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John Adams and Alexander Solzhenitsyn Were Right
A huge reason for the success of Western Civilization is that our Judeo-Christian faith focuses on improving yourself. You are made in God’s image. Act like it. Look inside yourself. Are there improvements that you could make in your soul? Well sure, but that’s really hard. But with God – the creator and master of the entire universe – watching you and taking a personal interest in your soul, perhaps you might give it a try. So we work at it. With varying degrees of success, to be sure, but we work at it. Our religious leaders are constantly imploring us to study the lessons of the Bible, and take them to heart. Don’t criticize others when you are so flawed. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and so on. Fix yourself first. A society full of Jews and Christians who truly believe in their God and seek to please him; that society is generally a pretty nice place.
John Adams was characteristically insightful when he observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” I would argue that this is true not only of our Constitution but also of any other government ever conceived.
Adams’ point is that if the behavior of people is not governed by their religion, then it must be governed by their government. He was a student of history. He knew that that does not end well.
In Matthew 22:21 Jesus said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” He understood that government was necessary to manage the affairs of men, but when it comes to managing really important things, like our souls, only God could do that. I would presume that students of the 20th century could reach no other conclusion.
Because government, understandably, takes a different approach. The government manages citizens and things, not souls. So it is essentially in the business of telling people what to do, and what not to do. What else could the government do? There is no other way.
In Christianity, you seek to improve yourself. In government, you seek to improve others. Modern progressives and others who have a great deal of faith in the power of government to improve our lives should stop and consider this very important distinction. And they should consider how well this has worked in the past.
Over the course of history, this has been tried in many different ways. Tribes governed by chiefs. Kingdoms governed by royal families. Socialist systems. Communist systems. And so on and so forth. They all look different on the outside, but on the inside, they’re all the same. They involve telling other people what to do. And for whatever reason, this doesn’t seem to work very well. In fact, these systems seem to rapidly, and consistently, devolve from ineffective to catastrophic. Every time. There is no other way.
It would appear that the only way to improve a society full of people is to improve the actual people. One at a time. From the inside out.
Teachers recognize this phenomenon. A kid from a good family is easy to teach. A kid from a horrible home will be either very difficult or impossible to improve, no matter how talented and dedicated his teachers are. The damage is done. There’s nothing to work with. And good teachers can recognize which kid is which by the end of the first week of school. They know which kids will be in college prep courses, and which will be in detention. They do their best with everybody, of course. But they know how things will turn out. They’ve seen it before.
So as we abandon our religious faith as individuals, we hope that improved government can maintain this very nice society to which we have been accustomed. And despite its flaws, our government is certainly one of the best in the world.
But it doesn’t matter. The damage is done. There’s nothing to work with. Teachers would understand. John Adams was right.
Viktor Frankl felt that freedom was a negative aspect (a lack of something – a lack of oppressive government), and that the corresponding positive aspect was responsibility. He said, “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” He didn’t understand how one could exist without the other.
The government can’t create 300 million responsible, moral individuals, by fiat. That is the work of parents, and of the church. There is no other way.
We’ve tried other ways. Those who believe that morality and ethics can be created by pure reason should stop and think about that if they study the history of the 20th century. Or even studied the history of any era, if you think about it.
To look deep into oneself, and critically judge what one sees, and then undertake to improve upon it to the very best of your ability – that is agonizingly difficult. The government cannot encourage us to do that. Only religion can.
On the contrary, if our behavior is governed by a system of laws, then it is only natural to work around and within those laws as effectively as possible. Most people are reasonable, and that is a reasonable thing to do. But even if your behavior is reasonable, and even legal, it may not be ethical. Which seems harmless. But as it turns out, it’s not harmless. Thousands of years worth of brilliant men, from Moses to Solzhenitsyn, have spent their lives explaining to us why this is so incredibly dangerous.
We pursue wealth and technological advancements to make our lives easier. And it works. I don’t walk to work. I drive a car. With air conditioning. It’s nice. Much easier than walking. And I like easy. We all hope to avoid things that are difficult. That effort to make difficult things easier is human nature, and it leads to many of the things that make our modern lives so pleasant. We prefer easy things over difficult things.
