Let Your 'Yes' and 'No' Speak Truth
By Eric Rauch
Jesus' statement in His Sermon on the Mount to let your yes be yes and your no be no (Matthew 5:33-37) is picked up by two other New Testament authors. In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes: "But as God is faithful, our word to you is not yes and no" (2 Cor. 1:18). And in his short epistle, James writes: "But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath; but your yes is to be yes, and your no, no, so that you may not fall under judgment" (James 5:12). With the brief background supplied by previous articles (here and here), we can now begin to get a better sense of what Jesus, Paul, and James are saying about "yes and no."
Last week, Joel discussed the real meaning of the Third Commandment. It was the fear of breaking this commandment that led to the Jewish tradition of not speaking God's name—fear of blaspheming His Name. Modern Christianity has somewhat adopted this superstition by turning the Third Commandment into a prohibition against using God's name as a swear word. While this is certainly part of it, we must realize that the Third Commandment is not only referring to words that proceed out of our mouth. We can also "take God's name in vain" without ever speaking a single word; in fact, this is probably more often the case. When we "take" God's name, we are taking an oath of allegiance to love Him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. When we violate this oath of allegiance, we are "taking God's name in vain."
Knowing that His audience had turned the law of God into a list of dos and don'ts, Jesus cuts to the real issue in the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout His monologue, Jesus contrasts the tradition of the first-century legalists (using the phrase "You've heard it said...") with the actual intention of the law (using the phrase "But I say to you..."). When He gets to the part about "not making false vows" (Mt. 5:33-37), He directly attacks their tradition of using heaven, earth, or Jerusalem as the authoritative object of their faithfulness to do what they agreed to do. In other words, the Jews had gotten in the habit—out of their fear of misusing God's name and violating the Third Commandment—of making vows in the name of heaven, earth, Jerusalem, etc. Similar to modern children saying "I swear I will not tell this secret on my mother's grave, " the Jews had developed a tradition that appeared to not violate the Third Commandment, yet still gave their vow some credibility. But Jesus exposes their tradition for the folly that it was by making the point that heaven, earth, and Jerusalem all belong to God anyway.
The primary point of Jesus' teaching is actually two-fold. He first draws attention to the fact that by swearing on these other objects, his hearers were essentially admitting that their own words were worthless. If the tradition of swearing on these objects was prevalent enough to be included in His sermon, it must mean that a general sense of suspicion was present among that society. In an attempt to have some semblance of honesty in a dishonest culture, they began swearing on the "higher" things that they held in common.
The second aspect of Jesus' teaching however is the more important one. After condemning their "heaven, earth, and Jerusalem" oaths in verses 34 and 35, He moves into the personal space of each of his listeners (and us as readers). "Nor shall you make an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. But let your statement be, 'Yes, yes' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil" (vv. 36-37). The issue of authority looms large here. Jesus isn't about to leave the door open for his hearers to come up with a different object to swear upon. Bringing it to the individual level, Jesus makes the point that we do not even own ourselves, which means that we don't even possess the authority to swear on our own lives. God not only owns heaven, earth, and Jerusalem; He owns us too. It is for this reason that the only option we have is to let our "yes be yes, " and our "no be no;" we have no authority to say anything otherwise. James makes this point clear when he writes:
Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin. (James 4:11-17)
Notice that James connects boasting with evil, just as Jesus connected anything beyond yes and no as being evil in His sermon. At first glance, it may seem that Paul—in the 2 Corinthians passage—is violating this principle by tying what he said to the faithfulness of God, but he is actually affirming it. When the passage is read in its context, it is clear that Paul is speaking about the words that God gave him to write and speak. What Paul is really saying is that he is delivering the message that God gave to him, not words and meanings of his own creation. In other words, Paul is saying God's words are faithful because God Himself is faithful. In reality, Paul is making a clear distinction from his own words and the Words of God.
And in this confidence I intended to come to you before, that you might have a second benefit—to pass by way of you to Macedonia, to come again from Macedonia to you, and be helped by you on my way to Judea. Therefore, when I was planning this, did I do it lightly? Or the things I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be Yes, Yes, and No, No? But as God is faithful, our word to you was not Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not Yes and No, but in Him was Yes. (2 Cor. 1:15-19)
Christians should be known as people of their word, just as God is of His. We should never have to resort to dragging God into our promises to other men. We have no authority to do this in the first place; and in the second, if we feel compelled to do this, it is a judgment against us that we are not faithful and true. May God be pleased to make us faithful to His Word, which will, in turn, make us faithful to our own.
