Part 4 – Twelve-step Program for American Recovery

 In previous sections of this series I’ve concentrated on what’s wrong with all of us – which is all we have real control over. This week I’ll get around eventually to picking on you and me, but I’m going to start with Them.

The Faceless, “Omnipotent” They

I’m really getting tired of these people, these people who run things. I’m even more tired of the rest of us letting them. They have power over the most important parts of our lives, yet They are a creepy, shadowy lot. Some who run for office show us their official faces, but Barack Obama, A.K.A Barry Soetoro, for instance, is still a mystery. Some, like Ben Bernanke, land fairly public jobs, but mostly They skulk around in marble-walled offices turning the tumblers on bank vaults. Now and then we learn the names of the scientists who make major “discoveries,” but rarely do They come out from behind those white coats. Who are those guys inventing more deadly forms of bird flu?

Part 3 -- A Twelve-Step Program for American Recovery

 Intro

The further we get into the presidential election the more certain I am that the salvation of this nation is more about each and every individual American than it can ever be about the positions of power in this country. Our future appears to be dependent on the voting choices of each person, but it is more heavily reliant on the quality of each individual. R.B.Thieme Jr., my old pastor, used to say, “A nation gets the leadership it deserves,” In a representative republic that is even more accurate because the welfare of the nation directly rests on the wisdom, the responsibility, and the humility of each and every person.

As just one of those individuals I offer this series of commentaries as a small effort toward raising the bar, toward urging upward the quality of thinking that drives this society. That’s all I can do. Please add your ideas to mine, help me refine my thinking. Let’s do this together.

Part 3  -- There Oughttabea Law

Part 2 -- A Twelve-Step Program to American Recovery

Part 2 – The Specter of Sigmund and Ghosts of Christmas Past

Let’s say we start to pay more attention to words and the deception that saturates our culture (Part 1 – Calling a Spade), we still have other serious chores to take care of if we are to resuscitate the greatness of our nation. Next on my list is ridding ourselves of our victim-hood, and embracing the free will God gave us.

A Twelve-step Program to American Recovery

The holiday silliness has barely subsided and, zippo! we’re thrust breathlessly back into this interminable election. While the de-throning of Obama is high on my wishes for 2012, it’s time we confront our national miasma at a much deeper level. Even if we elect President Perfect this year, it’s not going to pull this wonderful country out of the irrational mess it’s in. A real fix must come from each of us and requires more of each us than just casting a vote.

I decided over the holidays that my small part of the cure is to write a series of posts discussing what common sense tells me we need to do heal our culture and our future. I offer these ideas for your consideration in the hopes of opening discussions, of triggering questions, of setting off ripples of thought. If you don’t agree with me, tell me why; if you think what I say makes sense, tell someone else. We have the power to restore this country – if we have the will.

Part 1 – Calling a Spade

“In the beginning was the Word…” The Apostle John begins his gospel with this phrase and in so doing places language in a pre-eminent position. After all, our universe was spoken into existence, so it is not surprising that our national salvation depends also on words.

New Year’s Resolutions and Stubborn Reality

Speaking of stubborn realities, I’m getting old. Well, we’re all getting old, and at a fairly regular clip, but I’ve gotten a lot farther than many of you – and this business of New Year’s resolutions annoys me more every year.

For one thing, the year does not start in January. I’m a teacher. (I don’t just work as a teacher, I was born that way – it’s a congenital defect.) Teachers know that the new year begins in September. Life starts over in the fall, not mid-winter. I have no idea how, in the depths of the cold dreariness of January, anyone can feel up to beginning again. I’m doing my best to just keep plodding.

After all, we just staggered out of Christmas dragging our exhaustion and emotional hangovers with us. We just depleted our bank accounts. I, for one, have yet to recover entirely from my annual Martha Stewart attack  -- I cook and sew and paint and design and wrap and decorate, all quite happily, but not in wise moderation. By New Year’s I’m cross-eyed and suffering from creation fatigue, my house is a mess and my refrigerator is full of leftovers I shouldn’t eat.

So now I’m expected to begin behaving myself? It’s too cold and dark to start running, I can’t live on lettuce in the winter – I need mashed potatoes and gravy, warm bread and butter, hot chocolate and cookies. Some nefarious, symbiotic relationship must form between my need for vitamin D and carb-fat comfort foods. I can resolve until I’m blue in the face and all I earn for my trouble is a guilt complex and an extra 5 pounds.

