Wisdom Prepares For Coming Winter
Celebrities Die Too
At least once per year, I read through the list of recent celebrity deaths and try to understand the life that is now over. It’s easier to do with celebrities because we have some contact with entertainers via their work. I noticed that Dusty Hill died a while back now. He was the bearded bass guitarist for ZZ Top alongside Billy Gibbons. I guess I must have thought those two Texas Hillbillies would go on forever. Dusty claimed he believed in God but didn’t know who or what God is. His widow, however, asked Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty to give a eulogy at the funeral. He was born just two years before me and died at 72. I’m 71. The whole of his life passed pretty much concurrent with mine. All he might do or be in this life is now over.
Markie Post also died this year. That surprised me because I didn’t hear about that anywhere when it happened. I remember her from the 1980s TV show Night Court and hadn’t seen her much since then. I guess she was frozen young in my thinking. She was only born eight and half months before me and didn’t make it to her 71st birthday.
Numbering our days
Psalm 90 is attributed to Moses who the Bible book of Deuteronomy says lived to be 120 years old and died even though he was still healthy. It is Psalm 90 that reminds us that our lives are like “new grass” that “springs up new in the morning, but by evening, it is dry and withered.” The writer then asks God to “teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Larry King also died sometime this last year. He was 87 which sounds like a long life and yet looking back on it, not so much. Larry was quite sick from age 54 on after a major heart attack and a later bout with cancer. He also suffered a stroke that put him in a coma for weeks a few years before he died. As Psalm 90 puts it:
Our days come to seventy years, Or eighty, if our strength endures. Yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, For they quickly pass and we fly away
Palm 90:10
Larry King, born to Jewish parents, said he was an agnostic most of his life but after the age of eighty declared himself an atheist. He was married eight times to seven different women and only met his first born son when that boy was thirty years old. Yes, they say he did over 50,000 interviews on his various talk shows and won several entertainment awards, but what is that to him now?
Faithfulness Is Waning
In discussing Larry King with my wife she said that at least he lived at a time when people married those they slept with. “Now they just sleep around,” she quipped. She had also read somewhere that 70% people in relationships now cheat on their spouses or significant others. That number seemed high but maybe not. Something like that happened in the Roman Empire. Though historians may not directly attribute sexual immorality to the fall of Rome, it does seem to be a factor for attitudes and behaviors that eventually did.
U.S. Constitution For Moral People Only
The United States and its constitution of limited government has really always been an experiment that goes against history. John Adams once said to a man who asked if they now had a new government after the constitution after it was ratified, said “We’ve given you a government, if you can keep it. This government is for a religious and moral people only. It is wholly inadequate for any other.” George Washington, when asked why the Articles of Confederation that preceded the constitution failed, said “We had over-estimated the goodness of people.” James Madison once answered the question why government needed to have the power the constitution gave it, said “If men were angels, government would be unnecessary.”
The point was men and women aren’t angels and their ability to govern themselves in a free and open society deteriorates when their allegiance to God is replaced by indulgence. When people fail to govern themselves governmental power must increase to deter harmful behaviors. And this increasingly powerful government will attract those who are most likely to abuse that power.
Winter is coming
In George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, seven kingdoms fight for control of the fictional continent Essos. Martin uses the image of winter (which could last for up to ten years in the story) to picture hard times and dangers that are coming in the story. In the first novel, the mantra “Winter is Coming” dominates all the plans and behaviors. Preparing for it drives the story, and each kingdom is fighting for ultimate control to secure the best outcome for themselves.
History tells us that peace and freedom is short lived. Like the lives of famous people, they are not eternal. As in the families in the seats of power in Game of Thrones, the fight for control requires totalitarian force for the ultimate winner. Because without an omnipotent loving God people surrender their allegiance to, only absolute force will control them.
