Ideas Have Consequences

In his Inaugural Address, our new president said this: “The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit, to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed from generation to generation: the God-given promise that we are all equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”

In the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers wrote this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”

Thirteen years after the Declaration of Independence was published, the French people rose up in revolt against an unjust government under the banner of “Equality, Liberty, Brotherhood.” The French Revolution was a direct offspring of the Enlightenment and had strong atheistic roots. Hence the proclamation of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity had to be the product of an idea separate from God and not the truths declared by the American founders because many of the intellectuals behind the French Revolution rejected the very idea of God.

Built on a set of noble human ideals, the French Revolution bred reaction which led to the struggle over who would wield the power to enforce the “noble” ideas. And that struggle was the father of the guillotine, the Gulag and the Nazi extermination camps.

America was built on the solid foundation of several “self-evident truths” all of which had their origin with God and not with man. So when the new president speaks about the precious gift of a noble idea of equality, freedom and happiness, where does he stand: In Paris or in Philadelphia? Ideas are from the mind of man; according to the Bible, Truth is a revelation from God. If the foundation of the United States had been built on a set of ideas invented by men, then other men with other ideas could wrench those ideas away with the power of the sword and enforce those ideas through the power of the state. The history of man, and particularly the history of the twentieth century, has been an ongoing battle between the truths of 1776 and the ideas of 1789.

Yes, the president does mention God in his Inaugural, but he structures his sentence to suggest that the “God-given promise that we are all equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness” is a generations old idea, albeit, a “noble idea.”
Many argue today that God is a necessary invention of man; man needs the idea of God in order to pursue “noble ideas.” However, this notion turns the biblical narrative on its head: In the Bible, God is the creator and man is the creature created in God’s own image. “God” created by man is the atheist’s conceit. To the atheist the claim for the existence of God is an insult to the nobility of man’s rational nature and needs to be put to rest once and for all.

So, does the new president stand in the great tradition of 1776 or has the noble appeal of 1789 caught hold of his imagination? It would be nice to know because the real meaning of his words will tell us much about where he wants to lead America.

Ash Wednesday 1991

The day was Ash Wednesday, February 13, 1991. My family and I were on an island in the Caribbean which was not a well traveled place because the U.S. Navy had reserved large sections of the island for practice bombing runs. The bombs no longer were falling and the house we were renting was situated near the top of a hill. It was in that house on that day that I unexpectedly came across a two year lectionary hidden deep in the pages of the Book of Common Prayer. When I discovered this lectionary, it was if I heard a voice telling me that this was the map I needed for the way ahead. So on that day many years ago, I quietly committed myself to following this biblical road map everyday of the year no matter where I was or what I was doing.

Thus began my response to God’s call. I would honor God by coming to know his Word by setting aside time every morning of every day. This journey would be slow and it would require perseverance. But if I was going to truly honor God through my life, I would have to be equipped with a deeper understanding of God’s Word. And through an everyday encounter with the Old and New Testaments, I began to understand what it meant to walk on God’s ancient pathway.

In the Company of Angels

On Friday, I received the call at my office from my sister. Almost immediately, I understood that this was the real thing. Mom was in the Emergency Room at Abington Hospital and in great pain. My sister Megan was extremely upset as it was taking the hospital forever to deal with Mom’s situation.

We had known for more than a year that my mother had a blood condition that would inevitably lead to the end, but despite her 88 years, she remained a huge life force. She seemed to withstand all of life’s afflictions in a perpetual state of good will and good humor, all amounting to nothing less than sheer joy. She faced the darker forces of this life combatively and her friends and children and acquaintances fed off of her powerful and positive spirit of life. The Bible says “choose life” and Mom chose it to the power of ten.

I traveled from New York to the hospital in the suburbs of Philadelphia that evening. When I got there, Mom was in intensive care and heavily sedated. Her breathing was labored but she was asleep and resting and seemed to be beyond the reach of the physical pain that she had suffered through earlier in the day. Megan and I sat with her for several hours and then we reluctantly left for our own resting places for the night.

Saturday was a day of choices. The doctors all were clear that she was in the last days of her life. We learned that the hospital had a hospice facility and Megan, my brother Steven and I visited it and were impressed by the people who ran it. And after conferring with my brother David, who was still in California, we decided that hospice care was the best option. Mom remained under sedation and asleep all that day and we began to believe that she would never awaken again. She would be moved to hospice care on Monday.

On Sunday, after attending a local church service, my sister and I returned to Abington to be with Mom who remained in intensive care. Soon Steven arrived with his laptop and a DVD of ancient home movies. Unknown to all of us, Steven had brought medicine from heaven. We turned the computer on and watched flickering images of children and parents and places from long ago and we spontaneously began to share stories and memories prompted by what we were looking at on the screen. Soon, the mood changed from the normal hush of a hospital to laughter and jokes and joy. And then Mom awoke from her deep sleep. This was a party she was not going to miss! She recognized all of us and said “I love you” several times. Even the nurses looked up from their stations to see what was going on. Tracey, the nurse in charge of Mom, came in and joined the party that celebrated life in a place where illness and death was so prevalent. This time of light and life would be short lived, but for everyone present it was a miracle. When I think back to those precious moments, I think of the words of King David’s psalm:

You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.

On Monday, Mom had fallen into a deep sleep once again. She was moved from intensive care to the hospice and so we sat with her throughout the day. That night I returned home as did Steven. We fully expected the vigil to last for a good long time, but on Tuesday in the early afternoon in the presence of my sister Megan, Mom took a gentle last breath and then her spirit rose from that place in the company of angels.