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Why Common Sense Died
By Dr. Archie P. Jones
Recently Glenn Beck has rightly been lamenting the death of “common sense” in American government and law—a phenomenon which must be evident to many Americans over forty and manifest to every Bible-believing Christian. Philip K. Howard had complained against massive, hyper-detailed laws generated by regulatory bureaucracies to tell us what we must do in every situation—and leaving nothing to the common sense of the individual—in The Death of Common Sense; How Law Is Suffocating America (1995). Glenn’s guest Lori Borgman lamented the death of “Common Sense” in a great, now much-circulated satirical obituary in the March 15, 1998 Indianapolis Star.
Bureaucratic law, Howard noted, replaced humanity in the replacement of the system of common law which we inherited from England. Bureaucratic rules and regulations seek to predetermine results based on rationalistically conceived principles; the common law applies the law on the basis of the circumstances as evaluated by the common sense of the individual person. The “Progressive Era” at the beginning of the twentieth century saw statutory law begin to replace the common law for purposes of economic regulation; this increased with the economic regulations of the “New Deal” and continued with the increase of federal government bureaucracies added under subsequent administrations. The idea that every situation must be covered by the law has produced an explosion of the size and detail of laws—including those which Congress votes on but never reads, those which our bureaucrats produce but cannot explain, and those which cannot be known because the regulations are too massive and numerous. The fact that no matter how learned, intelligent, and numerous are the bureaucrats who grind out these legal monstrosities they cannot know or anticipate every situation produces not only oppressive regulations but also the frequently asinine details of many regulations. Centrally-dictated, self-exercising rules, Howard notes, admit “no judgment or discretion, ” allow for no adjustment to the virtually infinite “range of future circumstances, ” and give us the opposite of what our “founding fathers” wanted: coercive government, “a government of laws against men.” Such a legal system stifles individual initiative, produces time-consuming wrangles over bureaucratic processes, involved lawyers in virtually every human interaction, makes us a society of legal enemies, and reduces our freedom.
Borgman traces the death of “Common Sense” to the prior deaths of his family members, Discretion, Responsibility, and Reason. And to his declining health, caused by the notion that a law should be passed or a regulation mandated even if it only helps one person, well-intentioned but overbearing regulations, self-seeking lawyers, and schools’ zero-tolerance policies. And to his loss of the will to live—caused by the proscription of the Ten Commandments, churches becoming businesses, criminals getting better treatment than their victims, judges interfering in everything, idiotic decisions by juries, and nonsensical OSHA (Occupation Safety and Health Administration)-type regulations. Howard traces it to 17th and 18th century “Enlightenment” rationalism’s notion that man’s unaided reason can predetermine, and create laws governing, all relations between citizens.
The death of “Common Sense” was and is caused by modern men’s rejection of God, the Bible, and a Christian view of the world and of life. “Enlightenment” rationalism sought to effectively exclude God from His universe and world (rationalistic Deism which denied God’s divine providence) was but one way of doing this), to replace God’s word with man’s unaided reason, to replace God’s divine providence with man’s control of all things through the all-powerful state, and God’s law with man’s laws. “Common Sense” is not a universal thing. As R. J. Rushdoony pointed out, different religious-philosophies teach diverse views of the world and of life, and what is considered commonsensical in one society is not considered to be so in another. What we in Western Civilization considered to be common sense was a product of the prior influence of Christianity on the peoples of Western Civilization.
When Western and American law were based mainly on biblical teachings men could know what the law required—and figure out what the law required in a given new situation—because God’s law is not a monstrous, complex, self-contradictory conglomeration of regulations. The common law is a great mass of judicial decisions, but the ethics on which those decisions were based, the ethics which allowed for individual initiative and judgment in novel situations, is derived from biblical law and Christian theories of “natural law.” God’s law revealed in the Bible contains few laws which men, using their God-given reason as He intended us to use it, can discern. Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light. Faith in Him and obedience to His law is the way of national prosperity and freedom (as Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26 and many other Bible passages make clear).
Though modern man-centered thought, because of its inherent problems, has gone from rationalism to irrationality, the irrationalists who currently dominate our culture and civil governments are just as opposed to common sense and freedom as were their rationalistic parents. Their continued rule will make sure that “Common Sense” stays dead. And it will certainly kill Freedom.
