bombs and guns seem to dominate the news.

  
  

  In response, we want to lash out, launch the preemptive strike, cut the head off the snake that weaves about hissing and sticking it’s malevolent tongue out at us.  We despise those people who hurt us or stand ready to hurt us.  We feel justified in our hatred and anger toward terrorists, abusers, murderers . . .

  
  

  On the other hand are the victims of violence, disease, and abuse whose lives are mutilated and destroyed by their contacts with the elements of evil.  We feel compassion toward them and cry out our grief that we have not the ability to return to them one lost day, or to redeem them from one hour of suffering.  Some things are outside the scope of human capacity.

  
  

  I am alarmed when I hear news of requests for the justice department to be granted new powers to invade our lives.  I'm grieved by reports of "collateral damage" which occur whenever we undertake military action.  I'm frightened by a world that seems to have forgotten the lessons of the past.

  
  

  Maybe it's a minor thing on the radar screen of things to be unconcerned about, the removal of the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance.  But it seems to me part and parcel of the package that worries me most.  Before we take that step, I think that we should stop and think about the direction that step moves us toward.  Whether we think that Christian Theism is the best system to live under, or whether or not we personally believe that God exists is beside the point.  The phrase "under God" reminds us each time we say the Pledge of the underlying assumptions held by the framers of our Constitution, the founders of our country.

  
  

  When we consider their worldview, we can understand why they wrote the Constitution the way they did.  They assumed that because every person was made in the image of God, every person has value.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. . . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men"

  
  

  If we decide that we no longer wish to live or operate under this frame of reference, what view will we hold instead?  Shall we take the view of Naturalism?  All men are the result of cosmis chance in cooperation with the laws of physics as such they have no inalienable rights. . .  Governments are instituted by those with the power to enforce their will. 

  
  

  Perhaps we should go with Eastern Monism.  All men are one, any perception that you are not me, he is not she is illusion.  There is no guilt because there is no sin.  There are no rights because rights require a person to exercise them.  Government is a sad lack of realization of Oneness. 

  
  

  Or we could susbstitute the Postmodern view that we don't know where people came from, we don't have any way of communicating clearly about what they are doing much less what they should be doing.  Government can never be perceived as other than the oppression of one group by another group armed with a metanarrative and the persuasive power to convince others.

  
  

  There is a lot about the doctrine of the founding fathers that I think they got dead wrong.  But before we jettison that worldview entirely, I think we should stop and ask ourselves what view we will base our laws on instead.  Would you rather live under a system of law that assumes you have the inalienable right to life?  Or one that assumes that if you suffer it is because of past bad karma so that any attempt to relieve your suffering would be the true evil.  Would you rather live in a country that has laws based upon the principle of private property, or would you rather live in a country that arrogated all property rights to the state?  Would you rather live with the understanding that you have freewill and can thus be praised for your efforts and rewarded accordingly, or would you prefer a society that assumes that there is no such thing as frewill, you are nothing more than a bag of chemicals and biological determinates, your acheivements are not your own because at the heart of it all there is no "you" to acheive anything.

  
  

  It's fun to debate worldviews and to argue about how improvements could be made upon our laws.  But, I think that we should remember that without the foundation we currently have, our debate would never be anything more than an interesting intellectual exercise.  There are countries in the world based on some of the alternative views that I mentioned above.  We might want to visit, but we don't want to live there. 

  
  

  Do not be eager to deal death and judgment
  For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

  • 8:40 am
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