From sea to shining sea
Tomorrow is the annual celebration of the ratification and signing of one of the most critical documents in human history – The Declaration of Independence.
I learned many years ago that one must often return to the philosophical underpinnings of faith and practice. The malaise of life causes us to lose our way and veer off course more quickly than we can calculate. Before we know it, we transgress our principles and the articles that set us on the right path in the beginning.
For me, this means reading and meditating on the Bible almost daily. It means discussing my life with my Creator throughout my daily existence. As a person of faith, the Bible is the founding document that guides my actions and forms the framework of my opinions as dozens of topics cross my path every day. God’s Word is my historical rock.
As an independent nation, we too have a historical rock consisting of three or four documents detailing our philosophy of the national, state, and individual rights and responsibilities. Most of us, including me, rarely read the foundational thoughts that created our nation. Perhaps we neglect this citizen responsibility to our own peril.
News stories weekly bombard us detailing unrest and turmoil concerning justice and human rights issues. We hear people arguing and pontificating in support of their cause. I don’t know about you, but it sometimes “feels” like the nation is severely divided into multiple irreconcilable segments about everything from racial to environmental issues. Anger and hyperbole fill the airwaves.
Is this an accurate assessment? Yes and no. And how should we interpret this phenomenon?
Yes, the nation is divided on a myriad of subjects. No, the country is not divided upon its philosophical roots, explained in the founding documents and principles they espouse.
One of the great benefits of aging is the accumulation of experience. As a person travels through life, one accumulates a backpack full of knowledge and wisdom gained from witnessing thousands of events. From this storehouse, the traveler begins to realize, as Solomon proclaimed, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV) With this knowledge comes a level of peace.
The present debates and divisions in America have always existed. They are nothing new. Fistfights and personal slanders sometimes accompanied arguments in the halls of congress. One famous disagreement concluded with a pistol-clad duel between two prominent characters, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton got the short end of that stick and died a few hours later. Can you imagine how long that would have been in court in our times? The major news outlets would have had a field day with that juicy bit of news. Burr murdered the man who helped write the Federalist Papers and created our financial system!
Citizens have always marched in support of their cause, and statistics have always been used and misused. Inaccurate information has always been propounded, and justice has frequently eluded our grasp. Our form of Government is raucous and sometimes erupts in violence. We have not achieved utopia, and I doubt we will. America is not heaven. Sometimes sea to shining sea is a scary place.
“What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again” (Ecclesiastes 3:15 NLT)
With all these existential threats, something must hold us together. Something does. The adhesives that adhere us to one another are the principles and prescriptions found on the vellum of our founding charters. These are the rocks upon which our republic is built.
Perhaps, it might be good for us to read once again one of the anchors. I’ve copied it for you below.
Let the debates rage. But let us also thank our Creator, as defined in this Declaration, for revealing to a long-past generation that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights. My prayer is that we might celebrate the raucous pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness and acknowledge and glorify the One from Whom our freedoms proceed.
Live Inspired!
Don Mark
The Declaration of Independence
In Congress, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