Americans used to have the freedom to use common sense because the church—following the Great Commission—had sought to influence, and did decisively influence the peoples of Western Civilization including these United States of America: their ethical, social, legal, and political thought, institutions, and culture. Americans no longer have that freedom to use common sense because the church has long abandoned the wholeness of the Great Commission. The church in this country as well as throughout Western Civilization still has virtually abandoned preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God; education; ethical, social, legal, and political thought; and the influencing legal and political institutions. As a result “Common Sense” is dead and Freedom is nearly so.
Americans used to be free to exercise “Common Sense”—and to have the Freedom to do so—because the church had (albeit imperfectly!) obeyed the Great Commission. “Common Sense” will not be resurrected, and Freedom will soon die—or be strangled—if the church does not return to the whole counsel of God and obedience to His Great Commission.
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“Monsters from the Id”
By Gary DeMar
Michael G. Zey of Montclair State University in New Jersey writes: “People want to believe that there is superior life in the universe, and that these aliens will be able to upgrade our own lives. This is a form of wish fulfillment.”[1] This is especially true since, as the late Michael Crichton made clear, “the belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.”[2] Similar to the way the “evidence” for evolution is designed to rid God from the cosmos, space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life (SETI) are designed to make man the next best thing to a god.
There are at least two problems with space optimism: (1) Evolution can go in any direction. You could get Kanamits, Terminator-like Aliens, or space vampires. There is no guarantee that you’ll meet E.T. or the child-like aliens that showed up at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Here’s how one commentator put it: “we are no more likely to find other planets inhabited by benign vegetarian philosophers than the Americas were.” (2) If humans ever explore other planets in earth-like solar systems (an unlikely prospect in the near or even far future given what we know about the distance of stars and the length of time it takes to travel to the nearest one), they will take their fallen natures with them.
One of the best films to make the second point is Forbidden Planet (1956). �It takes place on a distant planet in the early part of the 23rd century. The storyline is based loosely on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. “Of all Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest sets forth most fully and delightfully the biblical story of humankind: the tempestuous nature and thorny way of fallen man. . . .”[3]
The United Planets Cruiser C-57D is sent to the planet Altair IV, some sixteen light years from Earth. Their first contact with the planet is a warning to stay away by a Dr. Morbius, a member of the original earth colony. Ignoring the warning, Commander John Adams and his crew land and are taken to the home of what seems to be the lone survivor. Showing that he is in perfect health and in need of nothing, he dismisses the intrusion and encourages them to leave. �Then Altaira appears, Morbius’ nineteen-year-old daughter. Paradise has its Eve but with no Adam in sight.
In time, Morbius tells the history of the planet that he has been able to compile after 20 years of study. The Krell were a highly advanced alien race who “were a million years ahead of humankind” and believed “they had conquered their baser selves.” But on the “threshold of some supreme accomplishment, which was to have crowned their entire history, this all but divine race perished in a single night.” A similar thing happened to the original Earth colony as they tried to leave the planet in their spaceship. Only Morbius, his wife, and Alaira survived. His wife died of natural causes a few years later.
What unseen and unknown force wiped out the original expedition’s exploratory party and vaporized the Bellerophon as it took off? Like 20 years before, the unseen “monster” reappears and begins to kill members of the newly arrived crew. We soon learn that there is no monster “out there.” In reality, the monster was Morbius’s “own subconscious desire for lust and destruction” projected by Krell technology onto anyone who threatened his world. In the end, Morbius realizes that he is the monster. “Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it.”
The Krell were of the same nature as humans, something that believers in a new humanity will not tolerate:
In the Myth of the New Humanity, the human race evolves progressively upward toward spiritual as well as physical transformation, or toward absorption into something even grander—a Cosmic Mind, a Conscious Universe, The One. Our evolutionary path takes us off our home planet and out toward the stars.[4]
Tell it to Morbius and his beloved Krell. “The author Colin Wilson [author of Space Vampires] has likened Forbidden Planet’s ‘monsters from the id’ to claimed occult phenomena involving monsters from the subconscious, and in his novel The Philosopher’s Stone, the destruction of Mu is caused similarly by subconscious monsters from the sleeping minds of the Old Ones.”[5] In biblical terms, we would call it “sin.” No matter where we go on earth or in the cosmos, we will take it with us.
No matter how sophisticated the technology, the heart of man is still the problem. Krell science could be used to light cities and power factories or destroy an entire race of people “in a single night.” Good and evil are always in the picture. Even the most technologically advanced can’t get away from them, but given evolutionary assumptions, they can’t account for them. Don’t ever think that scientists are somehow immune to “monsters from the ID.” They aren’t, [6] as even evolutionist Stephen J. Gould has stated: “The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method, ’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots, is self-serving mythology.”[7] Scientists did not stop the Holocaust. Scientists invented atomic weapons. They, like the rest of us, can be spokesmen for good or evil, but in a world without God, they will not be able to tell the difference.
Endnotes[1] Quoted in Thomas Hargrove and Joseph Bernt, “Y3K? Space aliens and androids: A national poll finds that Americans believe in a fantastic future filled with technological, medical and space-age advances” (2000).
[2] Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture (January 17, 2003):
[3] Grace R. W. Hall, The Tempest as Mystery Play: Uncovering Religious Sources of Shakespeare’s Most Spiritual Work (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1999), 22.
[4] James A. Herrick, Scientific Mythologies: How Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 99.
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet
[6] “Scientists are thought to be objective in their search for facts, as opposed to others (especially theologians) who are considered biased by their faith.” (Charles E. Hummel, The Galileo Connection: Resolving Conflicts between Science and the Bible [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press], 1986, 14).
[7] Stephen J. Gould, “In the Mind of the Beholder, ” Natural History (February 1994), 103:14.
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Second Group Christians
By Eric Rauch
In a parable about stewardship in Luke 19, Jesus tells His hearers to "occupy until I come." The New American Standard translates the verse this way: "Do business until I come." The verse prior to the parable gives the context: "While they were listening to these things, Jesus went on to tell a parable, because He was near Jerusalem, and they [His listeners] supposed that the kingdom of God was going to appear immediately" (Luke 19:11). Since this parable immediately follows the story of Zaccheus' conversion, we have no reason to assume that Jesus is speaking to a different audience. In this parable, Jesus actually speaks of three groups of people: (1) faithful and productive stewards, (2) unfaithful and unproductive stewards, and (3) His enemies. The rewards doled out to the first group and the punishment given to the third seem to be fair enough to our 21st century sensibilities, but the parable is really directed at the second group—the most populated of the three—the unfaithful and unproductive stewards.
If we were really honest with ourselves, we would be quick to admit that we do in fact belong to the second group. Each of us have been given talents and abilities that are seldom used to their maximum effectiveness. Far too often, we are more than willing to stand in the shadows and allow our gifts to go unnoticed. And when this happens on an individual level with alarming regularity, we should not be too surprised when it begins to happen to the church as a whole. The Church in America has an astounding physical presence—a church can be found on nearly every corner in every town—yet the shadows loom large enough so that even these buildings can remain hidden to the culture. Rather than being the central point of contact in the community, the church has become just another building on the landscape—visible yet invisible.
As the church has become more and more invisible, the federal government has become more and more visible. This shouldn't come as a revelation to most readers because as Robert Nisbet has pointed out:
Politics and religion are and will always be adversaries; this, be it noted, by virtue of what they have in common as much as by what separates them... Only in the mass followings of the Caesars and Napoleons of history are we able to find phenomena comparable to the mass followings of Jesus and Mohammed. But what makes them analogous also makes them adverse. When religion is powerful, as it was in the Middle Ages, the political tie is weak, raddled, and confused. But when the political tie becomes powerful, as in the modern totalitarian state, the role of religion is diminished—in large measure as the result of calculated political repression but also as the result of the sheer lure of the political-ideological "church." [1]
Nisbet echoes Robert Winthrop, who 150 years earlier said this:
All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries and other governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions, it is Religion which must support the State. [2]
What both Nisbet and Winthrop are saying is that when men are self-ruled under God's law—that is, when the church is properly doing its job—the civil government is all but unnecessary. But when men are lawless and refuse to be self-governed and demand freedoms that do not rightfully belong to them—that is, when the church isn't doing its job—they will find a tyrannical dictator for themselves who will promise to give them everything they want. It is this second state, the unhappy one, in which America in the year 2009 finds itself.
