Observations©

Donald S. Conkey

 

Date: August 9, 2007    # 932 – Two Little Bundles of Energy (812)

 

In mid July my granddaughter Malina, a recent graduate, of Brigham Young University, came to visit, while husband Mike was in India training for his first post-graduate job. She brought with her her two very active sons, Lorn, and Hal. We had a wonderful visit and the two boys, both bundles of energy, totally wiped me out. It took me several days to recover.

But it was worth all the effort on my part to get acquainted with two great grandsons – and to feel that connection between me and them, and them and me. As we sat in church, four family generations, I was reminded of the Founder’s wisdom in establishing as one of America’s goals – the “securing the [of] Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …”

During her visit Malina received several e-mails from her husband in India. They included pictures showing life-styles in India, styles that contrast sharply with most American life-styles. About the same time I received an e-letter from Woodstock’s Earl and Lynne Mecham, currently serving their church mission in Siberia. Their letter graphically tells about the ‘shocking’ Siberian cultural life styles where they are living.

The contrast of life-styles in India was illustrated in the pictures sent by Malina’s husband from India. And the Mecham’s e-letter emphasized the contrast in life-style they encounter in the Siberian cities where they serve. I write from time to time about the efforts of certain groups to remove religion, especially God, from America’s society and am again reminded by these communications just how fortunate America is that they haven’t fully succeeded and we are still able to worship God according to our own conscience.

The Mechams tell how the government in Siberia harasses church missionaries by requiring them to reregister every three days with local authorities. This has been costly in both time and money for the missionaries. And recently church officials had to sue local Siberian city officials over thousands of rubles in fines for not registering properly – and won. I now wonder if the ACLU got their training in fighting religion in Russia? The ACLU could be worse; they could control all religious activities. This e-letter should remind us that unless Americans remain vigilant against government intrusions against religion, they too could end up like what the Mechams describe in Siberia, loosing our First Amendment freedoms to worship God as we choose.

Malina’s husband’s pictures also graphically show the difference between India’s culture and Americas’. It’s dramatic. We complain of traffic bottlenecks, they too have traffic bottlenecks – caused by rickshaws and cattle – not cars. And Indians still have the caste system to deal with. I wonder at times how Americans would deal with a similar caste system. Gandhi was India’s Martin Luther King. Freedom has been oppressed worldwide, often by religious intolerance, for centuries.

While pondering these two e-mails I couldn’t help think of how blessed Americans are because of how a few strong men, supported by equally strong women, were able to draft, then adopt, though with strong opposition, three documents – one declaring America’s independence, one outlining and guaranteeing individual rights for all Americans, and one creating a new form of government to live by – three documents that became and are beacons of liberty to a world enslaved by tyrannical governments – some enslaved by religious intolerance and others by power hungry evil men and/or evil women.

Why was America blessed with these three documents of freedom, documents that ascribe to the power of the people to self-govern themselves, ideas of freedom borrowed from the “perfect laws of liberty” Moses recorded in the Bible?

Most ‘believers’ believe ‘America’s God’ inspired the Founding Fathers with the desire to emulate that government Moses has established in ancient Israel, using those fifty-nine laws, referred to by James as God’s “perfect laws of Liberty,” and also described as the “Laws of the Covenant.” These statutes were revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai to govern man’s relationship with all other mankind, the same Laws the Israelites rejected 230 years later when they asked Samuel for a king, “like other nations.”

Those eternal principles of freedom are embedded into America’s three documents of freedom, evident by the Founder’s choice of words used in drafting these documents. Jefferson wrote “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God;” and “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 …” etc, and closed with a powerful appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our [their] intentions” in declaring their independence from a tyrannical king. Eleven years later other wise men added a Preamble to their new Constitution that enthrones those same principles of freedom they had found in the Bible, those principles of freedom many now believe America is rejecting today, as did the Israelites anciently.