Don’t
get me wrong. I have led a ministry to
homeless; many were illegal and I’ve never asked for immigration status before
responding to need. But I also vote to
enforce existing law, I resent that officials are forbidden to identify status,
and appalled that illegals get favored treatment in schools while Americans
struggle to pay tuition and find and hold jobs.
I recognize that most gun running and child pornography are done by
illegal immigrants – albeit not primarily from Mexico. Above all I know that the issue is whether
our laws are defied or respected, not how anyone feels about them. That is still old school.
Likewise,
I care when people are in pain, but the issue in Zimmerman was whether he acted
in self-defense, not how Trayvon Martin suffered. Yet many Americans – many millions – think it
is all about how people feel; they believe feelings are sufficient to govern
the behavior of others. They take a
post-modern view – an evolutionary view – of ethical behavior.
Post-modernism
as a worldview popularized a profound desire to know the back story of mere
facts, to appreciate context, and to identify with the people who populate
events rather than cooly appraise them and move on. It asked questions like, “Why did Indians
attack wagon trains and railroad builders on the Great Plains?” or “Why did
farm workers unionize under a communist in California?” and “Why did the
Vietnamese revere Ho Chi Minh?” These
questions brought uncomfortable answers that revealed thousands of broken
treaties, unspeakable conditions on farms that none before Cesar Chavez
addressed effectively, and the reality that Ho stood against the French
colonizers of his land while we defended them.
But every pendulum tends to swing too far and the evil we seek to avoid
evolves into the evil we failed to anticipate.
Excessive objectivity gave way to excessive subjectivity and every
person – or pressure group – becomes arbiter of right and wrong based on
self-generated criteria. The biblical
Book of Deuteronomy says that in those days there was no king and everyone did
as they pleased.
In our time we
cannot seem to distinguish between whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and
Edward Snowden – who revealed government corruption and oppression without
costing life – and Bradley Manning and Julian Assange – who betrayed our nation
and cost many lives by giving information to the Taliban and Al Qaeda because
Manning was conflicted about his sexuality – per his own account. We are confused because we want to identify
with the little guy taking on the perceived bully – even when the little guy is
the bully – like the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon and the shooters
at Ford Hood and the Washington Navy Yard.
Jesus was no
ethical evolutionist. He identified with
every human being, whether or not He approved their behavior. He forgave all and died for all. But He called sin what it was and offered no
compromise; he said behavior has consequences and He knew whereof He
spoke. The stories of the women at the
well and the Temple (John 4 and 8) are classic examples. He refused to judge in each case, but He also
declined to intervene until their behavior was submitted to Him.
Reality is we
need both objectivity and subjectivity in our ethics. We know a good and loving God who wrote the book
on His created ones; solutions are simple.
For Christians – one at a time – take God’s promise of a coming Great
Awakening seriously and His reminder that only a period of escalating re-focus
on Him and on His whole revealed Word can open the door to it. This is called repentance we have just
celebrated the National Day of Repentance on Yom Kippur. (Go to www.dayofrepentance.org for
details.) For those who know neither God
nor his blueprint for abundant life – no hard feelings, but it’s time to get a
clue that what we are doing is just not working.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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