OPINION: Symptoms And Causes
By Rev. Tim J. Smith
A Newport News, Virginia woman was arrested April 10th for child neglect, a felony, after her six-year-old son shot his first-grade teacher. In addition, the mother faces a misdemeanor charge of endangering a child by reckless storage of a firearm. The case may now pass with limited to no notice by mainstream media outlets as moral outrage about family breakdown is not their cup of tea. However, one can guess that if attention is in fact paid to this case, the misdemeanor gun charge will garner lines of anguished reportage about “gun safety.” The general and superseding felony of child neglect may fade from view. And the symptom of reckless gun handing by mom will eclipse the prior issue of greater concern – namely, how in the world a family produced a six-year-old who came to intentionally shoot a teacher. Symptoms have causes. No matter though. For politicians will blurt, “What we really need is another law for securing guns safely.” Feckless posturing about symptoms wins – over, in this case, actually addressing the state of the American family.
The Colombian dissident Nicolás Gómez Dávila once made an astute observation about the state of our culture – “Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”[1] A proliferation of new laws indicates the usual systems producing social and cultural vigor are not functioning. But politicians want to be seen “doing something” so they pass a new law which ignores root causes: That is, the cultural immune system isn’t working to sustain vigor, such that simple opportunistic infections may take the body out. Our society’s response? Bleating about various discrete issues while ignoring root causes. However, treating symptoms and ignoring obvious diseases will not work indefinitely. Eventually the body politic will succumb.
In First Timothy (2: 1-4), Paul the Apostle enjoins believers to pray for kings and those in power. Why? Because Christians are supposed to be nice and law-abiding? Well yes, but there’s a specific reason Paul gives. The goal is to free good people to flourish and to share their vision of society. (In Paul’s case, to preach the Gospel throughout the Roman empire). The assumption here is that health and vigor for a culture do not come from government but can be impeded by government. Culture is upstream from politics and must be attended to if we are to have a just society. So Paul says, pray for just and good political leaders who recognize this.
Now, historians would be onto something if they observed that, historically, most such prayers for leaders have been for them to repent of unrighteousness. And to leave off corruption. Included in these petitions have even been prayers for the downfall and removal of corrupt leaders through God’s just judgment. Many nations throughout history have suffered under unrighteous leaders. Who both fail to do good and fail to call out and punish the bad. And Acton’s dictum rings true, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Case in point – someone once observed, “Democrats seek money to gain power, while Republicans seek power to gain money.” The right wing and the left wing are attached to the same greedy vulture feasting on the nation! Taking a stand for moral matters and calling out evil (as in root causes and not just symptoms) could jeopardize fundraising and reelection.
American’s trust in all major public institutions has been falling for years, but especially with regard to elected officials. It’s possible your average American voter trusts the used car salesman across town more than he does the politician in Columbus or D.C. Social disorder is rising and naming names and getting specific can get you censored or shunned. Politicians response? They won’t say the sky is blue if the anti-blue-sky activists issue a press release calling them mean names. Cowardly leaders won’t lead so the social order weakens by the day. Meanwhile, self-interest and ethnic solidarity increasingly hold sway over the common good. Polarization of the populace continues and is probably being aided via influence operations by certain foreign state and non-state actors.
William Butler Yeats famously gave this frightful image of disregard for social order, composed during the devastating aftermath of the First World War:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
How does the serious citizen or faithful Christian react in this situation? With a steady realism. We must recall primarily that God is still on His throne and rules in the affairs of men. And one of the ways that God rules is to allow the law of cause and effect to exercise full power in our lives and nations. We may be assured that a full recompense and judgment for the great national sins of America – slavery, abortion, exploitation of the weak, war-mongering, and other sins – will not be coming, but has come already. For the modern world is not awaiting God’s judgment. The modern world is the judgment. And like Israel of old, the righteous suffer along with the unrighteous as great national sin receives great national punishment.
So what to do?
An Early American flag approved by Washington for use by the colonial army and navy depicts the beloved pine tree of New England. It contains a white field with the words emblazoned, “An Appeal to Heaven”. This phrase comes from the writings on liberty by John Locke. (Second Treatise On Civil Government). These words – An Appeal to Heaven – mean that, though kings arise through God’s providence and rule with His permission, they are not the final authority. The People may, after having exhausted all just means to reform a government or remove a king, may appeal to the ultimate appellate court for help. A petition to the throne of God Himself. We the People must know in our hearts that because kings must conform to God’s righteous will, all laws which uphold God’s truth are indeed higher than the king. A nation can and should expect that their leaders honor and uphold that which are the highest ideals of the people. Do we not still make our leaders swear an oath before God, right hand on a Bible, that they will defend our constitutional order? Without this order and stability of constitutional governance our society stumbles toward ruin. Because it seems too much to ask our leaders to honor their oaths.
So, what about those who believe in this order of constitutional governance? Who work for righteous government? A government that supports addressing root causes. Well, our patience grows short. Because leaders heed corporate lobbyists but turn a deaf ear to those who elected them. One has said that our senators should wear racecar-driver jumpsuits with patches. So we can tell who their sponsors are. It would seem most are not doing the People’s work. But we must continue the People’s work of entering the cultural and political arena, heads held high, and reform our culture. Making it a culture that does a good job of producing good men and good women. History shows that the most “heavenly minded” tend to be doing the most “earthly good.”
Yes, the most earthly good. Historians have argued that though the same social unrest flared in 18th-century England as in France, only the French had a ruinous and bloody revolution. At the time the guillotine was carrying thousands to an early grave in Paris, the British instead experienced the Wesleyan evangelical revivals. This massive social change shunted unrest off into social reform and betterment instead of political war. And one of the disciples of this British evangelical movement, William Wilberforce, came to parliament with a goal. Wilberforce’s life goal was to abolish the slave trade in all the British empire. He succeeded in 1807, the first time in history a nation had totally outlawed slavery.
May we be as tenacious as godly Wilberforce. And take back the political process for the good of all our families and communities.
