The Mighty Viking

We are not Creators.

We have a God for that, something larger, An ubiquitary Force we sometimes like to pretend we understand, and like to misuse like a weapon and claim as our own.

We are Artists.  We are Engineers.  We are Nurturers and Husbands of the land.  We have learned to heal, to build, to breed animals and plants for our use.  

But we are not the Creators.

We can shape stone, and steel.  We have discovered tools, and vessels to carry us and our awareness to the depths, and heights, and the far reaches of the planet.  

But we are not Creators.

We have learned to recombine, to extract, to invent new combinations of things with the raw elements of our planet.

But we are not Creators.

We have been given a Planet to use, and an abundance of life, from which we draw our own life.  We have been given the intelligence to learn how they work, the ability to develop skills to make them work for our benefit.  We have been given strength, and instincts that urge us onward to fit, as we should, into this vibrant planet. We can do things with this planet no other creature can do.

But Creation is not one of those things.  We are not Creators.  We are Creatures.

And so, take what you are given, and hold it close.  

Understand everything that is given.  Resource, Skill, Wisdom, and Compassion.  Understand that the Creator has given these to you.

This is Worship.

Nurture what you are given. Use what you must to thrive.

And when you have grown, and what you are given has flowered, and is ready for harvest, when you have something to give, give it.

This is Love.

This is our place and purpose:  to receive, to nurture, and to give.  We receive from the Creator.  We nurture ourselves, those close to us, and the earth we are given.  And we give of our excess.  We give of our knowledge, of our resource, and of our love.

Tyrants will not give, and slaves cannot.  Only the free can give.

Worship the Creator

Love the Earth, and all in it.

Build with what you are given.

Give back a measure of your work.

And have faith that doing these things as free men and women is how the Creator intended this world to work, that a greater purpose is served.

This is the Equation of Life.  As we address that of God in creation, we answer to the Creator.

I just realized what‘s going on.

And, being a Saturday morning, I‘ve got a little time to reflect on this epiphany.  

I should warn you, this is something of a political post, though I‘m not here to hammer on one side or another. Ya‘ll a bunch of sinners that need Jesus…

We are all talking about the division in this country, the “them against us” duality that seems to both cripple and confound us.  Why can‘t the other side see what we‘re talking about?

Turns out it‘s pretty simple.  There are more than two principle sides in the matter.  There are four sides to our present politics.

The system we have, the one carved out by revolutionaries nearly 250 years ago, was a system of self-government.  It was brilliant in its day, and still holds the answers to our present problems.  But part of its beauty is dependence on a moral underpinning to the society that uses it.

In 1776, that moral underpinning was fairly ubiquitous, provided through the discipline of a population founded on a combination of Christian principles, and the self-sufficiency required by the New World.

In recent times, however, Christianity, along with most religions in this country, has fallen into popular disgrace through the abuses and misdeeds of its prominent leaders, to the point where people have become confused , skeptical, and mistrustful of not only those leaders, but of the faith itself.

And as our collective sense of morality and self-discipline has waned, we have fragmented into four groups from two:

Left and right, liberal and conservative.  One bills itself as the party of the people, of the common man.  It sees government as a tool to cultural improvement, to social improvement, it is a powerful means of economic improvement.  It sees itself as the party of seeing good to do, and then doing it collectively.

The other party sees government as a necessary evil, a Pandora‘s box of temptation to those drawn to power.  It sees good to do as well, but only as individual effort any of us are free to undertake, not a government function.  And sometimes, by not addressing inequalities, it opens the door for private companies to set themselves up as Demi-dictators and economic monarchies.

So, two groups so far, liberal and conservative, both well-meaning and flawed.  Each needs the other for balance.

The other two groups align themselves with one or the other identity, but there is a critical element missing: moral character.  The soft underbelly of American government is that despite its best intent to anticipate depravity and nip it in the political bud, the demise of Christianity and self-sufficiency has affected our government system in surprising ways.

So now, there are four groups, that can be characterized as follows:

• group 1:  Christian Conservatives.  Oddly enough, I don‘t mean the group that calls itself by that name.  What I mean is good people brought up with Christian values, and who see personal investment into society as critical.  Their principles are not set by their own subtly-disguised desires, but by a written standard they‘ve come to accept and live by.
• Group 2.  People who have spied, in a situation of minimal government , opportunity to take advantage of trust, scarce regulation, thinly-spread enforcement, and graft-powered preferential treatment in legislature.  
• Group 3: liberals who see government as their moral and societal redemption.  These include both certain Christians and atheists, whose drive to do good extends to deeds they themselves don‘t do, but rather commission through election.  In this sense, a division appears within the atheist group where some have turned it into a quasi-religion with its own moral code, largely adopted from the core of Christian values, while others revel in the guiltless freedom of hedonism.  
• Group 4:  those that confuse liberalism with anarchy, and set themselves up as gods, seeking nothing higher than the power to make decisions, without all that awkward “answering for it” thing.

