500 Pounds of Stratosphere
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
We are now at that stage of our cultural devolutionary farce when, any day now, some bright kid is going to wear a tee-shirt to his government school, and on that tee-shirt a message will be emblazoned, and the message will read “endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and he will be sent home for having displayed un-American sentiments.
The news in this department is unrelentingly bad. This next item is not to be filed under “hypothetical reductio,” but rather under what looks to be standard operating procedure in blue states now. In just a few weeks, Massachusetts begins its official persecution of churches that remain faithful to the Bible. Churches are included in the sweeping diktat, and these churches must refer to all sexually confused people in accordance with their chosen “gender identity,” or else.
As one web site has aptly summarized it, “Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” We have moved well past the point where we need to document such abuses—no need for that when it is raining abuses now. Not only is it raining abuses, it is raining absurd abuses. The secularist, tethered to nothing, anchored firmly to 500 pounds of stratosphere, sets up a hue and cry about genital mutilation in the Middle East, and then in the next breath wants to make it illegal for anyone in this country even to object to our forms of secularist genital mutilation (i.e. youth transgenderism).
In Yemen, the mutilation of a young girl’s genitals is descried as primitive and backward. And yet now in Massachusetts, if a church objects to vile parents having a young boy’s penis cut off, those who object to this are classified as haters.
In Yemen, that really is an appalling practice carried down into the present from centuries of backward superstition. In Massachusetts, this is the new regime, being instituted now, as we speak, by the enlightened ones, the progressives. In reality, they are as blinkered as it gets.
Such absurdities and contradictions abound. And if they are so plain, and yet so invisible to those in the grip of them, what we need to do is explain why that is. To do so, let us return to our first paragraph. Rights derive from God. God is the giver of rights. If there is no God, there are no rights. If there is a false god, there are false rights. Water does not rise above its own level, and rights in a worshiper do not rise above the nature and character of the one worshiped.
The true and living God can bestow rights. Idols cannot do so. Imaginative fancies cannot endow anybody with anything. The principles should be clear enough across the board, but let us take two deities, one true and one pretended, in order to make the point evident.
The God who actually made the world is unchanging and immutable, and He is also holy. His Word is therefore unchanging and holy. As a consequence, His gifts are irrevocable and good. On the other hand, the god of the secularists is Demos, the people. But the people, unlike Jehovah, are both mutable and sinful. So here is the basic point of contrast.
The gifts you receive will mirror the nature, character, and attributes of the one who gives them. If your rights are given to you by the Creator then your rights are completely out of the reach of the next plebiscite. Those rights cannot be touched by kings, parliaments, assemblies, bureaucrats, commissions, congresses, presidents, resolutions, or referenda. Demos did not give, and so Demos cannot take away. And since those rights cannot be touched by them, I intend to behave as though those right cannot be touched by them.
But if you are a typical progressive, you believe there is no voice beyond that of the people. There is no transcendental voice, and as a consequence vox populi vox Dei. But what is that god like? I will tell you what that god is like. He is both wicked and fickle. You have no rights that may not be entirely removed by the next election, and if you complain about it, the response will be puzzlement—puzzlement on the part of anyone who worships Demos. You have as many rights as anyone. These things come and go.
And so we see yet again, from yet another angle, the utter impossibility of secularism.
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