It is one thing to say that America is in the state that it's in because the church hasn't been doing its job, but it's completely another to propose a solution to begin turning the tide back again. Not only is the American church asleep at its post, it is completely oblivious and apathetic in the few short hours that it is awake on Sunday mornings. And, as Mark Steyn points out, this is exactly what must happen for tyrants to flourish: "Big government depends, in large part, on going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them." [3]
Steyn's phrase "stirring up apathy" is as brilliant as it is oxymoronic, but this is exactly what government does. It seems rather counter intuitive to think of creating apathy by calling attention to it, but the government has been doing this for a long time and has gotten quite good at it. By "stirring up apathy" the government creates job security for itself by pretending to clean up each and every mess that it has made. It was big government that got us into this mess, and now we are expected to believe that only big government can get us out? Stirring up apathy indeed.�
But what does this mean for the rest of us, those of us in the second group of Jesus' parable? I would submit that we are in the midst of an unprecedented opportunity for second group Christians to begin coming out of the shadows and exercising their talents and abilities. Jesus said to "occupy" or "do business, " and that is exactly what we should be doing: taking care of business. There are two major themes in President Obama's current dismantling of the American system: debt and health care. It should have occurred to some of us by now that the Bible has much to say about both of these areas; both are mandates given to the church and should be taken seriously. The Bible tells us that the borrower is slave to the lender and that debt is surefire way to create a cycle of dependency, making slavery a habit. The Bible also speaks about ministering to the sick and the hungry, alleviating pain where possible and filling stomachs when necessary. These mandates were not given to the government, but the modern-day "Church of the Dark Shadows" has allowed government to walk right in and take its God-given mission field away. This is unacceptable, not to mention unbiblical, and the church can expect to stay right where it is, invisibly attempting to reach the world for Christ, until it gets back to its basic mission of being a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow.
Imagine—it's easy if you try—a world where every church member is out of debt and every child that dreams of becoming a doctor will work in the medical clinic that his own church operates. Imagine—it's not hard to do—a world where second group Christians are being encouraged and provided with nearly limitless opportunity to exercise their gifts and abilities in a church that serves as the community center; a church that provides education, restoration, rehabilitation, and sanctification to a community of lost and hurting people, people who have gambled everything on the government and lost. Imagine—I wonder if you can—a world where the church doesn't need, rely on, or fear the government, because it has each other and, most importantly, it has Jesus and that is enough. In fact, it is more than enough because there's always some to share. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. The real dreamer is the one who—like John Lennon—puts his hope and faith in man, rather than the God Who called us to these tasks in the first place.
Mark Steyn ends his article with these words:�
Of course we're "vulnerable": By definition, we always are. But to demand a government organized on the principle of preemptively "taking care" of potential "vulnerabilities" is to make all of us, in the long run, far more vulnerable. A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny... Once big government's in place, it's very hard to go back. [3]
He's right, of course, but one must ask: "Hard to go back to WHAT?" Steyn and the rest of the conservatives must begin looking a little deeper than simply getting rid of "big government." Big government is bad, we agree, but what do you replace it with? The sweat, grit, and bootstrap determination of the individualistic American making his own way in life is a great story for Hollywood, but doesn't fit the bill for the real world. What we need are focused occupiers, doing the business of the church who have no need of the welfare and the financial slavery that big government is peddling. They may be able to make us pay for it, but they can't make us use it.
Endnotes1� Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 356-357.
2� Robert Charles Winthrop, "Either by the Bible or the Bayonet, " as quoted in William J. Federer, America's God and Country (St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch, 2000), 701, 702. Emphasis added.
3� Mark Steyn, "Retreat into Apathy, " National Review Online, June 13, 2009. Online here �
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Changing Your Daily Habits To Help Prevent Back Pain
The back is probably the most used part of the body. If you suffer from back pain, you are probably desperate for ways to relieve it. Just follow some of these tips and change your daily habits to take some of the stress off of your back. You will be glad that you did when [...]
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Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Is A Pain In The Rear
There’s a diagnosis called Lumbar Spinal Stenosis. It’s a fancy name for a spine that has a narrowing channel which squeezes the nerves. These nerves lead to your backside and your legs, so there can be considerable pain. There’s lot of reasons why the spinal canal can be too narrow. For [...]
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Selective Condemnation
By Gary DeMar
Paul Hill, convicted of murdering abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard in 1994, considered himself to be a twentieth-century John Brown. Brown, if you recall, was the self-appointed avenger of God who was fond of quoting Hebrews 9:22: “All things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission” (KJV). If it took the blood of Americans to purge the sin of slavery from the land, so be it, Brown argued. For his actions, Brown was regarded as a hero by many in the anti-slavery movement of his time.
