Thread: Mr. Manuscript

Old Essay 2 GOVERNMENT GOD Or Why Do You Have To Go And Bring Religion Into It? Not trying to make this an all-religion-discussion kind of essay page, not at all. It's just rather in my face all the time, so it's on my mind all the time. So might as well put down what I truly believe, and let that be that about it. It's common for believers to talk about how the Founding Fathers were all Godly men. The Godliness of the Founders is essentially true, but what modern commentators on the subject seem to ignore is that for all that, they didn't really agree very closely as to what God actually wanted from them. Those were times where Catholics killed Protestants, not just in Ireland but all over the place, and the difference between Baptist and Methodist was a source of conflict. Yeah, they might have mostly believed in God whether or not they acted in what we would consider a proper Christian manner, which is also debatable, but their beliefs were widely different. I would venture so far to say that the divisions between Protestant denominations in those days was felt as keenly and viewed as strongly as the divisions between Christianity and Islam are felt and viewed today. The fact that they were able to come together and hammer out a Declaration, and thereafter a Constitution followed immediately by Amendments, incidentally, is wondrous, in retrospect. It also puts the lie to the modern claims of what the Founding Fathers wanted. Frankly, they wanted a hundred different things or more. They weren't at all unified in their views, goals, or visions of the nation they were striving to build. But they hammered it out, as I've said, and I keep using that imagery because that's how I feel it must have been done with effort, in the blazing heat of summer oh, the days before air conditioning..., and slowly, like blacksmiths putting together a fine tool. Because that's what I see our nation's documents as tools. There's a Joe PesciBrendan Fraser movie, With Honors. It's a decent little flick, notable in my mind largely for Pesci's speech to the pompous professor. In it, he basically says the beauty of the Constitution is that it can be changed. The Founders were old white rich men, to be sure, but they knew that they didn't know it all, and couldn't account for everything the future would throw at the nation. So they made their documents changeable, and threw their trust on the future. This leads to many issues of the day, such as various Constitutional Amendments, claims of what the Founders meant by one thing or another. What people seem to ignore is that we've already changed it drastically, in several particulars, and we're likely to change it again. If something really doesn't work, such as Prohibition, then we'll take it back out. It'll take time, and it'll cause a lot of grief, but it can be done. One of the things that people seem to want to change, getting back to the supposed point of this essay, is that whole pesky separation of church and state angle. I'm all for spirituality, and I'm even supportive of organized religion for those such as needs it and manages to trust it. Me, I'm as distrustful of religious authority figures as I am of governmental authority figures, with the extra difficulty that religious figures claim they know the unknowable, speak of faith as a certainty, when the point of faith is that you're uncertain, you could be wrong, but you believe anyway. Religious authorities claim to interpret the universe as happening in a particular way, by specific interpretations of their religious texts. All well and good, but what happens if you don't believe their interpretations? The universe is always more complex than you think, and not everything is going to fit into a limited range of definitions, so what do you do with the extra stuff that doesn't fit? Your interpretation can't claim to be comprehensive if you don't account for it, but there's only so much that documents written thousands of years ago are going to be able to cover. Yet the folks that limit the universe to definitions found in ancient texts are the same people who want to put religion back in government. But the Founding Fathers already thought of that. Not only did they have to deal with a wide range of differing religions in their own community, they also had the experience of dealing with the religious ruling structures of Europe. And their solution to the whole problem? Keep religion out of it. It's that simple. That's the only way you can be fair to all citizens, and avoid religious persecution. This nation was founded on the principle that all people are born with equal rights in life. Admittedly, the definition of people was rather more limited in those days, but we're still working on that. The point is, all citizens of the United States and, if you believe in the precepts upon which the nation is founded, all people, regardless of nationality deserve certain basic rights, regardless of whether they're rich or poor, popular or outcasts, intelligent or stupid, or what their whole belief system is. We may not do particularly well in granting those rights fairly, but the idea of them is ingrained in the very fabric of our nation. The difficulty with allowing religion to interfere with governance is that you can no longer guarantee that objective fairness can be maintained. Because the very basic essence of religion is that it's about who's in and who's out. Believers are saved, believers are one of us, and non-believers are heretics. So if you're in a position of governmental power, and there's a religious influence on your thinking, then you've got a problem, because the tendency is to pass judgment based on other people's beliefs and how they compare to your own, when what you ought to do is look strictly at the letter and spirit of the