Defending Domestic Rights

A "modest proposal" for defending domestic freedoms...

AMERICANS FOR DOMESTIC RIGHTS

Domestic choices are deeply personal and often agonizing. Imagine how much more traumatic these choices must be when the government threatens to invade every home’s privacy and condemn responsible household-heads as a criminals for personal choices made within private households!

As Americans our domestic rights are profoundly important to us. Our homes become expressions of who we are. For many years American adults have enjoyed domestic freedoms. The autonomy of our domestic space is personal and sacred. We have assumed our homes to be as safe from desecration by outsiders as our own bodies. Many American adults even allow minor dependents to develop within the inner-sanctum of their domestic space. Each adult chooses how to manage his or her own home environment, and all such choices are deeply private. Americans appreciate the diversity of domestic expressions individuals choose for their lives.

In recent years, however, domestic rights foes who aim to usurp individuals’ private domestic choices and replace them with state-mandated moral codes have been gaining a foothold in government. Every American’s domestic freedoms now stand in jeopardy! Right now there are opponents of domestic rights in Congress who seek to label men and women’s personal choices as “morally intolerable” and “child abuse” and use that excuse to give the government the right to invade your private domestic space. Their anti-privacy agenda even goes so far as requesting that neighbors and health care workers become informants, reporting individuals’ personal home choices to governmental agencies that would have the authority to invade your home if your domestic choices on the management of your pre-adults doesn’t conform to official state-legislated morals.

Moralist zealots and political special interests seek to thwart the private choices of responsible adults and subvert your domestic freedoms to the alleged rights of dependent domestic minors, although the law does not recognize them as developed enough to be adults, and study after study has established that most minors (particularly the younger pre-adults) are incapable of self-sustainment independent of a domestic environment.

As the government ominously threatens to legislate puritanical morality and restrict even more domestic freedoms, many Americans do not speak up because they themselves would not choose to roughly handle or terminate their own domestic minors. What well-meaning Americans must realize is that criminalization of any adult's choices in the inner-sanctum of his or her own home is a violation of the privacy and domestic rights of every one of us! If we stand by silently the Constitutional right to privacy, the right to own property, the freedom to choose, and the protection against unlawful searches and seizures will be completely eroded in order to legislate the scruples of religious fanatics, social extremists, and special interest groups.

Please stand up for your courageous fellow Americans who even today face public humiliation, confiscation of their private homes and minors, and even imprisonment for exercising their right to make difficult domestic decisions! Educate yourself and those around you about your constitutional domestic rights and the ongoing crusade by politicians and special interests to restrict those rights. Let people know that you trust American adults to make domestic choices without government violating their homes. Write your congressman or congresswoman to let them know that you support domestic rights and urge them to oppose any legislation that would allow the government to dictate the personal choices of men and women in the privacy of their own homes. Join Americans for Domestic Rights today and let you voice be heard!

My home.
My choices.

Covenant Confession

Seven years ago when I was graduating from Covenant College I was elected to give a “senior talk” at a student assembly. What I gave was a confession. I wish that I could say I have matured so much that none of this still applies to me, but most of it does:

Four years ago I decided to go to a little Presbyterian college on a mountain. I was convinced I had chosen the best Christian college in the country, and the school was even willing to give me a scholarship for being a "Christian Leader."

Now 4 years later I am graduating from this school. I am more intelligent and more thoughtful than when I arrived. I have a better conception of my faith and I am much more capable of giving reasons for that faith intellectually. My actual faith in Jesus Christ, however, is weaker after four years at Covenant College. My “first love” has dwindled into weak flicker, well-concealed by intellect and apathy. I have not been alone in this coldness. I have sat with some of you and laughed at the naive idealists within each incoming freshmen class. We assure ourselves that Christian zeal must be a sign of either stupidity or hypocrisy, embarrassed that once we were that naive as well.


Yes, I have contributed to this attitude here on campus. Covenant’s goal of producing intelligent, thoughtful Christians gives us the perfect opportunity to feel self-righteous. We look down on our zealous, conservative evangelical brethren and label them as unintelligent or intolerant. We look down on the rest of the world as heathens and sinners, although we envy their ability to sin so freely. Our tolerance and open-mindedness is not the Christ-like sort, but a justification for excusing our own sinfulness. When we are forced to acknowledge our own apathy toward truly loving and serving Christ, we turn Reformed theology into a scapegoat, and blame those who teach us for our own sinful attitudes.