So this year I resolve not to resolve. After all, it’s going to be 2012 and all good Mayans know that the world is ending, so why worry about how clean my house is, or whether or not my dog gets a walk every day?  Instead, I’ll worry about the election, which has its own world-ending possibilities, the economy – ditto, and the latest health craze (So far we’re not to eat fruit, meat, starches, sugar, salt, fat, dairy, or cooked vegetables; I wonder what’s next.) That will keep me busy.

I’ll not try to lose weight, or keep my pantry tidy, or run a marathon. I’ll have a glass of wine now and then, some superb chocolate when the sky is dark, and I’ll take a nap whenever I feel like it. I’ll go to the gym because I like to move. I’ll walk the dog because I love moseying around my funky little town. I’ll read and write because I can’t stop. I’ll go to Bible class since I can’t live without it. I’ll teach -- that’s what I do. If I’m going to become a better person this year, God is going to have to handle it for me – which could be dangerous, but this is as good as I get on my own.

I wish you all every possible blessing in the coming New Year. Celebrate. Enjoy. Leave resolving for those poor compulsive souls who can’t help it. 

Hell and the Christmas Connection

‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the net

Bloggers were blogging from New York to Tibet.

Tweeters were tweeting and Facebook went wild

And no one remembered the birth of the Child.

The stores were all filled with shoppers exhausted,

The halls were all decked, the streets, they were frosted.

The children, intent on candy and stockings,

Indulged in annoying behaviors quite shocking.

Lights were all hung from the houses with care

In hopes that the neighbors would all stop and stare.

Cards were all stamped, presents all sent,

Nativities banished, the atheists hell-bent…

Which brings home to me my purpose in writing—

Though the concept of hell is not real inviting,

The idea of escaping is adequate reason

To celebrate Jesus this holiday season…

Boy – that was lame, and I can hear the objections now, “For pity sake, it’s Christmas; why would you talk about hell?” Because freeing us from that inevitable torment was why He came.  That’s why.

Christmas has become meaningless not because of the greedy retailers and the advertising geniuses. Not because we’re so materialistic.  Not because we’re a bunch of spoiled hedonists. No. No one remembers Jesus because no one will admit what it is He saved us from. Time was when hell was taken so seriously that polite people never said the word – it was too real to banter about, too horrifying to let slip into your conscious thought.

But now, our culture is permeated by the vague notion that heaven is a given – if you’re interested. If not, that’s OK too. As long as you are a reasonably decent person – somewhere north of Charles Manson, then you’ll do fine. After all, religion is nothing more than each of us picking a fairytale and sticking with the label. I’m a Snow-Whitean – what are you? It doesn’t really matter, because none of it is true anyway; it’s all just make-believe. That’s the assumption.

But allow me a “What if?”  What if Christopher Hitchens, the famous atheist who just died of cancer, was wrong and God is really out there? That’s a rhetorical question; God is really out there, in here, everywhere and I’m sure that Hitchens has realized that dying is – pardon the pun; I am not trying to be funny – a hell of a way to find out your views were incorrect. What if God really means what He says? "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him," (John 3:36). What if the “wrath of God” is real? And unending?

Look at the story Jesus recounts in Luke 16.

The Rich Man and Lazarus

  

“There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.  But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.  And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

 “Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’

“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’ Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead,’”(vs. 19-30).

The rich man here is thoroughly miserable – so miserable that just a drop of water seems like a huge boon, and the worst of it is that there is no hope – not for him and not for his stubbornly unbelieving brothers. What did he do wrong? He got rich? No. He didn’t believe what the Old Testament scriptures taught. And what was that? From the Fall of Man to the last page of Malachi, the idea of a Messiah who would come to earth and be a sacrifice for us is clearly the main point. And Abraham? (and obviously the beggar Lazarus) What did Abraham do right? “Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness,” (Genesis 15:6, quoted again in Romans 4:3).

We celebrate – oh Joy to the World! – the fact that many of the prophecies have been fulfilled in the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord. (The rest will come to pass at the Second Advent.) We celebrate the amazing fact that His work allows us the option to escape the horrors of unending torment. And all we have to do is believe. (You’ll notice that the rich man was very much conscious, very much aware. He did not just cease to exist; he didn’t get a pass. The justice of God meted out to him exactly what his unbelief earned him – eternal hell. )

Over two thousand years ago, in Bethlehem, God took on human form. He lived a perfect human life, proved over and over again that He was the Messiah, allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross where He made up the huge difference between perfect God and imperfect man. He died doing it. He rose. And now there is no longer that necessary gap between us; hell is no longer required. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” Hallelujah!