So we naturally prefer the government to religion. Religion is hard. Improving myself is really hard. It’d be so much easier for me to just tell other people what to do. Would I rather seek out the worst flaws of my character and endure the agony of brutal self-criticism and go through difficult work needed to improve them? Or would I rather put a political bumper sticker on my car and go vote? One can understand why so many people choose the bumper sticker.
Who will get more votes? The 1700’s theologian Jonathan Edwards, whose stump speech is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?” Or Bernie Sanders, who says you can do whatever you like, and he’ll give you whatever you want? Actually, forget Jonathan Edwards. A nice, unthreatening Republican can’t win elections if he simply suggests that someone has to pay for all of Bernie’s programs. That sounds hard. We, naturally, prefer easy.
Some will choose the bumper sticker. They always have. Understandably. But what happens when a quarter of us do that? Or half? That’s when things get dicey. And then, inevitably, violent.
Choosing the easy path makes things difficult, eventually. It always does.
There is no other way.
When I have an idea for a post, I often just write it as it appears in my head – just dump it onto the page, with little concern for quality. I type fast. This part generally takes 20-30 minutes. No more, because I get bored as quickly as I type.
Once my thoughts are on the page, I save it, and come back to it in a week or a month, when I feel like posting something. At that point, I’ll generally reorganize it, cut its length by half or so, and clean it up in an effort to achieve, well, coherence, at least. This part takes another 20-30 minutes, usually, unless my original version was total garbage. If this part takes more than 30 minutes, I’ll generally consider that post hopeless, dump it, and try another old first draft to work on, if I’m still in the mood.
I came back to this post today to clean it up, and thought, “Eh, whatever.” I’ve been doing that more and more recently. Sorry about that.
So to paraphrase somebody famous that I’m too lazy too look up, “Sorry this is so long, because I was too lazy to make it short.” Or something like that. It’s easier to just post it.
Again, we often choose the easy way. And that leads to sloppy essays and deadly government.
You’re lucky I’m just writing an essay, and not writing policy.
Published in General
You’re distorting my point. First, the government never “enforced” prayer. There was always an opt-out, even when belief in the social efficacy of a simple prayer for the good of parents, teachers, and nation was commonplace in the culture. Do you think social cohesion is improved now that children are not allowed to express the hope for the good of their parents, teachers, and nation as a group?
And, second, religion is convincing and effective for those who believe in something beyond the materialism of this world. “Studies show…” But, even if they didn’t, I can attest from personal experience that surviving and thriving under hardship is aided by religion and the communities that build up around it. Can you go to your secular humanist community when you’re in need, or even if you want to help others who are? What’s the secular humanist equivalent of the Knights of Columbus, for example?
And, finally, I’ve said religion is in decline in the West due to our material success, not because we took prayer out of schools. In short, we’re fat, dumb, and “happy” (although the increase in drug abuse and suicide rates would seem to contradict the latter). We diss the wisdom of the ages and then wonder why things aren’t working out so well personally and in society.
We have an enforced state “religion.” It’s secular humanist (soon-to-be) leftism. I predict it will not end well.
So which religion do you propose the government should impose? Once you start down the road towards school prayers, then you are guaranteed to have radical Muslim preachers leading prayers in public schools, and you’ll even get smart alecky satan worshippers. Let alone those fake Christian protestants. :)
As you know, I’m not a proponent of government schools anyway. I believe in subsidiarity. Let the local community (preferably the parents of students at each school) decide. It’s none of the government’s damn business whether kids pray in school or not! I don’t want it imposing any religion.
My point isn’t that government should impose Christianity. It’s that the state currently is imposing secular humanist leftism — an ideology in mortal combat with Jewish and Christian teachings. Schools are in the business of teaching our kids to hate their country, to mistrust their parents’ religion as backward and hateful, that recycling is a duty of citizenship (I have personal experience with this one), that the purpose of government isn’t to secure your God-given (natural) rights (freedom from tyrannical leftism), but to provide positive rights to marriage (no matter who you pair with), health care, college, housing, food, and a nice retirement (possibly from a job you never performed).
