July Fourth Ramblings

From the time of the ancient scribes, there has always been those who use the guise of religion to seek to assert power over others and establish laws designed to enforce a “Biblical World-View”, whatever that means.

Some of this drive comes from a simple fear of people getting away with things that WE want to do but don’t dare.

Some of it comes from a fear that God is going to punish us if we don’t do the right things or pass the right laws.

Some of it comes from our natural religion (which the Bible calls “The Flesh”) that we can buy our way back into Eden by doing proper things, offering the right sacrifices, making better choices, and driving out the sinners.

Most of it comes from the lust of pride – that if we could get people to do things OUR way, we can secure our own future; even if this means we have to dominate sinners and force them to obey or face the wrath of the law. God wants righteousness, does he not?

So for over 2,000 years, zeal for God’s law has sent millions to mass graves. Inquisitions, wars, genocides, enslavements, exiles…

It is precisely why our country was founded. Religious wars always end in mass graves, injustice, and cruelty, in the name of God. Exiles fled. But no one had ever thought of having a country without an official religion – until they realized something. If they were going to have an official religion, who gets to decide what that religion will be?

There were Congregationalists, puritans, separatists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Baptists, Reformed, Presbyterians, Jews, Atheists and Deists.

Who will choose where to worship, which religion to support, who will pastor…

Look at this this way…the recent law requiring the Bible to be taught in schools…

Who is going to teach it? Will the curriculum be Doug Wilson’s cult? Charismatic? Will the understanding be covenantal or dispensational? Will it be Baptist, Puritan, Reformed or Presbyterian?

If you say, “Well, we just want it taught as literature – the stories and such…

OK – which stories? Who edits them? Who interprets them? What will you say about Jephthah and Samson, and the Benjamite concubine?

If you think that Christians who think that this is a good idea will just get along and cooperate, then perhaps study early American History – Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, the women in Salem, or the Jesuit inquisitors – all who claim to seek a “Biblical world-view” and seek to serve the same Jesus.

The only way – the ONLY way – to politically stop bloodshed is by the enforcement of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court in the seventies did not “take God out of schools”, they stopped potential war over who writes the prayers in schools. Will they be Muslim prayers, Praying in tongues, Jewish prayers? Mother earth prayers?

And now, states that are seeking to “put God back in the schools” have done no such thing.

If Louisiana wanted to encourage behavior that pleased God, they would not have posted some archaic, ancient code that needs experts to interpret it (“If we aren’t allowed to kill, why do you support war? Why do you support capital punishment?) – see? Not as easy as you think.

To encourage ethical behavior, rather than political posturing, they would have posted age-appropriate and socially appropriate rules:

Don’t bully people. Honor your word. Be kind. Listen to your teacher when she is giving you instructions. Don’t call people names. Don’t betray your friends. Don’t spread rumors…

But the goal of the politicians was NOT to encourage ethical behavior. If that were indeed the case, they would not be championing the man who has openly and unabashedly broken every one of the commandments and boasts about it.

But I digress. The reason why I am very concerned about the religious right is that if they succeed, they will be undoing 250 years of American political thought. This political thought has given us many, many years of freedom – especially after the same rules were applied to women, minorities, native Americans and children.

If we embrace “justice for all” rather than “justice for some”, then we could truly be a beacon of liberty to the outcasts and the exiles.

But fear has caused us to regress. Millions are hell-bent on following power-hungry criminals over the brink. They believe that they will have special places in the new order, but the joy will only last until it is their turn under the guillotine. When you see Robespierre, ask him how it worked for him.

Because if there isn’t justice for all, there is only justice for none.

If a Muslim girl cannot attend a school without intimidation and bullying, then eventually no one will.

If the local Jewish community cannot worship in peace, then soon no one will.

If a black man does not have the liberty to carry a weapon without fear of being shot, then soon no one will have that liberty.

In other words, liberty only exists if it is liberty for all. And this liberty, the American Dream, is under attack. The Christian Right pretends that it is seeking to establish liberty and justice, but that is a smoke-screen. This is about power, domination, and control. They truly believe that only by passing “Biblical laws” – meaning, “those laws which I interpret as Biblical”, can we usher in a utopian age.

This was also the belief of the Inquisition, the French Revolution, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Cromwell, Hildebrand, Pol Pot, and the despots of every age.

It can and does only end in slaughter, mass graves and gulags. There can be no other end.

To sum it up simply, righteousness does not come by the law. If it did, there would be no need for Christ.

It seems to me that the first confession of a Christian should be “Righteousness could not come by the law. I plead for mercy.”

To then turn around and insist that righteousness will come by the law if my people enforce it with enough force, to me that seems the pinnacle of foolishness and irrationality.