So go out and shop, buy gifts and be jolly,

Indulge in all sorts of silliness and folly

For Jesus has come to save us from our plight --

“Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

The Tangle of Tradition

 God Rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay---

Things are so nuts right now that we struggle this Christmas season to find rest and be merry, let alone be gentlemen, but I sit here right now looking at my decorated tree and I find myself delighted at how silly, how quirky, and how charming are our Christmas traditions – I’m willing to part with none of them.  How fun to think of a visiting – say -- Martian trying to make sense of a society that, in the dead of winter, cuts down millions of small trees, sets them up in our homes, and covers them with all manner of, well, of junk.

As the only girl in a family of five children I was often disappointed in our Christmas trees – all festooned with pasty construction paper chains, hanks of tinsel, and tiny bells made by sticky-fingered little boys out of foil milk-bottle caps. I yearned for something stylish and sparkly. Though my grown-up tree has never come in contact with library paste, it’s far from trendy. I am of the tasteless belief that there’s no such thing as too many ornaments, so my tree is laden with everything from Fostoria crystal snowflakes to 10-year-old candy canes.  From where I sit right now I can see a square-ish reindeer with 3 glittered trees growing out of his back, a crocheted white angel, a pewter teapot, a bread-dough doll, some brass horns, a knit Santa, a ballerina…. See how confused a Martian anthropologist would be?

My tree, I confess, is a plastic facsimile; in fact we were among the first to own a petroleum by-product tree. Not strictly traditional, but it has saved my marriage and my sanity. My dear husband has always been a gentle Scrooge – “Bah! Humbug!” he’d exclaim at the idea of paying good money for a dead tree, for a tree dry enough to drop needles all over the carpet, dry enough to burn down the house. The grousing stopped when in the late 60’s I spent $25 on a fake tree. I could put it up myself, no need at all to ruffle his crabby feathers. We’re on Tree G-3 now and I adore it.

My perfectly shaped, synthetic tree has, for ages, been topped by a stuffed reindeer, which looks disturbingly like a camel, and carries a load of presents on his back. His limbs wrap around the leader and his facial expression makes it clear that he’s sure he’s falling. He has no symbolic significance – I just find his “How did I get up here?” look amusing and he reminds me of the time I told my 4-year-old, geeky grandson to listen for Santa and his reindeer. Ben put his hands on his little hips and shook his head. “Gravity, Nana. Gravity?” My tree deer is worried about that, too.

Besides the tree, I also love my snowmen. Ages ago I made them out of gourds – one of the dozens of hobbies to which I am unfaithful. The five snowmen gather annually and flirt with each other – Levi and Guinevere have had a thing going from the beginning, and Herkimer still looks like someone just goosed him – Hermione, I suppose; she appears to be having a private giggle.  Henry, who is 2 feet tall, just beams; he’s a merry gentleman, even if no one else is.

And what’s Christmas without my row of hand-painted Victorian houses (another abandoned hobby)? I can imagine the tiny inhabitants “hanging their stockings by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. ”  Speaking of cultural phenomena that would confuse the Martians -- how would they connect that to the porcelain nativity scene by the front door?

How silly are we? Whatever does a 2,000-year-old Jewish baby have to do with Norwegian reindeer and fat men in red suits? Why do they come down the chimneys? What’s with the angels? Or the gingerbread houses? Or the three kings on camels? And snowmen – were there snowmen in Judea? And what’s with the stockings? And the lights? Oh my goodness, the lights! And people rushing around buying presents and music everywhere. …

Ah, God rest ye merry, silly, endearing gentlemen, let nothing ye dismay, for Christ was born in Bethlehem upon this Christmas Day.

And the Martians will just have to deal with it.

What Man is This?

I love the old hymn set to the 17^th century English tune Greensleeves -- “What child is this who’s laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?” Lovely, soft, and haunting, yet it is not the child that matters; it is the man He became, the man who died, the man who rose again.

Jesus Christ -- Immanuel (God with Us) was, during the short time He was with us, a complete human being, as well as God Almighty. I know -- my brain doesn’t get all the way around that one, either, so for now let’s just look at the man. The Gospels show only glimmers of Who He was when He wasn’t actively involved in His ministry; we talk about his “missing” childhood, but when you go to look for the grown-up, off-stage Jesus, He’s just as hard to discover. We’re used to finding out anything we want to know about someone’s private life, but the personal Jesus eludes us.