Virtue always comes at a personal cost. Our society is promoting anti-virtue — decadence — by teaching everyone to feel entitled and by promising to deliver those entitlements for freeee! It’s a damned lie. No society can thrive believing such things.
According to your rather sardonic remark re how ironic it appears to you that it isn’t the christians who are “happy…and represent an increasing share of population growth”. (In response to several Judeo-Christian advocates for our beliefs and culture generally having a positive effect on not only true adherents but the society they interact with <historically speaking>)
Do I really hear you using the “nones” (no religion) as your shining example of prosperous and joyful fruitfulness and multiplication of society? Certainly, you couldn’t possibly be using the same “none” demographic that has set new standards for despair and suicide in epidemic proportions across the nation could you. The same none who demographically are not on skid-row or homeless, or even without 24 hour internet connections, yet, like the kids of that great generation that made going to college, becoming prosperous,affluent, realized angst at the thought of those goals making them happy paradoxically have made them so empty as to eschew having children or even having sex with real live naked women (or men if they are female). Odd choice of people with a set of non-beliefs…or maybe you meant “Nuns”, because membership in convents are setting record numbers of new members. Sorry, I’m not bitterly mocking you, however, I honestly did laugh at your choice of example as much of my studies over the last 7 years has involved statistics and demographic trends. I’ve already embarrassed myself plenty with my ESL skills to appreciate making mistakes of the hilarious variety.
None, I believe.
But you can, while not imposing a religion, rest on a principle or two like “nature and nature’s G-d” and “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”
You can even, while not imposing a religion, censor atheists. That’s John Locke’s way.
The main thing at this point would seem to be to stop the government opposition to religious practice.
Wow. Just wow.
That’s why we have the second amendment.
Did you mean the first?
Yeah, it’s not one of those points where I agree with Locke.
But I do defend him from a certain kind of objection. The point is not absolute liberty to believe what you want.
The point of all of Locke’s ethics is the good of human beings. The point of government is to protect the rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke’s justification for everything in his ethics is the value of human beings, and his justification for that is a religious one–we have value because G-d values us. This suggests that, however much we must tolerate different varieties of religion, an opposition to all religion may not be subject to the same protection.
(I think I went over this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4uHBV9EGFs.)
Again, there seems to be a conflation of economic ideas and religious ideas.
There are lots of Christians who support higher taxes and more spending on social-welfare programs.
There are lots of non-religious people who support a more robust free enterprise system.
There were probably lots of Christians and Jews who applauded President Franklin Roosevelt when he signed the New Deal into law and applauded when President Lyndon Johnson when he signed the Great Society into law.
The population of Australia is less religious than the population of the United States. Yet Australia is in many ways more free market oriented than the US.
No, the second. If too many people want to inflict that rule on Americans then I would hope our rights to protect the first amendment would be enforced by the second.
Right on, right on.
That’s another one Locke also got right.
“The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” – The Treaty of Tripoli, ratified unanimously by the United State Senate in 1797
Shhh. Don’t tell people that the founders ever said such a thing in a binding legal document. They will trot out excuses . . . .
I’ve read enough Locke and Ben Franklin to know they’d like that. No need for an excuse.
Not only that, but to talk of “our Judeo-Christian faith” is to imply that it doesn’t really matter whether you believe that those who worship Jesus are violating the 1st Commandment, “Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me,” or whether you believe that those who don’t worship Jesus are deliberately disobeying God.
No one talks about Judaism and Christianity being the same (or different) religions when we talk about Judeo-Christian culture. We’re talking about shared values. Stop straw-manning.
Who is saying the government is founded on the Christian religion? Obviously there were some shared premises about the value of human life (“all men are created equal,” which implies a Creator) and natural rights (“to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness,” which implies rights from God, not government) in our founding documents. But the society was definitely, objectively Protestant Christian. It is the loss of religion among the people which is making government the assumed grantor of our rights. This will not end well. It never does.
You fellas are losing this argument and you know it, which is why you keep propping up these straw men.
I didn’t think that it’s the type of argument that is won or lost. The best we can hope for is respect for each others’ opinions.
Both the Jewish and Christian Bible depict God as demanding that a man be stoned to death for gathering wood on the Sabbath.
