Rev. Cwirla's Blogosphere

The Ten Commandments were mothballed from the Alabama state courthouse last week. State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore thought he was doing everyone a favor with his 2-ton twin granite tablets in the lobby of the judicial building. Apparently not, at least according to US District Judge Myron Thompson, who called the monument "nothing less than an obtrusive year-round religious display." And so the ten commandments were rolled out of court by the federalis faster than Charlton Heston could say, "Let my people go."

The same federal marshals also handcuffed praying protesters on the courthouse steps. Osama must be amused, if not bemused. Or maybe confused. Didn't we overthrow the government of Iraq so that the people there could enjoy religious freedom? Never mind, I'm rambling.

The public square seems to have become an atheist pulpit, with free religious speech as endangered as an old growth oak forest. According to the 1st amendment of our Constitution, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Apparently this doesn't apply to the judicial branch of our government for whom the only protected religion is the dogmatic belief that there is no God to believe in.

Rejecting a lawsuit appealing his decision, Justice Thompson is quoted as saying, "The empty space of nothingness in the rotunda of the Judicial Building is neither an endorsement of 'nontheistic belief' nor a sign of disrespect for Christianity or any other religion." Huh? "The empty space of nothingness" sounds more like Zen Buddhism and the sound of one hand clapping than any reasoned constitutional judgment. At least the good judge acknowledges "nontheism" as a religion.

A two-ton monument in the lobby of the courthouse doesn't make the ten commandments the law of the land. Nor does it establish much, if any, of a religion. For my money, Judge Moore could have erected a 2-ton facsimile of the Code of Hammurabi next to the ten commandments and made much the same point. Behind the law is the eternal Lawgiver, behind justice is the eternal Judge. Jesus said to Pontius Pilate, who was about to sentence Him to death, "You would have no authority except that which is given you from above." The apostle Paul wrote of the Roman caesar who eventually chopped off his head: "There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." I'll leave it to you to ponder the implications.

The founding fathers of our nation, whatever else they might have believed, believed that the divine Hand was guiding their little experiment in political liberty. "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness..."

It was "self-evident" to them that all men are created equal. This is self-evident not by empirical observation, but by the fact that all men are created by the same Creator, who doesn't play favorites the way His creatures are prone to do. Take away the Creator, and these truths aren't nearly so self-evident. In fact, they are not self-evident at all.

The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are "inalienable" because they are de jure divino, by divine right, from the hand of God, which means no man, no government, no anything can take them away. Evict God from the public square, and human rights are left in the hands of a mindless majority or the politically powerful, a moral "empty space of nothingness" filling the rotunda of government.

Opponents to Judge Moore's courthouse display cited the wall of "separation between church and state." That wall is supposed to protect religion from government, not evict God from the state. Commenting on the 1st amendment,Thomas Jefferson wrote this to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only; and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."

Good thing, too. The government can't handle public education, welfare, social security, or just about anything else it gets its bureaucratic fingers on. Where do you suppose we got the phrase, "good enough for government work" to describe mediocrity? The last thing we need is for the government to be in the business of regulating religion.

Freedom of speech is intended to protect the liberty of our mouths for speaking, not our ears from hearing what we don't like to hear. In the free, public square, you're going to hear things that challenge you, anger you, upset you, or just plain irritate you. Deal with it. We're supposed to be a nation of adults, not a playground of sniveling children who run to their mommies every time someone hurts our precious feelings.

Just because someone might be offended, doesn't mean we trip the circuit breaker on the flow of ideas. There's never an end to offense and always someone willing to take it, especially when it comes to matters of faith. If you believe anything with any degree of conviction you're going to offend someone just by opening your mouth. That's the price for having convictions.

I suspect that the atheist may be more than a bit unnerved by any form of God talk. A divine Someone may actually be watching all this. Paschal's wager is all or nothing. If the believer is wrong and there turns out to be no God after all, he hasn't lost much except a few hours of sleep on Sunday morning and a few dollars left in the collection plate. But if the atheist is wrong and there actually is a Maker, Redeemer, and Judge of the universe, then he's lost the whole ball game.

Our nation's moral compass no longer points in any reliable direction. Beginning of life? End of life? Marriage? Sexuality? Justice? Human rights? Who's to say? Right and wrong are determined by opinion polls and a handful of enlightened, black robed judicial gnostics with a penchant for social engineering. The moral buck stops with the highest bidder.

Hebrew National claims to be answerable to a "Higher Authority" for the quality of its hot dogs. Unfortunately, we can't quite claim the same for the laws of our land.

William M. Cwirla, 2003