THE MORAL ARC

 

"The moral arc of the universe bend at the elbow of justice"

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Scripture is replete with a few basic principles that are repeated from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelations.

 

One of these is the principle of justice or God's command that the world should be governed justly and that humans should interact with one another in just and fair ways and that rulers and leaders should dispense fairness and justice to those they serve as a central obligation of  their position of power.

 

Another way of expressing this is that natural law must have justice for each and every individual at its center  or it is neither natural nor law. The harmony of the world balances on the fulcrum of justice and when that harmony is disturbed then pandemonium ensues.

 

Justice is a spiritual principle and all people need to be spiritual as well as truth seekers in their patriotism or the passion we need to translate belief into action will succumb to the pervasive and pernicious cynicism of our age.

 Justice is also a main ingredient in virtue.   Politics and policy without virtue is darkness.  Politics and policy with virtue offers the chance of  both enlightenment and justice in the conduct of our civic affairs.  

 

When the question of our unalienable rights begin and end with the fact that these are granted to individuals  by God and/or nature and not by man, it is implicitly an act of justice by God and/or nature.

 

This leads directly to laws that ultimately are designed to protect us from ourselves or others, either individually or collectively, including most specifically when the collective others are acting under the auspices of the government.  

 

Humanity is supposed to be good and decent with one another.  We are meant to be so.  It is natural to be so.  The history of humankind  however is the history of people and philosophies in stark defiance of what our true natures are supposed to be.   So again we write laws.  We write laws with consequences if we violate them and all of these laws are morally fair and viable only insofar as they are just and that justice is clear and rational and the punishment for breaking these just laws is swift, just and merciful when appropriate.   

 

In the 238th  year of this Republic we find ourselves in a state of perpetual crisIs.  For the most part these crises are due to people and their leaders deviating from the ancient biblical principle of justice that has been  essential to our foundation and our framework over the life of our country.

 

As complex as our society has become, it is complex at the margins and not at the core...and the core is where the trouble lies...and the core is where the trouble must be fixed.

 

You don't have to believe in the word of God or even God himself to become part of the solution but you do have to believe in justice!

You have to believe in justice because not believing in it is to deny both the history of America and the promise of America to those who will follow us.

 

This may seem like a simplistic message but life has a way of over and over again demonstrating that what seems simple is rarely so  and what seems complex is either also rarely so or so complex that it results in negating its purported reason for being.

 

So a cautionary but optimistic word from one in the autumn of his years.  We humans by nature are meant to be good and just people and that means that we must reject any and all who attempt to turn us against one another for any reason whatsoever.  Those who seek to divide us for insignificant and immoral reasons such as race, gender, ethnicity,  age, income, religion  etc. are the enemy of justice.  These people seek to define us by everything but the content of our character and if we let them get away with this then we lose our souls and then our beloved  country is sure to follow.   Our country is so divided today and we must get past that which separates us and truly believe that the past is not inevitably  prologue and that we are all in this great and noble work in progress called America... together. 

 

Justice demands a return to the melting pot so that our differences can be celebrated in a fashion to unite us and not used as tactic to divide us.

 

Justice demands that the solutions to  pathologies of one part of us become the responsibilities of all of us.

The rate of unwed births in the black community...fatherless homes where young black boys and girls are raised all too often in what Pope Francis calls a "throw a way" culture...black on black violence which all too often exceeds the  daily death toll of the battlefield...these problems are not simply the exclusive problems of black America for a very simple reason.  These kids are not just their kids ...they are our kids...they are my kids...they are your kids and for all of us a change must come...a change is "gonna" come!

 

ERLANDSSON