I want to see a glint of humor in His eyes when His mother tells him that the wedding wine has run out, yet the words He speaks to her sound curt and purposeful and she responds pretty intensely herself. “Whatever he says, do it, “ she tells the servants. Yet certainly He had a quiet chuckle as the freshly water-filled jugs instantly turned to well-aged wine. It amuses me how narrowly the clueless host escapes embarrassment and how fooled the wedding planner is – surely it all amused Jesus, too.  But He had a serious purpose – He had started showing people who He really was; He had opened the curtain – the show had begun.

But, surely He must have been fun to be with. What did He and the disciples talk about as they walked those dusty roads and ate bread together? (We know of one silly conversation amongst the disciples about which of them would be the greatest, but Jesus was not a part of that.) Did they tell jokes? Talk about politics? Tease each other? We don’t know. 

The Pharisees criticized Him for hanging out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and I can picture Him seated at a table completely at ease with this rough crowd. I like to think of Him throwing back His head in laughter, offering a toast, nodding and smiling, clapping someone on the back, shaking hands with newcomers, but nothing like that is recorded, and His own account tells us we should picture those meetings more like the teaching sessions He held in the synagogues.

I can feel His exhaustion and claustrophobia after those long days healing the multitudes. He was a rock star, on at least two occasions drawing crowds of 4-5,000. They followed Him everywhere, crushed in upon Him, wouldn’t let Him breathe, and each crowd was heavily laced with the vicious hatred of the religious leaders, waiting lustfully for the slightest misstep.

I have a friend who talks about the rebel in Jesus, and it’s true that He had no respect for the man-made law of the Pharisees, and that He found many an occasion to show them that contempt. He was not, however, the rebel the crowds wanted. They thought He came to save them from the Romans, to become their new king, so the pressure from the multitudes must have been overwhelming; they wanted so much from Him – leadership, hope, healing.

When He heals the paraplegic in Capernaum the crowds are so thick that his four friends have to break through the roof of the house where Jesus is speaking to lower their friend into His presence. The intensity of that moment – the pressure of the bodies, the lack of air, the heat – just the thought of it makes me choke. Add into that the hatred of the Pharisees – who had made sure of their spot in the room – and you have a real pressure-cooker. We know that He occasionally escaped to pray by Himself, that He asked the disciples to act almost as bodyguards, that He occasionally spoke to the crowds from the safety of a boat. I would have done that too.

Only twice do we see His calm, patient surface craze a little under the pressure – His weeping for Jerusalem, for His doomed nation, and the night in Gethsemane before His arrest when He was actually sweating blood.

How human He was. Even though we can’t yet know Him the way we would like, we’ve had a peek, a glimpse of the man Who will greet us in heaven someday, the man Whose birthday we celebrate not just because He healed the sick or fed the five thousand, but because He went through with it; in spite of His terror, He finished the job. Tetelestai He said, and He died and then He rose again, as will we who believe. It is indeed a Merry Christmas.

The Lion of Judah

Please read this sentence, then close your eyes and recreate in your mind your old Sunday school picture of Jesus. There. He’s wearing an ankle-length, white robe; his hair is long and perfectly groomed. He’s sitting, surrounded by attentive children his soft hands extended inclusively toward them, actually touching them, a look of soft yearning on his lean, ascetic face.  He is the personification of love – love at its most sentimental and marshmallowy level.

I’ve held onto that mental picture from my country-club Methodist Sunday-school for over half a century. This Christmas, as I unpack my Christmas decorations, I’m consciously putting away that old mental picture; I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me so long, for it has barred me from really getting to know the strength, the power, and the true love of my Savior. He is not that man in the picture.

I don’t mean that Christ isn’t loving, just that the sappy thing going on in that piece of art, and in most liberal churches, has nothing to do with the Christ of Scripture.  Yes, Matthew records Him saying, “ Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come to me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (19:14).  If you look at that passage carefully, however, it records nothing of a conversation with the children. He “lays hands on them” – He had been healing the multitudes and evidently took some time to heal the children as well.  But Scripture records no conversation with them. That famous picture suggests a lovely little Sunday school scene – or perhaps the absence of context leaves a young mind free to imagine that into the painting. A little story telling, some candy passed around, lots of smiles and nods, but we somehow lose track of the fact that that statement is a rebuke to his disciples, unsoftened by preamble or much explanation. Theywere just trying to protect Him, but He doesn’t acknowledge that; He uses the opportunity to teach them, not the children.