Although initially shocked by Brown’s exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. “He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . ., ” said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. “No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . .”[1]
Ralph Waldo Emerson used religious imagery by putting the “slavery issue into moral relief and made ‘the gallows glorious like the cross.’” What were the exploits that “initially shocked” Brown’s supporters but later were overshadowed by his “righteous” intention to rid the land of slavery? “On the evening of 23 May 1856, he and 6 followers, including 4 of his sons, visited the homes of pro-slavery men along Pottawatomie Creek [in Franklin County, Kansas], dragged their unarmed inhabitants into the night, and hacked them to death with long-edged swords.”[2] He and his men were acting as vigilantes. The Pottawatomie Massacre was the first act of savagery that caught the attention of the anti-slavery movement and instilled fear in supporters of slavery. “God is my judge, ” Brown said.� “It was absolutely necessary as a measure of self-defense, and for the defense of others.”[3]
In 1859, Brown hoped to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. After arriving at the arsenal he began training a small group of men for military action. Northern abolitionist groups sent 198 rifles and nearly 1000 pikes in preparation for the raid. The arsenal contained 100, 000 muskets and rifles. Brown’s plan was to use these weapons to arm rebellious slaves who would then strike terror in the slaveholders in Virginia. The first person killed by Brown’s men was Hayward Shepherd, an African-American baggage handler on a train that had passed through the area. Two slaves were killed as well as two people from the town, including the mayor. Federal troops eventually arrived under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee. Brown was later tried, convicted, and executed for his act of terrorism.
How has history treated John Brown? William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), editor of the anti-slavery The Liberator, had a lot to say about Brown’s exploits on the day of his execution. Although he was still “an ‘ultra’ peace man, ” he thanked God “when men who believe in the right and duty of wielding carnal weapons are so far advanced that they will take those weapons out of the scale of despotism, and thrown them into the scale of freedom.” Such righteous violence was “an indication of progress, and a positive moral growth; it is one way to get up to the sublime platform of non-resistance.” Brown’s violence was “God’s method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant.”[4] In 1863, businessman George L. Stearns held a “John Brown Party” where he unveiled a “marble bust of John Brown, the antislavery martyr who had died on a scaffold three years earlier after his doomed, heroic effort to free the slaves by leading a twenty-two-man raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.”[5] The comments by Richard Ellis offer a helpful commentary on the adulation given to John Brown:
The radical abolitionists’ response to John Brown and General Benjamin Butler also attests to the primacy of the hypocrisy within radical abolitionist political thought. Brown was canonized by abolitionists precisely because he embodied the idea of putting hypocrisy first. Brown’s moral zeal and uprightness exposed the hypocrisy of the shuffling and timid compromises made by politicians. Brown’s own acts of cruelty were forgiven, excused, or denied on account of his authenticity and candor.[6]
Brown remains a sainted figure. On Bowdoin College’s website under “Abolitionism” you will find the following:� “John Brown led a righteous crusade against slavery, born of religious conviction—and carried out with shocking violence.” Notice the words “righteous crusade” and “born of religious conviction.” Can you imagine such words being used to describe someone who killed an abortionist? Of course not, even though the arguments used for justification by Brown for his antislavery views and actions and Paul Hill for his antiabortion views and actions are nearly identical.
John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry, written by Brendan January and published in 2000 by Children’s Press, is in the “Cornerstones of Freedom Paperback” series. Do the actions of John Brown merit inclusion in a series on “freedom”? The following is on the “Ask Kids” website: “Harboring a fury that was fueled by profound religious devotion, John Brown carried his hatred of slavery into action, creating a legacy of bloodshed and violence that remains at once inspiring and appalling to this day.” Brown had “profound religious devotion” to his cause that was “inspiring” even if it was “appalling.” He was a murderer and a terrorist whose actions led to national bloodshed in a civil war that two world wars did not equal in the number of American deaths—more than 600, 000![7] The “Ask Kids” site includes Brown’s final words to the court with no commentary added:
“I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His [God’s] despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done.”
Then there’s David S. Reynolds’ biography John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. Reynolds points out “that not only was Brown ‘right’ on slavery and other racial issues of his day, but that his conduct—in causing the Civil War to begin in 1861 rather than, say, 1881—potentially saved hundreds of thousands of lives that could have been lost in a war fought in a time of much greater population and more deadly weaponry and, at the same time, might well have spared an entire generation of African-Americans the humiliating experience of human bondage.”[8] No one could know this. Maybe the issue of slavery could have been resolved without a war similar to the way England abolished the slave trade. Again Paul Hill and the killer of George Tiller could make similar arguments to justify their actions.
