One of the things that makes it delightful to be a philosopher is the opportunity to look at the big picture. Let us share musings for a few minutes about the sweep of the way things really are as we examine the human condition. We will speak sub species aeternitas, as if we were god, as is the philosopher’s wont.
The human condition is a continuum. At one extreme is the totally natural state of a human being as represented by feral children, those raised by animals with no human nurture. Such persons are essentially animals, knowing nothing of human language or knowledge, of history or of future, living from moment to moment and day to day by reacting to their immediate environment to nourish and to protect themselves.
The middle ground of the human continuum is filled with human activity which is a response to human conventions. Human conventions are systems of cooperation which are achieved in a more or less arbitrary manner and which enable human beings to enter into and fulfill cooperative arrangements.
One very prominent human convention is language. The sounds of any human language are arbitrary, intrinsically worthless. But by having agreements as to the significance of those sounds and how they are to be organized, we humans manage to communicate with each other in rather sophisticated ways about quite complex matters. This communication is a cooperation which makes possible a great many other cooperative endeavors which take the human being far beyond the feral state. Human conventions are civilization, and civilization is simply the sum of the conventions a group of human beings employ.
Using language, human beings organize and conduct family cooperation, that foundation stone of all civilized peoples. The family cooperates to produce food, clothing and shelter and to perpetuate whatever civilization the persons involved enjoy.
Beyond family life, language enables exchange of goods in an organized manner, which is the economic structure of groups of families. Civil government is a convention created to govern the relationships of families to each other and the relationships of individuals from different families to each other. Technology, the production of goods and services, begins in the family but gains power and scope through language usage to become a community affair. Art, which is a species of technology, flourishes through human conventions of systems of representation and presentation. The highest human conventions are sometimes the moral codes which govern human conduct and guide aspiration and cooperation.
Conventions have their seamy side as well as their good side. Conventions are used by some persons to enslave others. They are used to promote false ideas and evil morality. They are used to pursue war to gain advantage over others by taking their lives, property and goods.
The fact that human conventions are used by humans to produce evil as well as good, and that sometimes the evil of the conventions is greater than the good, causes some persons to be pessimistic about the whole human enterprise, to see it all as simply an arbitrary game for gaining advantage over other persons. Thomas Hobbes pointed out that even bad conventions are better than no conventions, for bad civil governments are still better than the feral condition of no government.
But fortunately, there is another end to the human continuum. In addition to the feral state of nature and the more or less arbitrary human systems of conventions which create civilization, there is also the presence of God and His covenant with man. Whereas the feral state is animal, evil in the sense of being little, essentially sub-human, the other end is divine, essentially super-human as human beings take upon themselves the divine nature and become as God. Whereas the middle ground of human civilization is built upon arbitrary conventions which enable cooperation for both good and evil, the divine end is built upon cooperation with God in doing only good. Whereas the feral condition is one of relative powerlessness and local effect only, the divine condition is a focus of power, knowledge and goodness that reaches out to eternity. Whereas the feral condition has minimal cooperation and rewards selfishness, the divine condition is one of total cooperation and oneness, the consummation of selflessness.
While the feral and the divine conditions provide us with very distinctive alternatives, the bridge between the two is the human system of conventions. The only way one can go from the feral condition to the divine is through the system of human conventions. So let us examine the human conventions a bit more closely.
We have already noted that human conventions tend to be arbitrary. It is arbitrary whether we drive on the right or left side of the road, and whether we use English, Swedish or Swahili. It is arbitrary whether we use a patronymic or a matronymic naming system. It is arbitrary where we place local, state and national boundaries. The tax laws we enact are arbitrary, as are the requirements for citizenship and the legislative process. So much of what civilization consists of is so obviously arbitrary, that some among us have concluded that everything is arbitrary, that there is no right or wrong, good or evil, and we can and should just do as we please. To do as each of us would please without any conventions would take us back to the feral jungle, which almost everyone recognizes as undesirable. So the pressure is to use our arbitrary human conventions to feature evil as good.
If we pretend that there is no divine, then anything more feral is appropriate if we desire it. Everyone admits there is a feral end, but not everyone admits that there is a divine end to the continuum. Without the divine, civilization tends to sink toward the feral until it is destroyed, even as happened to the Nephites, the Jaredites, and the Romans.
But there is a divine influence in this world. It infuses the arbitrary human systems with real good, with ideas which point men toward divinity. The more a civilization incorporates the divine into its conventions, the more it will prosper and gain power, and the more it will perpetuate itself.