On that basis, we should reject, and we have rejected, Judeo-Christian values.
A humanist approach to morality, where human beings have value, seems superior to a Judeo-Christian approach to morality, where human beings who disobey God by gathering wood on the Sabbath are put to death.
And that’s just one example of an instance where human beings are depicted as being killed in the Bible based on God’s arbitrary morality.
I would argue that you are taking the words of a Deist, Thomas Jefferson, and shoehorning them into a Judeo-Christian faith.
The US Constitution does not mention Jesus once.
.
Clearly a religion that came to existence in a mild climate!
You are the one who keeps bringing up economic ideas. Christianity (and bravely (foolishly) speaking for Judaism) is not about tax policy and social welfare provided by government. The policies individual Christians and Jews support are not statements about theology! Your repeated overtures into “economics” stems from your materialist worldview, which, btw, is a very Marxist way of thinking — Economic Man.
I would characterize the Christian ethic as one of self-sacrifice for the good of the Other. I’m learning the Jewish ethic seems to be one of immanentizing the eschaton (which makes me wonder if this is why so many Jews end up on the utopian Left), which explains the excellence Jews pursue and achieve in education and other endeavors. Both worldviews have contributed immensely to the common good in our civilization.
But, there’s no doubt individual Christians (who would transfer power to the government to force others to sacrifice) and Jews (who worship at the altar of secular humanist leftism) have lost the thread of their religions. This does not make Christianity and Judaism bad for society. It makes some people bad Christians or bad Jews.
Scripture never declares the purpose of the church/ecclessia as an institution to be the civil government. Would you not agree that the book of Romans makes that clear enough ?(even for church leaders in medieval European to be rebuked for having made the church and civil gov one entity acting together)?
Not at all. Others have argued that once people are untethered from the Judeo-Christian faith, people start demanding “free stuff” and socialism follows.
But as I mentioned before, Milton Friedman was an agnostic Jew. Ayn Rand was an atheist. Neither Friedman nor Rand were Christian or practicing Jews.
Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian, yet Christians continue to attempt to take credit for many of Jefferson’s words.
Once we stop talking about “free stuff” and economic issues, we can then talk about issues like slavery, which the Bible does not prohibit.
Americans in the 19th century abolished slavery even though the Bible does not call for slavery’s prohibition. Notice that the Bible does prohibit people from eating shellfish but does not prohibit slavery.
In America eating shellfish is legal and owning a slave is illegal. That’s humanist morality, not Judeo-Christian morality.
You really, really, really shouldn’t speak for Christians and Jews on Biblical interpretation. Was a man ever stoned for gathering wood on the Sabbath? Ever? In history? Prove it. So, maybe God wasn’t getting at what you say He was.
And human beings have value with humanists?? Depends on their gestational age and “quality of life,” doesn’t it? Who decides? You? Me? Someone else?
You’re a better man than I if you can respect such wrong opinions! Of course, I’m not a man. ;-)
There is no Judeo-Christian faith! We should be able to agree on that much!
Wow! You actually made the one “silver-bullet”, air-tight statement that no person in written history has ever done with such emperical, evidentiary proof: you demonstrated that all Jews and Christians are wrong in believing their cherished Scripture. What are you doing on ricochet, dude? This should make you headline news worldwide and the most sophisticated, a well loved celebrity of people who think “religion is just for little kids and old ladies”. You should be out there basking in your singular discovery instead of wasting time disproving Judeo-Christian Scripture to Jews and Christians .
Perhaps, a tour of India declaring the futility in believing in the easter-bunny should be your next “victory for facts and stuff”?
True or not? You decide
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+15%3A32-36&version=NKJV
Numbers 15:32-36 New King James Version (NKJV)
Penalty for Violating the Sabbath
32 Now while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. 33 And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. 34 They put him under guard, because it had not been explained what should be done to him.
35 Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.” 36 So, as the Lordcommanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died.
People, it’s bedtime over on my side of the world. I was thinking of doing a post later on biblical difficulties. We could talk about this then maybe. Or maybe someone wants to start a new post and link from here?
Or maybe I should address the implicit charge that this passage would make G-d a jerk or something. Maybe–but definitely not before morning.
Yes, it is true.