Lately, our pastor, during our evening Bible classes, has been taking us through a comparative study of the gospels following the outline of Life of Christ from a Jewish Perspective by Arnold Fructenbaum. I’m finding there a very different Jesus – one I’d noticed before in the Temple money-changing tirades, but had discounted as flukes; those events were at such odds with my mind’s sweet Sunday-school picture. During over 40 years of intensive Bible study, I had vaguely noticed the direct, abrupt manner that Christ had with people, but I had chalked it all up as being “prophet talk,” just a manner of speaking, a sort of short-hand. No chit-chat is recorded, none of the niceties, no softening of reprimands, no pleasantries, no sweetness -- just tough love for His followers and a heavy, resigned distance with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Part of my mind had assumed that the gospel writers left out those socially sweet pieces, the “How’s the wife?” bits, like in any good novel, for the sake of brevity, which may be partially true, but the more we study, the more I realize that He had no time, in a sense no patience, for beating around the bush. He had no games to play.

Not once does He try to charm His enemies into loving Him. Not once does He fall into the traps they lay for Him. Not once does He rely on tact and politics. He just tells the truth. Even when He’s healing the sick, He doesn’t fawn over them; He just gives orders. “Go forth and tell no man,” (Matt 8:4) not, “Here, let me help you up. Do you need a ride?”

Even when He’s dealing with His disciples He doesn’t cushion things for them. The night they were caught for hours fighting a strong wind on the Sea of Galilee He could have gone with them, for no doubt He knew that storm was brewing. He could have, had He been operating on “Sweet Jesus” frequencies, calmed that wind from where He was praying on the eastern shore, way before it had exhausted and frightened them half to death. Instead, He waits until their boat is nearly swamped and then scares them even further by walking toward them across those dark, tossing seas.

Then He allows Peter, in his usual Petrine enthusiasm, to try walking with Him on the waves, knowing Peter will muff it and nearly drown. It isn’t until then that He gets into the boat and calms the wind. He wasn’t at all interested in keeping them comfy – He wanted them to learn. (Matthew 14:22-33)

I find that, though this accurate Jesus is thoroughly intimidating, He is more real, more believable, more dependable than the one in the pretty picture. What was that Jesus going to do when bad guys were really after me -- pat me on the head? No, this Jesus is tough enough to calmly tell the cold, open truth even when He knows they’ll kill Him for it – which brings up one last point: had He been that Sweet Jesus person in the painting, they never would have killed Him. They wouldn’t have felt they had to.

I have been, throughout this study, reminded of the discussion Lucy had with the beavers in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lucy asks Mr. Beaver about Aslan, the lion/Christ figure of Narnia. The beaver answers, “He’s not a tame lion…He’s not safe, but He’s good.”

As Christmas approaches this year, that is the Jesus I’ll be celebrating.

Liberty and its Limitations

Thanksgiving ranks right up there with the 4th of July as a quintessentially American holiday. We gather to give thanks to the God who, while allowing us each maximum free will, has managed to bless and protect this most unusual country. You see, freedom is God's idea, so it makes a great deal of sense that He would smile upon a nation dedicated to His concept. Let us during this Thanksgiving take some time to think about liberty, appreciate its largess and the limits that sustain it. May He continue to bless you and yours.  Happy Thanksgiving.  

“This is a free country.” 

“I can say whatever I want.” 

“I have the right to do anything I like.” 

“You can’t tell me what to do.”  I hear these statements in the halls at school, on TV in the evenings, on the radio on the way home, and I find myself wondering: can a nation full of people who don’t know what freedom is continue to be free?  I’m so very afraid not. 

Freedom is not an absolute.  No one is absolutely free.  I can’t just decide to levitate above the back-packed hordes in the hallways.  Or just because I had such a grand time at a party, I can’t rocket back in time to enjoy it all over again. I can’t sing an aria. 

I’d like to do all those things – I can just see the looks on all those young faces as I straddle my broom, rise silently to just below the ceiling, and jet off down the hall, swerving to miss the florescent lights. Students here have long suspected me of belonging in a Harry Potter movie, anyway, so why not? 

Law, that’s why.  Scientific law won’t allow it.  I can’t go back to the party because time only moves forward. (This is a useful law since many of us more timid souls would spend our lives huddled comfortably in our baby cribs; we know what’s out there in the real world and we want none of it).  I would dearly love to sing, really sing, not just struggle to match pitch and pray the melody won’t soar above my measly three-note range.  But alas.  Natural law again.  Both genetics (none of the women in my family tree can sing) and physics combine to rob me of that privilege. We are all subject to natural law. We suffer consequences if we attempt to disobey it; the Darwin Awards recognize those who were rash enough to ignore it.