law. I want to pause a moment and point out that many people in power claim to be believers, claim to be religious, but not all of them actually practice what they claim to preach. In most governmental structures, claiming belief is an expedient way to garner support, and with support, you can get the things you really want done, such as gathering money and power unto yourself. How many Christian conservatives are sitting in government at this very moment, who got into power by appealing to the religious beliefs of their voters, but aren't doing anything on the religious front? Such as ministering to the poor always a big element of Jesus' teachings, or brokering peace also a common refrain from the old Carpenter, or advocating interference with genocides in Africa some of which are being perpetrated against a largely Christian population, no less, which you'd think would really motivate a true believer. But no, it's much more important to vote in tax breaks to the rich, and roll back an estate tax that doesn't even kick in until the estate hits the 1.5 million mark. Yeah, that's going to affect a lot of people somewhere around 130 families a year, I believe, out of, what, 3 million citizens? Try and tell me that's not rich white men looking out for their own.... So religion in government, as it is currently practiced in its limited way, is largely a lie. There are exceptions, but I'm more likely to see officials seizing convenient topics to drum up support from the religious quarter than I am likely to see them actually pursuing religious motivations. Would making government a more Godly institution help this at all? I really can't see how. For one thing, whose version of God are we going to institute? What happens to those who don't believe in that version? Are we going to include the Bible as a founding text? If so, which version? There are numerous editions which not only differ in translation but differ in content, some omitting or significantly changing certain inconvenient passages, and anyone who claims the Word of God is incorruptible probably doesn't know this. The fact of the matter is, it's as corruptible and open to alteration as any book, it just has an assumed power with believers, which lends it an air of invincibility that it doesn't really have. And it's not like we've seen great success with religious government other places in the world. Differing versions of Islam are constantly at odds with each other. The aggressively anti-religious Communist China taking strict Communism as their religion-analogue are as oppressive against faith as any Inquisition was. And supposedly Christian sects don't seem to have much problem killing each other off when it's convenient, in Ireland or anywhere else. So it's not like religion is going to help matters any great deal, regardless of what its proponents say. It's just that they believe they will personally benefit from it, in one way or another. True believers probably think it will be an objective good, but their focus is too narrow, and they seem to trust that people won't be able to mess up what they see as God's essential truths. They've got their blinkers on, is all I'm saying. It's understandable it's just human nature. But there's nothing that's been put out in the world that people can't mess up. There is no philosophy, no truth, no guiding principle that can't be eventually perverted into something opposite, if a person has a mind to do so. I was watching the raunchy puppet comedy Team America World Police this evening. I felt I had to see it the once, because it's from the South Park guys. Frankly, I wouldn't recommend it to all audiences, although there are some hilarious bits. But I was actually struck by one of their manipulative comedy songs the lyric went on about how freedom isn't free. The administration of the day would have you believe that preserving our freedom means we have to venture out in the world and fight anybody who might try and attack us, as if that's going to keep us free. There's a lot of possible debate about whether or not going out and attacking other nations is going to stop individuals from making terrorist attacks on America, but that's not my purpose here. What the administration seems to ignore is that the price of freedom is indeed vigilance, not against outsiders, but against those in power. Terrorists aren't going to be taking away our rights to travel, or be safe from illegal search and seizure that's our government. Terrorists aren't tapping phones willy-nilly, spying on innocent people who have done nothing but disagree with their leaders. That's the Feds, my good reader. So, yeah, freedom isn't free you have to fight your own government for it. And you might have to fight your religion for it, too. Wouldn't it be horrible if they were one and the same? I fully support people's right to believe whatever they want. Have a faith, don't have a faith, do what you like. It's not going to affect the way I view them as citizens, as fellow Americans, or fellow human beings if they don't happen to be from America. My religion is a personal matter of mine, and it affects who I am and what I believe to be right and good. That's unavoidable. But it has no direct effect on my views of social governance, of what's fair under the law, of what the good people of my community deserve from their leaders. My beliefs are strong enough, well-developed enough, and grounded well enough in the secular world as well as the spiritual, that I can make my arguments and put forth my stance without having to fall back to matters of faith. Faith is good, but government isn't faith. Government doesn't rely on belief in the face of doubt, it relies on proof and the law and the needs and demands of the citizenry. Or, at least, it really should. We'll see if it continues to do so.