Do you love yourself?
May 12th, 2009Self is an ever changing thing. It’s like trying to know a river.
I have friends who I love in retrospect — before their river hit the rapids and turned into a marsh. I remember the river they were and smile.
Sometimes your spirit knows when they will cease to be the friend you knew and become someone else. And yes, occasionally they end up being a better person.
But in this world that’s a very rare thing. I’ve seen it a few times — often with people who are old and wise. And then I’m shocked to learn who they were in their youth.
Why don’t more people become better with time?
It’s a difficult question to answer, but I believe it comes down to who we worship. Most often we choose to worship ourselves. And that is why moral relativism is the dominant religion of our time.
Moral relativism teaches that no universal standards exist apart from our subjective opinions. In other words, there is no right or wrong other than what we decide to do with our lives. Of course, they struggle when they must admit that men like Hitler are then let off the hook since he didn’t believe the Jews were human. The same can be said of southern slave owners who didn’t view their black slaves as fully human.
Sound familiar?
Today we commit the same sin by saying an unborn child with a beating heart and developing brain is not human. We conjure up clever arguments and euphemisms to make ourselves feel better as did the Nazis and southern slave owners before us: mass of cells, etc. I was surprised to learn that nearly every surgical abortion occurs after 3-4 weeks when the heart is beating and the brain is developing.
Eventually these misguided beliefs lead to conflicts.
Wars are fought to determine where our collective river will flow. The Germans wanted to purify the world with their ideals of a “master race” and the southern plantation owners laughed when Abraham Lincoln reminded them that all men are created with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Declaration of Independence was written by men who understood that there are universal truths that are self evident. Fortunately, the founding fathers were not moral relativists and that seminal document stood in defiance of slavery despite laws in the south that legalized the enslavement of blacks.
That doesn’t mean the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence were perfect. The message should not be confused with the messenger; history shows us that men who write about truth are not always adherents of it.
It’s easier to know the truth than to follow it.
I’m sure many Germans and southern slave owners truly believed the Jews and blacks were not human. Today many Germans see the error of their ways, but that won’t bring back the families that died in those concentration camps anymore than the Civil War could undue generations of forced labor in cotton fields.
The wars were costly.
Millions of men and women traded their lives for our freedom. And today the world again awaits the arrival of patriots. Though few in number, they are marching.
I can hear the drums of liberty in the distance…
-Mystery Cookie
“It is better to have not known the truth, than to have known the truth and turned away.”
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