I have fallen into the common mistake of forgetting that our project of making Christ preeminent in our thinking is only a small part of our calling to love and serve Christ with our entire being and live a life of total dedication to Him. Too often at Covenant we are intellectual Christians for the sake or our own pride rather than to truly glorify God. The intellectual mission of the college is not the problem. The problem is that we are usually either hypocritical or apathetic (pick your poison). It is no wonder that so many among us have lost their faith, when we try to stand up before each other by our own power rather acknowledging our total dependence on Jesus.


So did I choose the wrong college? No, I chose the right college. I still believe that Covenant is one of the best educations in the country. I cannot blame my sins, my apathy, my pride, or my lack of prayer on “the system” here at Covenant. My attitude is not the fault of the chapel program, or reformed theology, or contract, or the influence of you my fellow students, or of intellectualism, although I have blamed all of these things. It is my own fault. I have not loved Christ as I should. I have judged myself against my fellow Christians, and used their sins to excuse my own. It is easier to look at myself in the context of other fallen people. But if I see myself as judged against the righteousness of Christ, I am forced to admit my dependence and look only on Him for mercy. This should not only force me to “integrate my faith and learning.” It should pervade my entire being and move me in ways that right now it does not. Thankfully Jesus Christ is faithful even in my faithlessness. He has seen my heart both in the good and the bad.


So, I must come before you and apologize. In a couple weeks I will graduate and leave Covenant. Over these 4 years I have received a substantial scholarship for supposedly being a “leader for Christ” here, but my attitude has often been contrary to the cause of Christ. Yes, I have kept contract for the most part, and I was a leader in the Homeless Ministry, and I have integrated faith and learning, but these things are only filthy rags to carry away with me. In retrospect I wish I had been more open and honest about my sinful tendencies, and I wish I had been more zealous for Christ. I wish I had counted all things loss for the value of knowing Jesus Christ.


In my apathy I have often realized that many confessions from Christians have elements of self-congratulation and false-piety. I fear that this senior testimony is no exception. But I pray that Christ’s grace is what you see. Please do not fear being zealous for Christ, do not fear acknowledging your own sins and asking for forgiveness. It does not make a Christian anti-intellectual or hypocritical to love Christ that deeply. I beg you not to look back at graduation and realize that you have not loved Christ, even though He has loved and sustained you this whole time.


Dear Covenant, I must thank you. I should be grateful for this fine education I have received, and the professors who regularly put up with our apathy and self-righteousness. I must thank my brothers on Catacombs, I have learned more from these last 3 years with you than all my core classes. I am sorry that I have often not been Christ-like to you. I must also thank those of you who have been my dear friends here. You know who you are. You have shown Jesus to me in so many ways that you may not even know. I have admired you and been reminded of this faith to which I have too often been faithless. I have loved you all, or loved you as best I could through my pride and sin. I wish I would have been less interested in impressing you, and more in serving you. As I leave this place it is you who I will carry with me.

The Wages of Nihilism

Today's news is sad but not surprising. It seems that meaningless violence is the hallmark of our generation's nihilism:

"The ideal young revolutionary of our generation is like an uncaged animal that unleashes blind lust or fury at anything that nears it. What other kind of revolutionary could we expect in a world with nothing worth believing in? It is only the insightful revolutionaries who truly identify... the oppressor within themselves, in their own unrestrained passions. What else to do but turn that limitless fury in on itself? So they unleash all fury on their own angry selves, often killing a schoolyard full of random classmates with them, creating a horror so beautiful and rebellious that the rest of us can only watch with awe and envy. The school shooter is not an isolated phenomenon, he is the final product of the Revolution."

Continue reading "Generation X and the Revolution"

The Blind Mechanic

A few weeks back, I saw a very thin man being wheeled into the ER. I nodded toward him and smiled. He nodded back. He was not my patient so I went back to work on my own patients. About an hour later I noticed the monitors and said to a nurse, “You should check him, his pulse is dropping.”


The nurse looked up, “Oh, that's okay. He's dying. Terminal cancer, he just came in for pain control. He's comfortable now, so we're letting him die with his family.”


I noticed several young women around him who I assumed to be his daughters holding the man's hands. “Overall not a bad way to go, painless and being loved,” I thought and returned to my work.


Physicians see death so often that it becomes familiar. We are Mechanics of life and death, tinkering with the machinery of the body everyday. We intervene to keep the machine running, but eventually the mechanism always becomes unstable and breaks down.


Contrary to what you might imagine, doctors have no deepened understanding of death.