All Human Law Exists At The Point Of A Sword
Some believe that human beings can live as one without this forceful control. It is a fantasy that simple observation dispels. All human government is based on force. Even the Bible acknowledges this: “[The king] was not given the sword for nothing” (Romans 13:4). And the power of government increases only as number of laws increases. As others have noted, governments really have power only over criminals. To increase power, they need only make so many laws, statutes, and ordinances so it becomes virtually impossible to not be in violation of something at all times. The government can use that to threaten or force anyone to their will. The U.S. Federal Government instituted just under 90,000 new rules, regulations and laws in just over twenty years from 1995-2016.
Most U.S. Citizens No Longer Attend Church
In 1957, it was estimated that 77% of U.S. citizens were in church on Sunday morning. Today, general research indicates that only 22% attend every week and another 20% attending occasionally. That leaves 58% for whom traditional religious observance is not a part of their lives at all. Though it could be argued that they may have other forms of spirituality, this is still a large step away from the people that John Adams referred to and those for whom the framers of the constitution had in mind.
How This Change Affected Government
Since the tenure of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1902-1932), the U.S. Constitution in its original understanding has been under attack. It is argued that technology and socio-religious change has made it necessary to reinterpret the constitution for today. However, this reinterpretation actually rewrites it in order to give the federal government more power over the lives of its citizens. This means that the “freedoms” of those same citizens are being curtailed. This can, however, be made to look like the government is protecting freedoms. It fact, that is how they sell it.
Dobbs v. Jackson
Attempting to prevent government from ever increasing its power is derided as anti-democratic. For instance, in the recent case in Dobbs v. Jackson where the Supreme Court’s decision overturned the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, opponents claim that extreme justices have “taken away a constitutional right and freedom.” However, the constitution gave no power to the federal government to make laws concerning abortion or really any other medical practice despite their eisegetical interpretation that the “unenumerated rights” of the ninth amendment somehow included abortion. What’s more, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution stated unequivocally that any power not specifically granted to the federal government in the constitution, they are prohibited from assuming. All those other powers are reserved for the States or the citizens themselves. This means the U.S. Federal government has no say in the issue.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, they were simply following the specific law against the federal government assuming powers it has not been granted under the constitution by returning that power to the States and the people. They were not making any statement whatsoever about abortion itself. They determined that the people of the individual states have the right under the constitution to vote how they wanted on the issue of abortion without federal interference.
Flat Contradictions
Opponents of the decision started screaming “The sky is falling.” Though they wouldn’t say this out loud because of how ridiculous it would sound, their argument is essentially, “We can’t allow the people of Louisiana and Texas (or wherever) to vote on these things. That would bring about the destruction of democracy! We must have a law dictated from on high by the federal government that people cannot vote on it. That is the only way to save democracy.
The argument is a flat contradiction, but if shouted loud enough, people begin to believe that if we don’t give all power to the government, and particularly those in power at the moment, democracy and freedom will end. In other words, we must end freedom to protect freedom. George Orwell’s famous Oceana slogans are on full display: “Freedom is Slavery, War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength.”
Accepting Contradictions Is Deadly
In the fifth chapter of the Bible book of the prophet Isaiah, the end of kingdom of Israel is predicted. In the parlance of George R. R. Martin, “Winter is coming.” And in the case of Israel, they are unaware of it and unprepared: “Therefore my people will go into exile for lack of understanding” (Isaiah 5:13). They didn’t understand what was leading them to their own destruction. Isaiah says its because the rulers began to rule and the people began to live out of flat contradictions:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil Who put darkness for light and light for darkness Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter… Who acquit the guilty for a bribe And deny justice to the innocent
Isaiah 5:20, 23
Preparing For Winter Is Only Wise
When these things start happening in a country as they are happening now in ours, it may be time to start saying, “Winter is coming” and prepare for it. And that means “making the most of our time for the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:17) and short. Leaning into trusting the Lord’s directions for our welfare rather than leaning on our own schemes is a first step and something to practice intentionally. The people of Israel seemed to fail at this most pointedly, for Isaiah also said,
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and clever in their own sight
Isaiah 5:21
And secondly we need to wake up and stop dreaming that this fallen world will go on indefinitely without being called to account. We might ask God along with Moses:
Teach us to number our days So that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
Winter is coming. The wise prepare for it.