So, we have two groups of patriots, and two groups of pirates.  Each patriot group has, within its ranks, pirates.  If we could only take a few minutes out of our busy schedule to address this confusion, these schemers in our respective midst, we could maybe restore our American system‘s function.  But we are caught in a ego trap – we need foot soldiers in our cause, and are willing to take on any mercenary willing to fly our flag.  We need “useful idiots”, because we have come to see “Freedom” as something we can only keep through the use of our side‘s particular propaganda, which needs believers to have power.  We have abandoned our faith in the rule of law.  And it is largely because of systemic failure brought about by the sheer weight of unscrupulous groups, because of the demise of moral character.  If you can‘t enforce law, then very quickly people lose hope.

We have always had evil.  This is the motivator of the development of our government system.  It had a plan to scuttle power-mongers.  It accounted for greed, graft, manipulation.  It had a plan for all manner of bad behaviour.  But even the framers of our system knew there was a weakness, that there was a way this system could fail.  They knew the system could be subverted with sufficiently applied Apathy and moral decay.

And it seems right now that those who would tear anything down for a buck smell blood in the water.

They say 90% of leadership is knowing what to call things.  This concept is normally applied to deceptive advertising.  But with one small twist we can turn this lie back right side up.  Know what a thing is.  Don‘t give it a name, rather discover its name and true nature.  Do it before you align yourself with it.  Purge your belief system of unwanted influence.  Find a moral center that reflects your own values rather than work through a list of compromises you‘re willing to make to gain allies.  Understand and be aware of deceptive labels, and call all things by their right name in your mind.

Things are what they are, not what we call them. At the end of the constitutional convention of 1787, a woman asked Ben Franklin as he left the building “Well, what have you given us, a Republic or a monarchy?”

“A Republic”, he answered, “if you can keep it.”

He also did a little writing on the topic.  Bear in mind that Franklin was no regular church-goer.  But he still recognized the positive influence of religion in society:

“We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.‘ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And, what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, or conquest.” (Benjamin Franklin) 

And perhaps prophetically:

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. ” (Benjamin Franklin) 

To which I might add, perhaps the liberals are right.  Perhaps we have become so completely corrupt a society that we once again need a king.

But perhaps we can still save this, by reconsidering our own character, and fixing its weak spots. Strength of society depends wholly on the strength of the individual, and the family.

Perhaps it is better to answer the question with “A family.  If you can keep it.”

The story is told of two signers of the Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Both were Presidents of the United States, and while they differed politically through much of their lives, they reconciled in later years and became dear friends. They died on the exact same day July 4th, 1826, 5 hours apart. Adams last words were,” Thomas Jefferson still survives”.  He was mistaken- Jefferson had actually died 5 hours earlier.  Nonetheless, their deaths occurred on the 50th anniversary of the signing, which signaled the beginning of the nation.

Something happened on that day in 1776 – something Big. Something revolutionary.  

Something sacred was brought to the human experience.

The birth of this nation was ushered in by a few brave men with a vision of a government founded on freedom.  Their vision was not of a nation that could do great things with the communal efforts of its citizens.  It was of a nation great because of its space and construct – conducive to the greatness its citizens could generate in their own way, answering the need they saw around them.

The ink of the Declaration of Independence drew an inspired boundary around what is right and proper to the human experience.  It illuminated the parchment upon which a structure for human co-existence could thrive – if followed.

To this day, two forces assail those borders: Personal Greed, and “The Public Good”.  Each is a perversion of an ideal; self-sufficiency, and care of our fellow man.  Each is a lie disguised as the regalia of the Powerful, and  the Righteous.

Some say it is our sacred duty to ease the suffering of our fellow humans as we find it.  Others  say  it is our duty to take care of ourselves so that we stand ready when the opportunity to serve others presents itself.  These are right and proper in their proper setting perhaps, but when each is isolated from the other, our ability to choose our purpose is undermined as the balance of power falls under the sway of others.  The purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to claim for its future citizens freedom of the heart to choose what is right as we see it, not chains of control to force us to do what others think is right.

In the swirling, muddy sea of intrigue bestirred by Evil to hide from us this sacred place, our Declaration continues to shine – through both its success, and in the failures when it is bypassed, undermined, and subverted.

On this annual celebration we hold, it would do each of us good to reflect first on this remarkable scripture, and then rejoice, each in his own way, the implemented principles it brought about.  It is only by refreshing our understanding and commitment to Freedom that we can arise the next day with a clear mind for what it is we fight.