FREEDOM TO GIVE THE GIFT

Protecting the Human Environment: Alienation as Social Critique (Kristina Johannes, March/April 2003, Religion & Liberty)

While often described as a secular nation, the United States is more correctly classified as an interfaith nation. Its founding principles acknowledge the presence of a Supreme Being from whom certain inalienable rights are received. This means that our government is based on the worldview that God exists. One could say that the existence of God is a first principle of our form of government: God is the one who endowed us with those inalienable rights. In a sense, the challenge to protect the human environment is not new at all, but rather was given to us by our Founding Fathers. Within the Declaration of Independence's reference to "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" and the Constitution's hope of founding "a more perfect Union" is intertwined this mysterious concept of the grandeur of the human person and his or her ability to form a communion of persons conscious of God as the final destiny.

Therefore, the religious liberty that is the right of every person does not mean that government must be insulated from religious values. Quite the contrary. Government must not discourage, but rather it must encourage God-loving people to participate in the formulation of our nation's laws and policies. As has been previously alluded to, the religious believer is, in a real sense, the model citizen, because the religious believer is the one most likely to understand the importance of protecting the human environment from social alienation. In other words, the religious believer has the best standpoint from which to recognize the significance of creating an environment in which citizens are encouraged to generously give of themselves to each other according to a correct order of values established by the Creator.

Rather than expecting citizens to check their religious sensibilities at the door, society should highly regard participation from those who are fundamentally oriented toward the truth that each person must seek communion with God and neighbor. Among all citizens the religious believer stands out as a beacon most capable of guiding society to formulate policies that encourage an atmosphere conducive to the reason for human society's existence. One could say that the participation of the religious believer in the political process is our country's best hope of realizing the greatness of our foundation as a nation. As society comes to understand this, religious belief will no longer be seen as something that disqualifies a person for public service, but rather renders him or her more suitable.

The current environment in which religious believers are viewed with fear and skepticism prevents the greatness of our founding principles from being actualized. In order to truly form a more perfect union-the communion of persons-the human environment must be protected. Only then will the blessings of liberty, through which citizens enjoy the freedom to give the gift of self to others according to the order of creation, come to fruition. This is truly the essence of the culture of life. In reestablishing this culture, the religious believer must respond to the clarion call to protect and defend the human environment. This response must have personal and political components. True liberty-the freedom to act in the service of others-is necessary to allow this culture to flourish. Only by impressing this reality on citizens not religiously inclined and those who fear the reaches of big government can we answer their concerns regarding the religious believer's participation in politics.

Jacques Maritain has written well about this too and why elevation of the individual, upon which many would like to think a morality and a society can be based, must instead serve statism, destroying society and liberty:

[B]ourgeois liberalism with its ambition to ground everything in the unchecked initiative of the individual, conceived as little God, and the absolute liberty of property, business and pleasure, inevitably ends in statism. The rule of the Number [economic community, national or racial state] produces the omnipotence of the state. The indispensable condition for building a city out of liberties, beholden only to themselves, is that each member surrender his personal will to the General Will in a contract. which according to Rousseau gives birth to society. But since man in his material individuality is a part, not a whole, and since, further, in this system, the state takes the place of the genuine community, the individual is forced ultimately to transfer both his responsibilities and the care of his destiny to the artificial whole which has been superimposed upon him and to which he is bound mechanically. Of course his liberty will remain complete and unhampered, but in an illusory fashion and in a world of dreams. At the same time, he will exact from the state the satisfaction of his greeds and anarchistically reject the conditions of social life; not realizing that in this way society is driven to the insurrection of the parts against the whole, of which Auguste Comte used to speak, to the tragic isolation of each one in his own selfishness or helplessness. The very notion of the common good and the common work disappears.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2003 10:16 PM