Laws of the Land
This essay is two voices, a kind of give and take. I am in the blue, and my questioner is in the green.I agree we must make these personal decisions, through the Lord’s direction. Therefore, I will take my stand: I am Pro-Life (which doesn't mean taking someone else’s life, because they don't agree with you), regarding abortion. And I know it seems a contradiction in terms, but I am for the death penalty, from a certain point of view for many reasons. One reason is that God tells us in the Bible to obey the laws of the land, unless it goes against God's Word.... If any freethinking adult commits murder, and the laws of the land find the crime so heinous as to deserve the death penalty, then we must accept that ruling...
This is where many people seem to "get lost" - because the "laws of the land" are created by us! US. The "people", as in "We the People". Not some separate all-powerful-we-don't-have-a-choice-or-a-say-entity. WE make the laws. And we can certainly change them. Laws change. We do it all the time. There is such a thing as a "bad" law - Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that, in Selma.
Falling back on "it's a law" is giving away your right and your responsibility to choose the "law of the land". And yes, we DO have a responsibility to choose, as Christians, what our laws will be. We need to pray, and to vote. We need to speak out. The law should reflect the ethics and morality of the people. Not the other way around.
I believe we must accept the consequences for our actions, even though God always forgives if we confess them...I also believe God allows some people (even Christians) to be taken from the earth, because He will be glorified by this action (i.e. Ted Bundy), and it will bring others to Christ. We do not put the person to death, our law system does,
WE ARE the Law System... and it is folks who continue to think of "us" and "the legal system" as separate that will continue to uphold the same old, same old ways... and we can certainly see that what's happening these days isn't all that effective... is it?
... because they feel they are not able in any way to be rehabilitated, and are protecting society from them, therefore protecting us and our family from these "animals" I believe that some people are so evil that they are no longer human...
I just don't see it that way... They are most certainly "still human", most especially in the eyes of God, and it is for Him to judge them, and for him to decide their ultimate fate. Maybe it's me, and so many years working with "broken people", as many of the homeless mentally ill could be called... they were still most definitely "people" and some had done terrible things... but they were so very lost, and so very broken inside...
Christ told us:
Matthew 5: 22-24
But now I tell you: whoever is angry with his brother will be brought to trial, whoever calls his brother 'You good-for-nothing' will be brought before the Council, and whoever calls his brother a 'worthless fool' will be in danger of going to the fire of hell.
So, if calling them a "good-for-nothing" is bad, how much worse is it to remove their humanity completely??
Paul teaches us:
Ephesians 4: 31-32
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
And Matthew is pretty clear:
Matthew 5: 44-48
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.
and if per chance they get paroled or escape from prison, we are all at risk...and they are no respecter of adults, children or pets. I believe this is one way God protects us from the evil in this world.
God has His ways, indeed, and does not need us to force His hands...
Rush, a rock band out of Canada, has a song from ohhh... 10 years or so ago,
and they said:
"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice."
This seems very relevant just now...
A couple of months back, there was a terrible film adaptation put out of the story of Noah’s ark. Several of us discussed it, and the consensus was that it was a really really bad movie. I got many folks who asked me questions. I found myself over and over saying - "If you don't agree you need to say something. If you are silent,
they assume it's fine. If it's NOT fine, you have to say so!"
Same thing with the death penalty, or abortion. WE make the laws – the collective we, that is. If we don’t like those laws, we need to say something, do something! If we sit there and say it's "someone else's" decision, you have just, in one fell swoop, enslaved your soul.
Ooh... she said that, huh? Yep, I sure did! Melodramatic as it sounds! ENSLAVE YOUR SOUL to someone else's morals, someone else's values and someone else's agenda. Because trust me on this one, if you have a stance, or even an opinion, and you better say so. Or someone is going to say it for you. And they don't usually get it right. At least not in my experience!
So, you feel that you can't impose your morality on others? Guess what? Sorry, but that concept in and of itself is a moral belief. And, if you follow what you believe, your actions affect someone.
We often don't realize that our LACK of actions affects people. It's easy to think that by not imposing our beliefs on others that we will not harm them. But that's exactly what laws are, beliefs that are agreed upon, and then imposed on others. We have laws about just about everything... not to rape, not to steal... mostly because some folks don't seem either willing or able to examine their lives, and live in a kind of dot-to-dot, paint-by-numbers kind of world... so they need to "legislate stupidity"... (I just love Guv Ventura's line, can you tell?)
Now, you may choose not decide to place your views about abortion or the death penalty in society, but you still have made a choice - and many lives will (not may, will) be lost because of your choice. If you choose to place your view on abortion or the death penalty into society, you will help to protect lives, rights, and basic human dignity. It's called voting. It's called praying. It's called educating.
"It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
WE are all the candles. One of us, yes, one, is next to nothing... but raising our voices all together is a powerful, powerful light! Christ calls us to shine like stars in the universe, so that all may acclaim the glory of the Father. How can we do that, if we isolate ourselves?
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You've chosen to let others lead you, others decide FOR you, and others to rule you. We all have a choice. Like Yoda said - It is "do" or "not do" - both are choices.
As for the issue itself... well, either life is sacred, all life, and God's venue to pass judgement on, and goes for adults as well as unborn babies, or we can all just shut up about the abortion issue. Yes, shut up about the whole thing.... follow my logic here:
If an unborn baby's life is sacred, then so is a Serbian life, and a convict's life. Choices that he or she made have nothing to do with it. The consequences of their sins are up to God to judge and punish, if that is what He decides to do.
If we decide that killing "bad" people is somehow ok, then we have decided that we can legally murder. We have decided to retranslate the 10 Commandments, and have found some mental game to play to make ourselves comfortable with that. And that's each individual's choice to make. And they have the right to vote on that, in America, anyway, and make their opinion law. So, if we decide that we can kill adults, and their lives are ours for the taking, well, then what are the lives of unborn children? More special? No, just other lives we can legally decide what to do with...
But is that really what Christ taught us? I don't read it that way, and I don't live it that way... but we all have our own choices to make, and to live with, don't we?
Think about it....
In His Love,
Lisa Alekna
05/07/1999
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