Why Are You Out There?
When someone attempts to impede democracy actions are good things:
Writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was once locked up for refusing to pay a poll tax. He opposed the tax on moral grounds – in a democracy, he argued, a man shouldn’t have to pay to vote….
That night, so the story goes, Thoreau looked up from his jail cell to see Ralph Waldo Emerson…standing outside. Emerson looked at him and asked, “Henry, why are you in there?” Thoreau fired right back: “Ralph, why are you out there?”…
The man outside the bars may be every bit as much a prisoner as the one inside. Or even more so, if his so-called freedom is built on a foundation of denial and lies.
Now, Thoreau was anything but a Christian. That particular idea, though, was downright Biblical. It’s more or less what Jesus is getting at [in John 8:31-47]. Jesus is comparing two kinds of freedom: the outward kind, built on a foundation of happy lies and outright denial, which in the end turns out to be just another kind of slavery; and the inward kind, which comes from a clean conscience before God, and can never be taken away.
Far be it for me to cite The Sequel; I’ll take Bentleyville’s current Presbyterian minister* at his word. And tell anyone who happens to be in the area of One Liberty Plaza this afternoon to say “hello.”
*Full disclosure: one of the previous Ministers is an ex-roommate of mine. That said, the above was found from a Google search, purely a fortuitous coincidence. At least as far as I know.