An Appeal to Heaven

And the end of all our exploring,
Will be to arrive where we started.
And to know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot, 'Four Quartets.'

We’ll Do it Our Way, Thanks!

Winston Churchill once observed that “The Americans always get it right… But not before trying everything else first.” Winston said perhaps more than he knew. We Americans do like to do things our way (underline Texas in your books on this subject).

This strain of thinking runs deep into America’s past and connects us to each other in important ways, striking against “the mystic chords of memory” which Lincoln would write about as he labored desperately to hold the Union together. We are bound by a shared love of the true and the beautiful. We recognize these things in the world that God has laid out around us and we see His signature. And while He has taught us not “to rely upon our own understanding,” still we are decidedly not instructed to ignore it.

Unlike the animals, we have the capacity to reflect. We possess a conscience and can choose between right and wrong in all matters that come before us. Importantly, we are able to do this without anyone’s help.

Plato asks, “And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good. Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?” For the pre-Christian Greeks, it was a question whose answer was best left to the gods. The arrival of Jesus Christ would bring the answer directly to Earth, carpenter’s tools in hand. (After all, there was much work to do). God places His navigational software within each of us, drawing us closer with each passing day.

Through His Word God offers us a roadmap to our lives, the way back to Him. All of our human activities, including what our Founders would call the new “science of politics," must then follow the same Divine heading, “on Earth as it is in Heaven,” as the Lord’s Prayer instructs us. God’s law provides the perfect framework for His creation (a sometimes errant creature in need of an occasional course correction). When Earthly endeavors are congruent with God’s word, there is peace through unity with the Lord. This is why the Enemy has only one Post-It note on his desk: "Separate them from God today!!”

The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727), a fervent theologian as well as a scientist, showed clearly that “The “Divine Watchmaker” had left us an amazing watch to take apart in the study of the natural world. Others would follow him, The Author of Nature had written His answers in the trees. They blew through the wind, cresting with the mighty waves at sea. A tiny mustard seed. We need only study these to catch a glimpse into the mind of God and how He intends us to live. Balance, order, symmetry, harmony: Newton demonstrated clearly that the omnipresence of these all around us proves the presence of a loving God who is constantly leading His people toward understanding what He wants from them. From the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” then, we can then draw our own laws to live by. God is the source of all truth. Life becomes our dictionary.

It is no accident that in the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote of our “natural” rights in the way he did. These rights predate all governments and their source is the source of all things: God. His truths exist above all human activity, which is why Jefferson reminds his readers that “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” a legal nicety simply meaning the proposition requires no proof (As it turns out, God does not need to explain Himself). This meshed nicely with Newton’s Three Laws of Thermodynamics, the immutable ‘natural laws’ of motion which Jefferson had studied as a student at William and Mary. Jefferson leaves the door open to other ‘implied’ rights: “…that among these rights are, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” implying the presence of other rights to which men have natural title. Perhaps only God has that list, but for Jefferson’s purposes the ‘Big Three” spoke to the situation at hand (Are Jefferson’s three rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) a quiet hat tip to Newton’s Three Laws? We may never know).

The American Revolution was a spiritual revolution of the heart, a change in moral course by the force of politics and war. It was a call to The Supreme Judge of the World, as Jefferson describes Him, an “Appeal to Heaven” whose foundational argument based itself not on the laws of man, but rather on God’s laws.

And while secular historians have tried to distract us with the “No Taxation Without Representation!” Hysteria, or a bunch of liquored-up colonists tossing tea into the South Harbor, or even the difficulties of everyday colonial life caused by the Navigation, Stamp and Sugar Acts of Parliament, this fight was at its heart a spiritual struggle. Redemption, perhaps the most consistent theme of both the Old and New Testaments, would find its place here. A “New England” was being born, replacing the sick patient and his dying ideas about the proper role of government in the affairs of men.

In 1818, an aging John Adams wrote to Hezekiah Niles and described it this way:

'But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and the hearts of the people, a change in the religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.'

It was this fast-moving fuse of political and spiritual freedom which burned white hot from American Revolutionary pulpits. Working as a solvent on the legitimacy of the Crown’s claim to sovereign rule, it was a crying out from their “errand into the wilderness,’ an appeal to Heaven for His justice, His mercy. In their minds, it was not rebellion but the essence of obedience to God.

War and Remembrance

It is essential that we tell these things to our children, and their children. How about you first tell them the story of this great nation? If you do not know our history, this is a great time to start. Our children are being lied to daily in our schools by people who busy themselves by ransacking American history for a usable past, from which they can construct arguments, reinforcing and amplifying their current political positions. Head that off at the pass.

'Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he shall not depart from it' (Proverbs 22:6).

Right here at Grace Woodlands Church several brave mothers raised their hands to join the Conroe School Board District (we call them “The Magnificent Seven”), proving that local action is the key.

Educate yourself. Hillsdale College offers a free online history series that is as good as attending the College. Write down your life story for your grandchildren. (They are way more interested in your story than they will ever let on). Our country just may depend on enough people learning the true story of this great nation under God… before it is too late.

Ralph Waldo Emerson understood the dangers of national forgetfulness. On a muggy July morning in 1837 in Concord, Massachusetts, he stood before the newly built Concord Memorial, a large stone memorial dedicated to the Battle of Concord, the skirmish that would lead to revolution the next year. Emerson wanted his listeners to feel something that morning as well as hear it: He waved his hand across an ancient Massachusetts stream “which seaward creeps” (back toward God) and offered a call to remembrance, as well as a call for national redemption:

'By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard ‘round the world. The foe long since in silence slept, alike the conqueror silent sleeps. And Time the ruined bridge has swept, down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, we set a votive stone; That memory may their deeds redeem, when like our sires our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare to die, and leave their children free, bid Time and Nature gently spare, the shaft we raise, to them and thee' (Concord Hymn (1837).

Emerson asked them to remember, to honor, to love… "To never forget what they did here,” as Abraham Lincoln admonished his listeners at Gettysburg following the battle. Like Emerson before him, Lincoln understood the importance of national remembrance and the vital importance of its upkeep.

One hundred and fifty years later, President Ronald Reagan would echo both men:

“Our freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. It is not passed on through the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed down to them to do the same; Or one day, we will be spending our sunset years telling our children , and our children’s children, what it was like in the United States where men were free.”

America is a great God story. Pass it on!

Happy 250 years, America!