Romans 13

Nice tear from Arielle here lately, though one para has had me fingering the navel for a bit:

What does it matter if people experience greater personal freedom and happier earthly lives living in so-called Christian democracies if their hearts remain dark and their eternal soul remains in jeopardy? What kind of priorities do we have when we make people's physical freedom take precedence over their eternal salvation? Why would we want to help craft a nation of whited sepulchers?

I probably ought hazard that this is out of context and you should read the post before you get all Jacksonian. As well it helps to know that she's hitched up so the only tyrannizing she's like to engage in is over NFL and Nachos with her old boy. But this is a big quandry I've seen batted about over the years from many folks when it comes to Christianity.

The normal course of things is to point at Romans 13 where it's "OBEY, biatches." Quoth Paul. But that's hardly the end-all be-all of things as there's plenty other notice to be had that obeisance to Fallen sorts is predicated foremost on honoring God first rather than in the breech. Whether it be to do your bit and wind up in the gulags. Or do your bit and have the Tokugawa shogunate drop your locks in a basket. Or do your bit and have a very personal experience as a Veterinary Orthodontist for the King of Beasts. Historically it seems Christianity isn't much of an HMO plan as every you time you turn about you find some Single Payer putting believers to the sword for being... Well, nice. Or weird. Or intersected with politics.

Currently the group Food Not Bombs is in a bit of a scuffle with the law in Orlando due to feeding Travelers sans official permit that they're not allowed to acquire. Which, to normal folks, means that Food Not Bombs is having a picnic with their friends in a public place. Where those friends merely happen to be absent a Federally approved postal address due Capitalistic inadequacies. Granted it is Florida, so they might be lacking an address due local or Federal law rather than the vagaries of societal interactions involving bits of paper with dead Presidents on them. This is all a straight up loaves and fishes riff that even non-Christians should recognize easily.

Now Food Not Bombs is as classic Hard Left as you can possibly get, blindly passing off phrases as 'revolutionary movement' and 'autonomous' as well as cuddling cozy with Amnesty International in their mission statement. And they only do Vegetarian meals. Which does beg the question as to what is possibly humane about inflicting the destitute with rampant flatulence. Regardless they are flipping Saint Paul the bird and handing out loaves, if not fishes. No matter, we should not mistake that this is a storied and successful tactic of the Hard Left in breeding virulent altruism. Or if not altruism, a second look at their politics.

If we ignore all the political apparatus and the cloud of falafel death lingering over the public spaces then this is simply an acme of Christian motion and behaviour. Right up to and including the point at which a finger is put in Government's eye and folks are a bit stuffed for getting stuffed in a Lion's maw. Civil disobedience is still disobedience. The very act of disobedience to the law is one of politics, and the two can't be separated. But if propriety under Christianity is illegal then Christianity is political by definition.

There's an odd, and at odds, bit here. The Hard Left also has a penchant for being the ones to restrict freedom so that they may come in with disobedience to alleviate the yoke from others. All as a point of a membership drive. People are simply most open to options when they have none. It works beautifully and is the go to solution so long as the ends matter more than the means. The difficulty is that morality, broadly, is defined as the means being primary; the ends are simply what they are. If the moral onus is loaves and fishes then you're handing out sandwiches. And getting arrested. And we're straight into politics anyways.

There's something a bit obscene about speech and action in that none of it can escape politics. For if we hand out falafel-burgers we're into politics. And if we speak Truth to Power about handing out falafel-bugers we're into politics still. There's simply no manner around it as laws are simply when society, as defined by the folks with the gun, exercise speech and action on our personal behalf. Whether we want, or agree, with it or not.

There's a slang screed that kicks about: "Don't push your religion on me!" And there's an aphorism that kicks about: "You can't legislate morality." Of course you cannot legislate morality qua a positive enforcement as law can only operate after the fact. So while a law itself cannot create morality it can certainly punish the dickens out of immorality. And every law does so. Now we largely lay it on Hume's head for things about the ought/is dilemma, but it remains that morality comes from God. Or, to give a nod to poly and a thesists: From our derriere. So it is correct to say we cannot legislate morality as our only option is to punish immorality; where immorality is defined in law by legislators as to who gets the short-end. But it is completely fallacious to claim that law is anything other than pushing a religion on someone as the moral domain comes from, for the a theists, pure fiction.

Threading the needle ain't easy here. But for my part, fuck Paul, I'm handing out ham sandwiches. The Bible is silent on the matter of grains and legumes but I'm still taking my own charge on a lack of flatulence. Whether or not I get the dock for sitting at the front of the bus is irrelevant; it's as much a propriety as it is a political statement by the commission of a crime.

That doesn't cover all the bases, but it accounts the lint I've found in my navel so far.