The mural “The Settlement of Kansas” by John Steuart Curry includes a larger-than-life depiction of John Brown holding a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other and hangs in the Kansas Statehouse. The Civil War dead and wounded are symbolized by the depictions of lifeless soldiers at his feet. There’s even a 500-piece jig-saw puzzle of the painting. Can you imagine the hue and outcry if similar accolades and commemorations were showered on those who killed abortionists for reasons remarkably similar to those of Brown? There are many on the left who extol the revolutionary exploits of Che Guevara and wear “the most famous photograph in the world” proudly on their clothing.
By the time Brown’s body lay “a-mouldering in the grave, ” the reverberations of his fanatic actions had shaken North and South, slave and free. Brown got what he wanted: the shed blood of hundreds of thousands of young men in a protracted civil war that led to the expansion of the federal government, continued racial conflict, segregation, and racial quotas. John Brown allowed poor theology to direct his actions, and there are people today who consider him to be a secular saint.
When Paul Hill was working through the logic of finding justification for executing abortionists, there were many who attempted to reason him out of his position. Prominent Christian leaders took public stands against Hill’s actions. Hill believed, like Brown, that he had a divine mandate to be God’s avenger:
“I believe that the Lord has used and will use what I did in a marvelous way. I’m standing for a principal. I’m willing to die for the principal. I consider it a great honor to die, possibly die, for having defended innocent human beings.”[9]
He crossed jurisdictional boundaries. His methods, not his views on abortion, were almost universally condemned by Christians. Of course, there were those who felt the same about John Brown.[10] In 1993, Hill was excommunicated from the church where he was a member, and he was routinely and regularly counseled not to kill in “the name of the Lord.”[11] In fact, I was one of those who told him that he did not have biblical grounds to assassinate abortionists. The excommunication came after appearances on The Phil Donahue Show, Larry King Live, CNN’s Sonya Live, and ABC’s Nightline where Hill made his John Brown-like views known. On March 15, 1993, Hill appeared on the Donahue show where he offered this analogy as justification for killing abortionists: If someone were killing children on a playground, “if you were to come up behind that man and shoot him in the back three times, you would have protected and saved innocent life from undue harm.” Killing an abortionist is no different from killing Hitler, Hill maintained, and John Brown would have agreed. And I suspect that there are many pro-abortionists who might support the actions of Brown and the resultant “Civil War” because they believe in the greater good of such actions. George Tiller believed in the greater good of Roe v. Wade, but where did he and his accommodating church find moral justification for such a belief?
Abortion is legal, a constitutionally protected right. So was slavery, but this did not stop people from denouncing the practice as evil with harshest rhetoric. The terrorist actions of Brown did not delegitimize the antislavery movement. Pro-abortionists want anti-abortionists to change their rhetoric. They want pro-lifers to stop describing abortion as legalized killing. The essence of the debate is the status of the pre-born child. If abortion is not the killing of pre-born babies, then there’s nothing to protest. Pro-abortionists want the exclusive use of the English language and the right to define terms their way.
When a woman enters a “healthcare center, ” she does so to kill her pre-born baby. Calling the facility a “healthcare center” does not change that fact. Defending the institution of slavery by describing slaves as “happy and content” does not change the fact that they were still slaves. Describing the gas chambers in the Nazi death camps as “delousing facilities” did nothing to protect the Jews who entered them. Killing took place there. People were murdered by the hundreds of thousands in these “facilities.”
In the January 3, 1995, issue of USA Today, an article appeared with this headline: “In abortion battle, toll mounts.” Toll as in death-toll. Pro-lifers want the world to know that the death toll is nearly 50 million pre-born babies killed in America since 1973. Killing 50 million pre-born babies is wrong and so is killing those who work at abortion mills. There are many legal ways to stop abortion in America. Killing abortionists is not one of them. George Tiller was a member in good standing in a Lutheran church. This is America’s real problem. If the church of Jesus Christ with one voice will not condemn abortion and vote out of office those who defend the bloody practice, then we deserve the leadership that is wrecking our nation. Keep in mind that millions of so-called evangelical Christians voted for this present pro-abortion administration.
