On talk radio last July I heard a call from Cherie. She believes Republicans should sympathize with illegal aliens coming here to meet their basic needs. What struck me was not what she wanted, but why. She said illegals have difficulty expressing their feelings, but if we listen – as she has – we find they are afraid, desperate and needing compassion. That same day the Zimmerman trial featured a medical expert testifying that Trayvon Martin lived for anywhere from three to ten minutes after being shot and was in serious pain before death; the length of his suffering was the point of the report. The common denominator between these anecdotes is their irrelevance – from my old school viewpoint.
Don’t get me wrong. I have led a ministry to homeless; many were illegal and I’ve never asked for immigration status before responding to need. But I also vote to enforce existing law, I resent that officials are forbidden to identify status, and appalled that illegals get favored treatment in schools while Americans struggle to pay tuition and find and hold jobs. I recognize that most gun running and child pornography are done by illegal immigrants – albeit not primarily from Mexico. Above all I know that the issue is whether our laws are defied or respected, not how anyone feels about them. That is still old school.
Likewise, I care when people are in pain, but the issue in Zimmerman was whether he acted in self-defense, not how Trayvon Martin suffered. Yet many Americans – many millions – think it is all about how people feel; they believe feelings are sufficient to govern the behavior of others. They take a post-modern view – an evolutionary view – of ethical behavior.
Post-modernism as a worldview popularized a profound desire to know the back story of mere facts, to appreciate context, and to identify with the people who populate events rather than cooly appraise them and move on. It asked questions like, “Why did Indians attack wagon trains and railroad builders on the Great Plains?” or “Why did farm workers unionize under a communist in California?” and “Why did the Vietnamese revere Ho Chi Minh?” These questions brought uncomfortable answers that revealed thousands of broken treaties, unspeakable conditions on farms that none before Cesar Chavez addressed effectively, and the reality that Ho stood against the French colonizers of his land while we defended them. But every pendulum tends to swing too far and the evil we seek to avoid evolves into the evil we failed to anticipate. Excessive objectivity gave way to excessive subjectivity and every person – or pressure group – becomes arbiter of right and wrong based on self-generated criteria. The biblical Book of Deuteronomy says that in those days there was no king and everyone did as they pleased.
In our time we cannot seem to distinguish between whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden – who revealed government corruption and oppression without costing life – and Bradley Manning and Julian Assange – who betrayed our nation and cost many lives by giving information to the Taliban and Al Qaeda because Manning was conflicted about his sexuality – per his own account. We are confused because we want to identify with the little guy taking on the perceived bully – even when the little guy is the bully – like the brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon and the shooters at Ford Hood and the Washington Navy Yard.
Jesus was no ethical evolutionist. He identified with every human being, whether or not He approved their behavior. He forgave all and died for all. But He called sin what it was and offered no compromise; he said behavior has consequences and He knew whereof He spoke. The stories of the women at the well and the Temple (John 4 and 8) are classic examples. He refused to judge in each case, but He also declined to intervene until their behavior was submitted to Him.
Reality is we need both objectivity and subjectivity in our ethics. We know a good and loving God who wrote the book on His created ones; solutions are simple. For Christians – one at a time – take God’s promise of a coming Great Awakening seriously and His reminder that only a period of escalating re-focus on Him and on His whole revealed Word can open the door to it. This is called repentance we have just celebrated the National Day of Repentance on Yom Kippur. (Go to www.dayofrepentance.org for details.) For those who know neither God nor his blueprint for abundant life – no hard feelings, but it’s time to get a clue that what we are doing is just not working.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
