Joshua and the Constitution
This morning, my daily Bible readings took me to Joshua, specifically Joshua 24:14-24. As is my want, I read beyond verse 24. Chapter 24 is the last chapter of Joshua. Joshua warns and provokes the people by saying that they are unable to serve the Lord.He says that they must choose to serve either the Lord or the gods their forefathers worshipped in Egypt (before the exodus) and the gods of the Amorites. And Joshua states quite clearly,simply and directly "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
And the aged general and successor to Moses passes away after exhorting and warning the Israelites.
I was thinking that with his death, one of the two last "old men" from the slavery in Egypt, the Exodus and the entry into the Promised Land had passed away (Caleb's death is not recorded). That Joshua's audience was those who were under twenty years old at the beginning of the Israelites forty years in the wilderness (but still had experienced the slavery and Passover and resultant liberation from Egypt), those born in the wilderness who knew nothing of the slavery in Egypt and those who had been born in the newly conquered Promised Land. And it occurred to me that there came a time when the last of those who had experienced all of this history of slavery, liberation, wandering and the Promised Land, those who had heard Moses, those who had heard Joshua, there came that time when the last of them passed away. I thought there came a time when the last of the Founding Fathers passed away (James Madison 1836).The last American citizen who experienced the oppression of King George III and the Parliament, the Revolutionary War, the wilderness of the Articles of Confederation and the promised land of the new Constitution and the Bill of Rights- there came the time the last of those citizens passed away.And the words of warning from the Founding Fathers were forgotten just a surely the warning words of Joshua and Moses were forgotten.And the ringing promises to follow the Lord were forgotten as fading echoes by the generations who came later.
And so it is here in America.
And so when I hear this morning GWB talk about the founding values from the Declaration of Independence, that liberty comes from God, I scratch my head and ask: then how can he pile on more and more programs to a country where it takes OVER half the year to pay for Government ? That he seems to think that liberty from God is being forced to work OVER half a year to support government? And that at least 90% of those programs and departments are illegal under the Supreme Law of the Land, not to mention ineffective AND counter productive!
Liberty from God as slavery and forced servitude?
I don't get it.
posted by Amendment X at 9:15 AM permalink
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