Digging Deeper

Gaining Conscientious of Existence and Personal Responsibility 

I recall at a very young age the moment when I realized that no one is responsible for my actions but me. No matter what happens to me, I’m responsible for how I act and respond to the world around me.

Human have free will. We are free to decide how we’ll relate to others, to God, and to ourselves.

Without freewill there could be not be love. If we weren’t able to choose and all things were forced, there would be no capacity for love. Acting in love is realizing our own responsibilities toward society and living in a way that honors the dignity of all mankind, including ourselves. 

Mankind knows there is such a thing as right and wrong. This morality is written on human hearts across the globe and across the ages.

We have freewill to decide what we will do with this morality. We can attempt to override such understandings of right and wrong in our minds through clever argument. But we know there is such a thing as right and wrong, until the point where the truth has been denied so many times that we don’t even think there is such a thing as Truth anymore.

But the Truth remains. We are not a random chance of atoms coming together without purpose. We see evidence in creation, in nature. We see it in mathematics. We see it in the sunrise, the sunset, the beauty of a Kansas sky and the way crops grow. We can marvel at the beauty of the universe and the mystery of our own being. How did all this come into being? 

If I  - if all  - have come into being by merely natural selection and chance, then why do I have the ability to think and reason, to enjoy beauty, to have opinions and emotions and meaningful relationships, how do I have the capacity to put others before myself? How is there love and imagination, memory, meaning and music if all we have is a material universe and temporary existence? 

Because we are not merely material beings. At the core of our souls, most of us hope for more. More purpose, more joy, more success, just - more good. Eternally more. And we have a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. Murder, adultery, theft, false testimony, and even covetousness (wishing we had the very thing that belongs to a neighbor instead of them possessing it) — we know such things are wrong. We can feel it if we are honest.

These are the last five of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. This is the basis for moral societal law in western civilization. And such moral laws are written on human hearts throughout time and throughout cultures, albeit some more than others, as this moral code of nature can be overridden to the extent of denying truth exists. This code of conduct — to Not harm one another in such ways — uplifts mankind, showing respect for the individual while maintaining freewill and freedom so long as one doesn’t violate such rights of another. But, of course, we do violate such rights of one another.

And so in order to have a society that maintains peace with one another as to not violate the unalienable rights of another, our laws must fall in line with the moral code of the last five commandments of the decalogue. By punishing the guilty when appropriate by law, the government steps in to the secure rights of  people Not to be murdered or assaulted, lied to under oath, or stolen from. This is how we keep a free and prosperous society for every person including those with less power, money or strength. All are subject to the law.

This foundational moral law for how we must protect one another has been violated by every one of us. Nevertheless it is the standard, it is the aim. We miss the mark, but it remains the mark regardless. When the violation is severe enough, government must step in to reconcile losses to the victim. But in matters of the soul and eternity there is grace and Good News for every one of us. 

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes from our Creator, and so government has no right to take them away. Government’s job is to secure such rights for the individual and to punish those who seek to take such rights from others. This is the foundation that sets a society up to realize freedom and prosperity. It is building upon the timeless laws for humans relating to humans which preserve the rights of the individual as well as justice for all.

In our great nation, such rights are secured by the consent of the governed. We get to choose our leaders and thus how well our unalienable rights are secured.

When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.

Thomas Jefferson