Opinion

“Stronger Together,” And “Great Again,” But In The Eyes Of God Or Men?

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Alan Keyes Former Assistant Secretary of State
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Recently I published an article on my blog about what the term “conservative” means to me, as both a member of the Body of Christ (“It is not I who live, but Christ in me.” Galatians 2:20) and a member of the sovereign body of the people of the United States.  I make no apology for observing the essential relationship between these two characteristics; or for being clear about what both imply for my actions in this year’s Presidential election. (At the root, both the so-called major Parties have nominated candidates who, in principle, abandon the decent character required to sustain our form of government—of, by and for the people as a whole. Therefore, I must and will reject them both.)

From the first, the citizens of the United States conceived of themselves as the sovereign body, favored by the laws and Providence of the Creator, God to hold sway over the nation they comprise.  The people constitutionally selected to wield government power are our ministers, not our masters.  This includes the President of the United States, who is elected to act as the representative of our common good will; not to reign over us according to some idiosyncratic will of his/her own, or of this or that faction among us.

But the root of good will is good character, which is to say the disposition to do what is right for the nation, taking into account, for better and worse, our qualities and circumstances as individuals, as a whole people.  Since the good character of the American people, individually and on the whole, is a premise of the good will we must have to act rightly in our sovereign capacity, maintaining that character is the sine qua non for preserving our right to do so. What destroys our character, destroys our right to self-government.

As a rabid advocate of abortion, Hillary Clinton adamantly wages war to annihilate the disposition to respect the imperative of God-endowed right from which we derive the unalienable rights governments are instituted to secure.  Every such right is, in the first instance, a duty to our Creator—a duty to respect the provisions He has made for our existence. The first provision is the mutual compromise He makes, within Himself, in order to provide the substance without which existence itself would be inconceivable for us, and indeed for all created things.

On his part, Donald Trump’s life appears to exemplify disregard for the self-limitation of power that God’s will for creation exemplifies, a limitation especially required in our dealings with one another.  Without it, we would obviously fail to observe and perpetuate the distinctive form of our existence as human beings.  We would fail to perpetuate humanity as such.

Judging by his own words, Mr. Trump has adamantly worked to be a symbol of the fatally corrupt understanding that makes enjoying the physical and emotional pleasures (including pride and vainglory) involved in our participation in God’s activity of creation (human procreation, but also the material achievements of human creativity in general), an end in itself.

But God’s activity of creation is an expression of love in which He forgoes His perfect and absolutely self-fulfilling way of being in order to fulfill His good will for others to participate in it.  This is the wellspring of God’s love (caritas), the love, characterized in Scripture as the indispensable, greatest and most enduring good God shares with us.

Love never ends.  As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, the will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now, we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 8-13)

Love is the forever abiding gift the Creator (who is God, and with God, and who becomes the Word made flesh, dwelling in the world and in all who will receive Him {John 1:14}) makes good in the activity of creation.  That love is thwarted unless each object of creation observes, in relation to all the rest, the bonds and boundaries that permit each to exist in its own way, while also existing in relation to one another and to God, whose being is the given (the gift) that substantiates existence for all.

The United States was founded upon the understanding of law that accepts the consequences of God’s expression of love as the basis for our human understanding of right, and the imperative of self-government.  In her embrace of so called “abortion rights” Hillary Clinton rejects that understanding.  In his self-worshipping idolatry of licentious power Donald Trump rejects it.  Both candidacies are therefore predicated on frittering away the character the American people require in order to sustain our self-government.  As an American who above all looks to God and His Word, made flesh, for the standard of right and justice, despite its reproach of sin in me and all the world, I must reject them both.  For once we let fall the right standard, America may stand stronger together in our own eyes, even great again in the eyes of the world, —but in the eyes of God?  Best now to ponder Revelations 22:11, and see and uphold the standard as He upholds it, even on the Cross.