                                                                                

We are also subject to social law, to moral law.  Social laws have nothing to do with the law of the land.  Congress doesn’t pass them; the president doesn’t sign them.  But here too we suffer consequences if we don’t follow those laws.  If we fail to send a thank you note for a gift, that giver may stop giving. If we’re caught spreading gossip about a “friend,” she’s likely to retaliate by blabbing a few choice tidbits from our own top-secret files.  If a woman runs off with someone else’s husband, she shouldn’t be surprised when said husband runs off with the next woman.  What goes around comes around. Consequences.

Now, it’s true that social or moral laws change more than scientific laws (which aren’t, strictly speaking, “laws,” but absolute statements of what actually and irrevocably is), but social laws do change ever so slightly and usually over long periods of time. We no longer need to be formally introduced to a person before he can become our friend, but we still do introduce people to each other.  Certain words are not to be said in public, yet in spite of Hollywood, and gangsta rap, only the most crude do so. (The current push for political correctness and “tolerance,” are more of an effort to force a change in human nature by means of altering the language, than an actual repealing or passing of new social law.) Each culture, at each stage of its history, has developed its own slight variations on moral rules, yet no culture exists that has none. 

Basically, the laws governing social/moral behavior are anchored in awareness and concern for our fellow man and for the welfare of the group.  No one is exempt. If our actions offend or harm someone, then we have broken a fundamental, unchanging rule, a rule carved in the stone of human history – we have failed to treat another human being the way we would like to be treated.  Granted, no police will come arrest us, there will be no trial, but chances are we will be punished, albeit unofficially, and maybe only in our own conscience, but punished nonetheless.  People who break too many social laws find themselves in fistfights on The Jerry Springer Show.  They become as much of a laughing stock as the winners of the Darwin Awards. They end up friendless, confused, often ill and isolated, and the more of us who behave in antisocial, belligerent, irresponsible ways, the more unstable and unpleasant our entire society becomes.  More consequences.

But this is a free country.  Yes, as free as they come, as free as has ever existed. We may think anything we wish, believe anything we wish.  We have freedom of religion here.  No one will execute us for joining a cult that worships Twinkies; no fines will be imposed if we decide that the true god is the queen of the anthill in our backyard.  Of course this is just judicial freedom.  Our government can’t control what God would think of all that. Let us not be confused on this issue.  We can, from our government’s point of view, believe or disbelieve what we will, but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that God is really “out there” and that He has His druthers.  Remember the story about the golden calf?  When God found the Israelites worshipping this statue, He made them grind it up, mix it with water and drink it. The fact that our human government imposes no similar religious requirements on us does not mean that none exist, or that we can willy-nilly invent our own fairy tale and that just because we are comfortable with those ideas or believe them, that they will be true.

In fact, truth is not affected at all by whether or not we believe it; philosophical laws exist as well as scientific laws.  We can stick our intellectual noses in the air and break those laws and carry on in irrational, ideologically irresponsible ways, but many natural consequences ensue.  We become addicted to drugs, to sex, to gambling, to government subsides. 

We get depressed, anxious, or hyper-active.  We suffer heart attacks, contract diseases, sit up at night worrying.  We can travel down the think-whatever- we-want-to path, ignoring rationality and evidence so far that we lose permanently the ability or the will to perform rational thought. And our government will allow us to do that.   However, if too many of us indulge our flights of fancy, it would be hard to maintain a functional civilization. One thinks of the sacred cows of India surrounded by starving Hindus.

Yet, in spite of, and to a large extent because of, all the restrictions imposed by nature and society, we have enormous freedom. In Kurt Vonnegut’s short story Harrison Bergeron, Harrison wants to be free, “to become what [he] can become.”  That is what true freedom is – a society that promotes, by both its rules and its lack thereof, the blossoming of each and every member. 

Freedom is not a vast void of untrammeled, unguided self-indulgence. It is not the total absence of consequences; it is the carefully controlled atmosphere necessary to nurture and encourage the best in all of us and the best must be protected by rational restraint. It was Ernest Hemingway who once said, “Art begins with limitations.”  He hints here at an even larger truth; life (and freedom) begins with limitations. As long as we keep these ideas in mind we can maintain the nurturing freedom that continues to draw stifled people to this promising land.