Endnotes1 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html
2 http://www.civilwarhome.com/johnbrownbio.htm. “Though this act was purportedly a retaliation for the burning of Lawrence [Kansas], most of the settlers killed by Brown’s party had not been involved in any attacks on free–soil settlers.” (Richard J. Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America [Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998], 36).
3 http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTRIALS/johnbrown/brownaccount.html
4 William Lloyd Garrison, “John Brown and the Principle of Nonresistance, ” The Liberator (December 16, 1859). Quoted in Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left, 36
5 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4633323
6 Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left, 42.
7 You can add the deaths from the Korean and Vietnam wars, and you still would not equal the deaths in the civil war.
8 Douglas O. Linder, “The Trial of John Brown: A Commentary” (2005).
9 “Excerpts From Condemned Abortion Doctor Killer Paul Hill” (September 2, 2003).
10 Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left, 40.
11 Tom Hess, “Murderer of Florida abortionist executed, ” Citizen (November 2003), 6.
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Why Paying Attention to the Constitution Matters
By Gary DeMar
I received the following portion of a longer email from someone who disagreed with me on the interpretation of the Constitution related to the relationship between the Federal government and the states. He opened his email with this statement (my response follows his comments):
“I, sir, have an education in law; you do not.� All you have are the efforts to rationalize your way around it—pseudo-law from the lunatic fringe which is applied to everything as one-size-fits-all all non-answer to everything.� Empty of content, it is an avoidance of everything, beginning with law and reason. The Constitution, sir, applies both to Federal and state gov’ts: it is expressly the ‘supreme law of the land’; it is�expressly stipulated therein that any subordinate law—and all other law is subordinate to it—�inconsistent with it is unconstitutional, including state constitutional provisions and law. That is why, as example, GA’s first constitution was amended to make it religion-neutral—to modify its prohibition against active clergy holding public office—upon ratification of the Federal Constitution.�All states with such prohibitions did the same, exactly as they modified the oath of office in the state constitutions to accommodate those who hold different, or no, religious views.”
Your claim to “have an education in law” is irrelevant since there are others who have an education in law who would disagree with your views. Anyone who has the ability to read and reason can join in this debate. The Constitution doesn’t require that a Supreme Court Justice “have an education in law” or even be a lawyer! I suspect that your claim to “have an education in law” means that you are NOT a lawyer or a law professor. So please don’t try to pull professional rank on me. If you are a law professor, then say o. As far as I can tell, you are a liberal statist crank.
You are wrong on your understanding of the relationship between the Federal and state constitutions as the Constitution was originally conceived. The prohibitions concerning clergymen not holding dual offices were in place in some states prior to the drafting of the Constitution. �For example, Delaware’s constitution (1776) established the Christian religion (Art. 22) while not elevating “one religious sect” in the “State in preference to another” (Art. 29):
ART. 22. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit:
“I, ___________ will bear true allegiance to the Delaware State, submit to its constitution and laws, and do no act wittingly whereby the freedom thereof may be prejudiced.”
And also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:
“I, ___________ do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
And all officers shall also take an oath of office.
ART. 29. There shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this State in preference to another; and no clergyman or preacher of the gospel, of any denomination, shall be capable of holding any civil once in this State, or of being a member of either of the branches of the legislature, while they continue in the exercise of the pastoral function.
A jurisdictional separation between church and state was maintained by prohibiting a “clergyman or preacher of the gospel, of any denomination” from “holding any civil office” in the state, “or of being a member of either of the branches of the legislature, while they continue in the exercise of the pastoral function” (Art. 29). Let me repeat. This state prohibition was in effect prior to 1787, and Article VI, sec. 1 in the Constitution did nothing to change this at the state level.
Taking your view, then one has to explain how the Constitution of North Carolina in 1776 provided, “That no person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State” and remained in force until 1835, when it was amended by changing the word “Protestant” to “Christian, ” and as so amended remained in force until the Constitution of 1868. And in that Constitution among the persons disqualified for office were “all persons who shall deny the being of Almighty God.”
Your understanding of the Constitution is a revisionist version. The Federal Government through the courts has turned the Constitution on its head, and your comments are evidence of this fact. Many of these changes came by way of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment which has been used to nullify the original intent of the Bill of Rights. Originally the states only wanted to give limited authority and enumerated powers to a national government. Thomas Jefferson made these points in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798:
“Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party....each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”
The very wording of the First Amendment is a brake on the Federal Government: “Congress shall make no law. . . .” If Congress can’t make a law, then it can’t make a law.
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