Yesterday I turned 54. Last year I said I was 35 and dyslexic. This year I am 45 and dyslexic. I can't use that line next year, and especially the four years after that. It was also my youngest daughter's 11th birthday. On top of that, my daughter Rose and I were born on my father's birthday. I have a cousin in Texas who shares the same birthday.
My father served in WW2 in Europe. Once a buddy and he were separated from their outfit in France, and they spent the night with a farmer and his wife. My father was so overwhelmed by the farmer's generosity and hospitality that he told the farmer and his wife that when he got back to the States, if he and his wife were to have a daughter, they were going to name it Colette, in honor of the farmer and his wife's very young daughter. That is how my sister got her name. Of course, my sister, who may be crazier than I, loves to embellish the story. She tells others that this farmer and his wife also had on their farm a donkey named Chris.
Actually, my parents were content with their two children, Colette and Gail, but Gail died at sixteen months as the result of a freak accident. This left my mom in a state of deep depression. The doctor told my dad that the only way to get her out of that was for her to have another child. That is how I came on the scene. Years later, in my version of the story, my dad and mom decided to sue the doctor for medical malpractice.
As always, my family rolled out the red carpet for my daughter and me yesterday. Actually, I kind of wish that my birthday was forgotten, especially by AARP that has been sending me stuff in the mail for over a year now.
September 17 was another birthday too. It was the birthday of the United States Constitution. Our form of government is 221 years old. That's pretty amazing, when one considers that it is the world's longest-running experiment in self-rule. I wonder how many Americans remembered this birthday. I wonder how many government or civic classes in high schools across our land pointed out this birthday to their students. I don't recall reading anything about this birthday in our newspaper, nor do I recall hearing anything about it on the evening news. I wonder how many elected officials remembered this birthday. Judging by how many of our state and national elected leaders legislate, I think many of them have never read this important document in their entire lives. How many voters who will go to the polls this November will have read the Constitution at any time in their lives? What a shame that this birthday was been forgotten. Maybe this explains to a large degree why our country is in its current shape.
The summer of 1787 in Philadelphia was riveting. The men who met to draft a new form of government over a course of weeks and months knew that the Articles of Confederation, that guided the infant country through the War of Independence, were simply unworkable. Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts sounded alarm bells in the minds of leading Americans that something drastic had to be done. Winning independence from Britain, it turned out, was but the first step to becoming a nation. As John Adams had predicted, establishing a truly national government would be "the most intricate, the most important, the most dangerous and delicate business."
Four months after Americans marched into the mouths of cannon manned by other Americans, the Philadelphia Convention would meet to create a new national government. The current government under the Articles of Confederation had neither a consistent currency, nor a military force, nor the power to regulate trade, nor the power to levy taxes. Tensions ran extremely high during the summer of 1787. Large states were pitted against the small states. Slave-holding states were pitted against the non-slave holding states. Those who favored a much stronger central national government were pitted against those who revered states' rights. After all the dust had settled, after everyone had their say, and after all the labor pains that seemed would last forever, the United States Constitution was finally given birth. Our three branches of government with limited and defined powers have been at it now for over two centuries.
Not even Alexander Hamilton, our nation's first Secretary of Treasury, would have approved our nation's recent action to bail out certain companies, some of which were a weird hybrid of federal and private companies. What the founding fathers feared has slowly developed over the years that our country today bears little resemblance to what the framers of the Constitution had in mind. The Scriptures speak of our "honoring the king". The closest thing we have to a king in our set-up is the Constitution. An encroaching and expanding form of government has become so customary and expected that many do not see anything wrong with it at all; in fact, they would see something terribly wrong if the government does not step more in our lives and solve all our problems. The idolatry that we encounter is not the worship by Israelites of Baal like we see in the Old Testament, but the the worship by Americans of Big Brother like we see from city halls to the halls of Congress. Should we be surprised that as more and more people demand more hand-outs from Washington that fewer and fewer people will look to the hands of a good God?
Our founding fathers, for the most part, were very religious men, who had a biblical worldview of things. They knew that there was a God who would supply all our need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19) They did not believe that there should be any Government that would supply all our need and wishes and whims according to the riches in the U.S. Treasury in the nation's capital. They sincerely believed that the government that governs least, governs best. They also came from a Calvinistic understanding of the nature of man; the different checks and balances imposed by the three branches of government were the result of their view of the total depravity of man.
Judges who legislate from the bench have usurped a role that never belonged to them. Then to make matters worst, they find things in the Constitution that are not there, such as a woman's right to choose murder over life. Yes, it would be grand and glorious thing if we were to return to our founding documents by actually reading them, understanding them, and implementing them. Presidents, senators, representatives, governors, judges, mayors, citizens, voters, you name them, would greatly benefit if they would just "honor the king". Can we turn this ship around in time? I hope and pray so.
Our Constitution is not perfect, though. That is why there are provisions for amendments. That is why we have the Bill of Rights. The framers never said it was perfect, but they had an in-built mechanism to right all wrongs over time. That is why there is an amendment for prohibition, and that didn't work, so there is a follow-up amendment to overturn the amendment on prohibition. That is why slavery was eventually stamped out, although it could have been done without so much bloodshed. (That is the subject of a another article down the road, maybe! Just think that the casualties from the war in Iraq account for less than 1% of the casualties from the War Between the States.)
Our nation has forgotten a very important birthday. We are worse off because of that.
Now I need to take off my civics 101 hat for a moment, and put on a similar hat that says it would be a grand and glorious thing also if we believers in Christ would also remember the founding document of our faith, God's Holy Word. That document is perfect; no amendments are needed. Just as government "has gotten too big for its britches", have our churches become the same way, all at the expense of forgetting what God's Word really says about things? As a Southern Baptist, I keep wishing and hoping and praying that more and more Southern Baptists would remember their original confessions of faith, hammered out by its founders in 1845.
It is nice to remember people's birthdays, but I for one would gladly give up all my future birthdays (I know this is not a great sacrifice on my part!) if I could live to see the day when other more important birthdays are fondly cherished and held in the highest esteem.
Yours in Christ,
Chris