So: the real question with which every civilization must grapple is the question: Is there a divine opportunity or is everything just arbitrary? Another way to say this is to ask if there is an imminent God who can and does help human beings, or is everything simply accidental and natural. The United States government and most of the first universities of this country were founded on the premise that there is a God and there is a good. But the sentiment that there is no God and that all is arbitrary is taking over our nation.
Three current issues show the difference clearly. The first issue is abortion. If there is no God and no right and wrong, then whatever is legal is appropriate. So if the government passes a law that its unborn have no legal protection, it doesn’t matter. The whole thing is a game anyway, so why not make it convenient for our selfishness.
The second issue is same-sex marriage. If marriage has no divine purpose because there is no divine, then why not accord to any so-called marriage the legal conveniences of traditional marriages?
A third issue is euthanasia. If there is no divine, if human life is only a convenience, if there is not right and wrong, then why should any human being have to suffer? Why not let anyone who is in mental, physical or social pain just apply to someone who can quickly and efficiently cause death and receive legally sanctioned assistance? If it is only a game anyway, why not have it be a game we enjoy playing?
What is behind all of each of these issues is that men sometimes reject God, then play being their own god in their own pleasant games. God gives human life, but men who do not want a god, take life and think that they give it or deny it at their own pleasure, thus playing god. God ordained marriage between man and woman for eternal purposes, to bring the couple into the nature of the divine. But men and women who do not want to serve the true and living God want to subvert marriage to mere convenience, be it heterosexual or homosexual, thus becoming gods unto themselves. It is God who ordains death and the suffering of human life, and in his economy, no suffering or pain is lost or wasted; it all has its purpose. But those who know not the true God want to play god and take life whenever they feel like doing so. The next step is of course to take the life of those who are deemed by others to have no purpose in living, even as Hitler executed the ill, the mentally incompetent and the genetically undesirable.
The playing of god by humans has a long and complicated history. Fathers and mothers have done it, judges, doctors and generals regularly do it, scientists and philosophers try their hand at it. The most glaring examples of playing God, however, are when men set themselves up as a light unto the world and dispense wisdom and instruction to get praise and gain, both in and out of the churches of the world.
So each of us has a very practical choice. Each of us in our thinking and acting must either worship the true God, worship a false god, or play god ourselves. If we worship the true and living God, we will stand for truth and right, even if we must sacrifice to do so. If we worship a false god, such as the “will of the people” or some charismatic human, we become pawns in their posturing as God. If we play god ourselves, then we will do as we please to compromise with evil and bring the civilization crashing down around ourselves.
Civilization can be good or evil. Good civilization is filled with right from the true God, and it prospers. Evil civilization is filled with evil and selfishness, and it crumbles. But the worst civilization is the one that knows the true and living God and deliberately turns its back on Him and plays at being its own god. This is why the Nephites were destroyed and the Lamanites persevered. The Nephites wound up deliberately playing god, while the Lamanites played god because they did not know God.
The conclusion of my tale is that you and I have a great personal responsibility in the future of our civilization. If we know that there is a true God but pretend that there is no god by going along with those who know not God, we create the conditions for the destruction of our civilization. We are sent to leaven the lump, but if the leaven has lost its lifting power, it is to be cast out and trodden under foot and the lump will be utterly destroyed as in the prophecy of Malachi.
For we know that the conventions of men are not all arbitrary. There is a right and a wrong about many issues, and we must stand for the right. We cannot say with the world, “I will play the game and pretend that there is no God and no right and wrong about political issues.” For us to do so is spiritual death to ourselves and a condemning of our civilization to death as well. For if a population has in it those who know God and yet serve Satan, it is a worse population than another where no one knows God and serves Satan by default. If you and I do not rise to the occasion and serve Jesus Christ, who is the God of this land, we doom this land to another destruction, just like the three previous nearly total destructions which have come upon it.
There is a clear prophecy that if the constitution of the United States is to be saved when it hangs by a thread, it will be the elders of Israel who will save it. But the prophecy does not say that it will be saved. That is up to you and to me.
In conclusion, then, we have a choice. We may pretend that the human conventions in which we all participate are all arbitrary and whatever is legal is acceptable, or we can wield the sword of the Spirit of God in promoting that which is just and true. We are endowed and empowered agents before the true and living God, and the choice is ours.
Thank you.