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Quote of the Day: Borders
“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,” — Acts 17:26, English Standard Version
While on the way to a Bible study months ago, John Lennon’s Imagine came on the radio. I started ranting to my wife about the insipid lyrics. I remembered a guest on “Red Eye” years ago who said that he hated “Imagine no possessions” worse than “Imagine no religion” as the latter can be chalked up to adolescent babbling, but private property is key to being free men or something like that.
The second stanza begins with “Imagine there’s no countries.” When we got to the Bible study, the pastor asked us to begin reading with Acts 17:26. I’ve forgotten what the larger lesson was that night. It wasn’t about “Imagine,” but I was struck by the difference. John Lemmon was asking me to imagine no countries and the Bible is reminding me that God has created nations and determined their boundaries.
Published in Group Writing
Amen to that.
There is a lot of bad theology in the hippie tunes of the late 60s/early 70s, viz., Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky.
And it sounds like it.
In other words, like a man and a woman can be essential to each other yet distinct and wildly different, peoples can be different yet precious to God and to each other. The differences are sometimes full of meaning and sometimes simply practical.
No country = no say in how we’re governed. I’m not sure why the anti-democratic nature of open borders isn’t apparent to more people. Brits seem to be catching on.
Perhaps the same can be said of cultures as implemented in countries. To at least some extent countries are based on cultures. If there were no countries, would we all devolve into a mass of sameness, erasing the differences among people that give the world so much interest? Maybe not. The United States is one country and we still are able to keep the cultural differences that differentiate the Northeast from the Southeast from the Southwest, etc. But maybe that’s because the United States consists of 50 mini-countries we call “states.” So, I think that without “countries” humanity would be at risk of becoming an uninteresting mass of sameness.
Well, I don’t think we ever have to worry about erasure of cultural differences. It can happen to a limited extent — American states and regions have been largely homogenized by television, telephones, and such, despite our remaining differences. But even the brutal regimes in China and Russia couldn’t make everyone alike.
Technologies do enable ever larger governments, though. If God doesn’t pull the plug in the next 500 years, there might indeed be something like a world government one day. Think the UN or EU writ large.
A redneck friend (not a philospher) once suggested a similar view on racial mingling. “God made us different and the differences are good, so don’t spoil it” essentially. My response was basically the same: No amount of mixing is likely to eliminate the variety, so mingle on.
The whole concept of “no countries” is absurd, as it doesn’t solve anything. All civilized societies have some form of structure, such as the family, neighborhood, villages, towns, cities, townships, counties, states, regions, countries, packs (NATO, Warsaw, etc.) up to world organizations such as the U.N. (arg!), International Red Cross / Crescent, and the World Court. How does anyone exist without boundaries that define their land and the governmental structures above them?
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Or several snarling masses of murderous opposition?
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I am a Beatles fan, but a Lennon detracter. He was far more self-indulgent than he was deep; and nations, religions, or eternal judgement can really get in the way when one wants to indulge in, for example, underage girls.
For an excellent treatise on this issue I highly recommend Yoram Hazony’s new book The Virtue of Nationalism.
I’ve gotta read that. In the meantime, here’s the video of his speech at Yale on the subject:
Yes that’s a great analogy – God specified what was to be Israel even in measurements.
I thought it was especially dumb when they performed it at the Winter Olympics last year… in South Korea of all places.
Andy Ferguson has a great piece about the mythologizing of Lennon’s genius at the expense of Paul McCartney, who was apparently the group’s essential talent.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.weeklystandard.com/andrew-ferguson/love-me-do%3f_amp=true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisegesis