Last week we rode the concrete waves ever eastward to the rocky hills and stony shores of New England via Buffalo, New York and the nearby wine country of the Finger Lakes, a beautiful area that belies the grime of the City to the south. We went to visit the remnants and new members of my family as well as the old campgrounds and sites that have become an integral part of this trip, including the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. Set on a hill overlooking the Berkshire Mts. and the town itself (made famous to the world through Arlo Guthrie’s epic ballad, “Alice’s Restaurant”), it is where a group of priests in the 1940’s rescued proponents and manuscripts of Sr. Faustina from Poland, a task that eventually led to the sanctification of Faustina and the institution of the prayer of Divine Mercy in the Catholic Church. It is a tranquil and holy place splayed over dozens or even hundred acres that make one feel ‘holier than thou’ in spite of one’s real self. I say this because, to visit, we had to first stay the night before in a nearby campsite in a state park, a place set against steep mountains and encumbered with a bunch of pesky East Coast rules that make one feel less than charitable.
One such rule concerned firewood. My wife got out of the car to sign in and surprisingly got into a several minute conversation with the guy manning the entrance booth, something that is normally closed by an 8 PM arrival. At one point he asked, “And we have firewood for sale if you need it,” to which my wife answered, “No, that’s all right, we bought some at that farm just down the road.” Doh! She got a lecture about transference of firewood and such, which I suppose is OK because the guy would not really know if we got it just down the street or not, but after driving all day, this was just another pain in the butt that was not welcome. The other rule in the campground was even worse: Alcoholic Beverages Prohibited. Of course, having camped most everywhere in these United States, we knew the drill: open the beer bottle in the camper, pour it into a Solo cup, and sit back at the fire like you’re chugging diabetes-causing soda pop.
And that is exactly what we did, burning verboten firewood all the while, even as we planned on visiting a holy site the following day. Next morning we woke without a felony charge, and after a particularly steep mountain hike, we slid down to Stockbridge as innocent-looking and meek as you please.
A question came back to me some days later, however, probably when I was knocking back my third cup of coffee while navigating the Jeep and our little trailer back west through the Poconos: was this kind of scofflaw activity a sin? The firewood really was from the nearby farm, and we hadn’t known of this Massachusetts’ law, but the drinking part we knew about all too well from other prohibition-minded states. We long have figured that the content of the law was more important than the letter, and we figured that the content had to do with keeping out raucous parties and preventing littering and fights, none of which we ever did, at least as far as anyone could notice. But that’s what we have always surmised. Maybe some of the law-makers were members of the Harper Valley PTA and really did believe that the mere presence of alcohol was a sin; maybe they thought they should keep the very possibility of youth being corrupted by the presence of a beer can from ever happening; and/or maybe they believed that “spirits” were evil spirits regardless that would pull campsites into a whirlwind from Hell with the mere twist of a wine bottle screw-top (we do not usually get the best for the woods). What do we really know?
So we were scofflaws who thought we knew better than officialdom, which is a sign of pride, which is the deadliest of sins. Yet I do not feel bad about it in the least.
I think most readers would agree that this is small potatoes and has little to do with any sin that a god who creates universes with a single word would care about. But it does bring in the concept of us mere mortals achieving perfection: at what point can we say before God, “good enough?” At one point does a lenient attitude become a slippery slope, where any rule or law or moral code might become a matter for our personal interpretation? To prevent ourselves from falling into the infinite depths of relativism, where can we feel safe in drawing the line?
It truly is not so easy to decide, for as good as we might want to be, we don’t want to be snarled in the red tape of human bureaucracy for the few years we have on earth. There are rules, after all, and there are rules, something I discovered years ago while fixing a ruined house into which we had sunk our life savings. At that time I was 40 years old, and had lived almost exclusively for 20 years in the world of ideas and concepts cooked up by pot heads and university professors to the delight of us wannabe eggheads. We argued about everything and often sought an agreeable compromise. House fixing, however, was real: a beam poorly placed could cause collapse, and a drywall poorly sanded would look cheesy. The people who had previously lived there were drug-addict renters who had cleaned the place out of copper wiring and tubing after they had been served eviction notices. I had to replace those, and the worst was the tubing: the soldering had to be perfect or it would leak forever. At one point I had asked a carpenter who we hired to do some difficult work, if I could let a particularly difficult spot leak “just a little.” He was horrified. You don’t let pipes leak, just as you don’t cross uninsulated wires or fail to caulk windows. You simply should never argue or conceptualize yourself out of this sort of physical workmanship.
We might say, then, that certain sorts of moral laws are non-negotiable, too. We know the biggies, for they were etched onto rock tablets nearly 5,000 years ago to serve later as THE guiding light for western Asia and all of Europe. But even these we tinker with. Adultery? Sure, many fail sometimes with this, this sin of the flesh being the most human of failings. For some, though, this has become nothing more than a Massachusetts drinking law, easy to dismiss as backward, patriarchal and oppressive. We were also given the law against dissing our mothers and fathers, which has now become par for the course, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, which I admit to doing almost daily. But even as we break one or another of these laws regularly, most still generally agree that such actions are wrong. At least we are trying.
But others have become entirely negotiable, and these laws are not nothing-burgers, either. For instance, some types of genuine theft have now been deemed OK by the law in certain cities as long as the goods are valued at less than $1,000 per visit. In Milwaukee, the mayor has proclaimed that adolescent “joyriders” should be allowed two or three car thefts apiece before they are prosecuted. To say that these get-out-of-jail-free cards are paths on a slippery slope is to say that an Olympic ski-jump is a playground bump. Personal property might create social differences, but it is what makes the world function. Without it, why would anyone work, or at least make something great? Santa Monica, California, is now almost devoid of stores, and the Magnificent Mile in Chicago is now more a mine field of theft and violence than a high-end shopping area. Talk about leaky pipes.
Murder is the heaviest of crimes, and it has not only been legalized but praised in its form of abortion. To say that this isn’t murder is again like letting the pipes leak. It may seem like nothing because the victims can’t speak, but it will swamp and ruin the woodwork of society eventually just as leaky pipes will ruin a house. I say this as one who once was very comfortable with abortion. From a scientific perspective, one that I once had, the fetus is only a clump of barely distinguishable cells. But there is a plan behind the cells, and they inevitably grow. What might not appear to be human will almost certainly become human. We might as well say that, since babies are not capable of rational thought, they are not fully human and can be killed, too. The arguments about this are far too long for this essay, but in the end I believe that this is one moral problem where there really is nothing to argue about. Again, pipes should not leak.
Most distorted by us – and by far the most important - is the first commandment, to “have only one God” before us. This is not part of our human penal code and should not be, but it makes adherence to all the other commandments a breeze. It was designed in its literal meaning for the pagan people of the time who worshipped statues of cows and such, but it was and is also meant figuratively for those of us who might put things of this world ahead of God. This is what most of us do most of the time. It is at the root all crimes, for to put God first, we would love him above all else, and thus would adhere to all those other things that he wants. And, as Jews knew and Jesus made explicit (Mark 12:30-31), if we put love of God first, we would also love our neighbors as ourselves. Obviously, if we did this, there would be no crime. Halleluiah. This barely leaves us any moral wiggle room. Going back to the commandment against adultery, for instance, we can imagine that someone - children, parents, or one of the spouses themselves - is going to be hurt by these actions eventually. So it is that even a scofflaw like me has to admit that following God’s rules make things better. Leaky pipes might be tolerable for a while, but in time, something will be ruined, if only just the water bill.
Rules. Without God we inevitably get mutable laws given to us by those with ulterior motives. They are subject to constant manipulation and eventually lead to chaos or tyranny. That is why we need sacred law, which can be known as true through both divine revelation and lots of time. Over decades or centuries, have we found that it (the sacred law) does not play favorites? Have we found that it leads to an orderly life that allows for the raising of children and the contemplation of God? Overall, has it proven to be fair and just for all? In the case of our commandments, I believe the answer is obvious.
As for me, I’ll stick to the sacred rules as much as possible but still tiptoe around those manmade ones, especially those made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On that bug-filled night, I found that sitting before a fire of local, if not state-approved, wood and drinking a few cold ones after a long day made me happy. This made my family happy, and thus everyone around us happy. There’s love of neighbor in there somewhere, I just know it, hiding behind the drywall among the leaky water pipes.
Last week we rode the concrete waves ever eastward to the rocky hills and stony shores of New England via Buffalo, New York and the nearby wine country of the Finger Lakes, a beautiful area that belies the grime of the City to the south. We went to visit the remnants and new members of my family as well as the old campgrounds and sites that have become an integral part of this trip, including the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Mass. Set on a hill overlooking the Berkshire Mts. and the town itself (made famous to the world through Arlo Guthrie’s epic ballad, “Alice’s Restaurant”), it is where a group of priests in the 1940’s rescued proponents and manuscripts of Sr. Faustina from Poland, a task that eventually led to the sanctification of Faustina and the institution of the prayer of Divine Mercy in the Catholic Church. It is a tranquil and holy place splayed over dozens or even hundred acres that make one feel ‘holier than thou’ in spite of one’s real self. I say this because, to visit, we had to first stay the night before in a nearby campsite in a state park, a place set against steep mountains and encumbered with a bunch of pesky East Coast rules that make one feel less than charitable.
One such rule concerned firewood. My wife got out of the car to sign in and surprisingly got into a several minute conversation with the guy manning the entrance booth, something that is normally closed by an 8 PM arrival. At one point he asked, “And we have firewood for sale if you need it,” to which my wife answered, “No, that’s all right, we bought some at that farm just down the road.” Doh! She got a lecture about transference of firewood and such, which I suppose is OK because the guy would not really know if we got it just down the street or not, but after driving all day, this was just another pain in the butt that was not welcome. The other rule in the campground was even worse: Alcoholic Beverages Prohibited. Of course, having camped most everywhere in these United States, we knew the drill: open the beer bottle in the camper, pour it into a Solo cup, and sit back at the fire like you’re chugging diabetes-causing soda pop.
And that is exactly what we did, burning verboten firewood all the while, even as we planned on visiting a holy site the following day. Next morning we woke without a felony charge, and after a particularly steep mountain hike, we slid down to Stockbridge as innocent-looking and meek as you please.
A question came back to me some days later, however, probably when I was knocking back my third cup of coffee while navigating the Jeep and our little trailer back west through the Poconos: was this kind of scofflaw activity a sin? The firewood really was from the nearby farm, and we hadn’t known of this Massachusetts’ law, but the drinking part we knew about all too well from other prohibition-minded states. We long have figured that the content of the law was more important than the letter, and we figured that the content had to do with keeping out raucous parties and preventing littering and fights, none of which we ever did, at least as far as anyone could notice. But that’s what we have always surmised. Maybe some of the law-makers were members of the Harper Valley PTA and really did believe that the mere presence of alcohol was a sin; maybe they thought they should keep the very possibility of youth being corrupted by the presence of a beer can from ever happening; and/or maybe they believed that “spirits” were evil spirits regardless that would pull campsites into a whirlwind from Hell with the mere twist of a wine bottle screw-top (we do not usually get the best for the woods). What do we really know?
So we were scofflaws who thought we knew better than officialdom, which is a sign of pride, which is the deadliest of sins. Yet I do not feel bad about it in the least.
I think most readers would agree that this is small potatoes and has little to do with any sin that a god who creates universes with a single word would care about. But it does bring in the concept of us mere mortals achieving perfection: at what point can we say before God, “good enough?” At one point does a lenient attitude become a slippery slope, where any rule or law or moral code might become a matter for our personal interpretation? To prevent ourselves from falling into the infinite depths of relativism, where can we feel safe in drawing the line?
It truly is not so easy to decide, for as good as we might want to be, we don’t want to be snarled in the red tape of human bureaucracy for the few years we have on earth. There are rules, after all, and there are rules, something I discovered years ago while fixing a ruined house into which we had sunk our life savings. At that time I was 40 years old, and had lived almost exclusively for 20 years in the world of ideas and concepts cooked up by pot heads and university professors to the delight of us wannabe eggheads. We argued about everything and often sought an agreeable compromise. House fixing, however, was real: a beam poorly placed could cause collapse, and a drywall poorly sanded would look cheesy. The people who had previously lived there were drug-addict renters who had cleaned the place out of copper wiring and tubing after they had been served eviction notices. I had to replace those, and the worst was the tubing: the soldering had to be perfect or it would leak forever. At one point I had asked a carpenter who we hired to do some difficult work, if I could let a particularly difficult spot leak “just a little.” He was horrified. You don’t let pipes leak, just as you don’t cross uninsulated wires or fail to caulk windows. You simply should never argue or conceptualize yourself out of this sort of physical workmanship.
We might say, then, that certain sorts of moral laws are non-negotiable, too. We know the biggies, for they were etched onto rock tablets nearly 5,000 years ago to serve later as THE guiding light for western Asia and all of Europe. But even these we tinker with. Adultery? Sure, many fail sometimes with this, this sin of the flesh being the most human of failings. For some, though, this has become nothing more than a Massachusetts drinking law, easy to dismiss as backward, patriarchal and oppressive. We were also given the law against dissing our mothers and fathers, which has now become par for the course, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, which I admit to doing almost daily. But even as we break one or another of these laws regularly, most still generally agree that such actions are wrong. At least we are trying.
But others have become entirely negotiable, and these laws are not nothing-burgers, either. For instance, some types of genuine theft have now been deemed OK by the law in certain cities as long as the goods are valued at less than $1,000 per visit. In Milwaukee, the mayor has proclaimed that adolescent “joyriders” should be allowed two or three car thefts apiece before they are prosecuted. To say that these get-out-of-jail-free cards are paths on a slippery slope is to say that an Olympic ski-jump is a playground bump. Personal property might create social differences, but it is what makes the world function. Without it, why would anyone work, or at least make something great? Santa Monica, California, is now almost devoid of stores, and the Magnificent Mile in Chicago is now more a mine field of theft and violence than a high-end shopping area. Talk about leaky pipes.
Murder is the heaviest of crimes, and it has not only been legalized but praised in its form of abortion. To say that this isn’t murder is again like letting the pipes leak. It may seem like nothing because the victims can’t speak, but it will swamp and ruin the woodwork of society eventually just as leaky pipes will ruin a house. I say this as one who once was very comfortable with abortion. From a scientific perspective, one that I once had, the fetus is only a clump of barely distinguishable cells. But there is a plan behind the cells, and they inevitably grow. What might not appear to be human will almost certainly become human. We might as well say that, since babies are not capable of rational thought, they are not fully human and can be killed, too. The arguments about this are far too long for this essay, but in the end I believe that this is one moral problem where there really is nothing to argue about. Again, pipes should not leak.
Most distorted by us – and by far the most important - is the first commandment, to “have only one God” before us. This is not part of our human penal code and should not be, but it makes adherence to all the other commandments a breeze. It was designed in its literal meaning for the pagan people of the time who worshipped statues of cows and such, but it was and is also meant figuratively for those of us who might put things of this world ahead of God. This is what most of us do most of the time. It is at the root all crimes, for to put God first, we would love him above all else, and thus would adhere to all those other things that he wants. And, as Jews knew and Jesus made explicit (Mark 12:30-31), if we put love of God first, we would also love our neighbors as ourselves. Obviously, if we did this, there would be no crime. Halleluiah. This barely leaves us any moral wiggle room. Going back to the commandment against adultery, for instance, we can imagine that someone - children, parents, or one of the spouses themselves - is going to be hurt by these actions eventually. So it is that even a scofflaw like me has to admit that following God’s rules make things better. Leaky pipes might be tolerable for a while, but in time, something will be ruined, if only just the water bill.
Rules. Without God we inevitably get mutable laws given to us by those with ulterior motives. They are subject to constant manipulation and eventually lead to chaos or tyranny. That is why we need sacred law, which can be known as true through both divine revelation and lots of time. Over decades or centuries, have we found that it (the sacred law) does not play favorites? Have we found that it leads to an orderly life that allows for the raising of children and the contemplation of God? Overall, has it proven to be fair and just for all? In the case of our commandments, I believe the answer is obvious.
As for me, I’ll stick to the sacred rules as much as possible but still tiptoe around those manmade ones, especially those made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On that bug-filled night, I found that sitting before a fire of local, if not state-approved, wood and drinking a few cold ones after a long day made me happy. This made my family happy, and thus everyone around us happy. There’s love of neighbor in there somewhere, I just know it, hiding behind the drywall among the leaky water pipes.
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