Doctors talk a lot about their own deaths, but not like you might talk about it. They don't discuss the meaning of death, or how it makes them appreciate the beauty of life. Seeing so much death, doctors mentally amass large collections of different ways people die. Doctors discuss the pros and cons of different ends to life, like other people might debate which car or computer is best: “Not a bad way to go.” “I hope I don't go like that.” “I want to go quickly.” “No, I want to go slow so I can set things in order.” “I want to feel nothing, just load me up with pain meds.” “No I don't mind hurting some so I can be aware of my family visiting me.” “I won't let them run a code on me if I'm old.” “I would prefer a sudden heart attack, dead before I hit the ground.” “No, I want to fade into dementia and never know what's happening.” “Renal failure isn't so bad a way, you just fall asleep and don't wake up.” We actually have such conversations, pulling various deaths from our collections and comparing them. Since we tinker with the mechanism of death we think we understand it.


Doctors mistake familiarity for understanding. We mistake the end of our job for the end of the matter.


Even we physicians of faith often think like nihilists. I struggle to remember that I know more than what I see. Every time I recite the Apostle's Creed I affirm that “I believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the life everlasting.” Still I must tear these blinders from my eyes to see with the eyes of faith. My perspective is limited, and my blinders that help me in my work sometimes make me blind. There is so much more to life and beyond life than this these faulty machines and ways the are repaired or broken.


*Note: information about the patient mentioned above is intentionally inaccurate to protect identity and privacy.

Places forget people

Places have a way of forgetting people.

As of today the place we have called “our home” now belongs to someone else. Place we inhabit become a subconscious part of our identity.

Places, however, have no memory. This house will not remember Joy and me or the happy years we spent here. To the people who bought 310 Union St it is just an empty space for them to use, just as it was for us when we moved in. As I was cleaning the basement I came across old writing in cement:

“DEC. 5, 1977 LAURA

I had seen the scrawled letters before, but as I am packed to leave I became curious about this person who had lived in my home, writing her name in the drying cement almost 30 years ago –just a few weeks before I was born. I wonder where Laura is now, or even if she is still living. Had she been a girl she would still likely be in her 40's now. If she was an adult at the time she could be quite elderly now. I wonder how her life turned out. I wonder if she remembers scrawling her name in wet concrete of this basement three decades ago?

The impersonal nature of the world always feels cruel to relational creatures such as ourselves. We want the physical world to remember us, to hold some evidence of our lives. Perhaps this relational nature even more than superstition makes us imagine ghosts of people who lived in our spaces long ago still inhabit them. This is the reason we leave monuments bearing our names throughout the world? Of course, none of this matters. People in the future will look back on our names as dull and empty symbols.

No object or place can maintain a relationship. We all eventually move on. A few hundred years from now and no one will know that any of us ever existed. Those who are remembered only can only hope to become lifeless notes in historical records –a historical figure: the exact opposite of a person, who lives, and loves, and hopes. Even still we hold on tightly...

I marked on the pavement beside Laura's inscription:

“JOHN & JOY: 2004-2007”

My Politics

Almost a year ago I mentioned the Consistent Life Movement as a idea that intrigued me. I've thought about it a good bit and I am fairly certain now I have converted to Consistent Life Politics:

My ideas about politics and policy have been changing. While this shift in my thinking began long before I discovered the Consistent Life website, it has been comforting to realize that others are arriving at the same place. At this point the main focus of my voting and civic involvement is changing ours to a society that does not kill.

Unfortunately most social/political dialog in our nation appears to be mostly on economics (Capitalism vs. Socialism) or citizen rights and responsibilities (Conservativism vs. Liberalism). While economics and rights are important, I believe we lose sight of more central values. All these popular ideologies seem to assume that intentionally destroying other human beings (in one form or another) is necessary for achieving social good. Looking at a history of civilization there are a few bloodthirsty madmen, but many more have been killed by people with good motives believing a better world would be created by removing certain others.

“We would be safer if we kill those who might attack us in the future... Our lives would be better if we have the right to kill a fetus... We would be upholding justice by killing a murderer... We can be kind to a suffering or disabled patient by killing them... Think of all the cures we might get from killing unwanted embryos... The world would be a good place if we could just get rid of the Jews, Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Capitalists, Communists, Homosexuals, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, etc.”

Before you know it creating a better world ends up making the world much worse. More than any Right vs. Left political allegiance, I have begun wish we could change into a society that agreed to kill no other human being no matter how insignificant or bad that person might be.

In the post about Hussein's execution Chris McCartney asked “But was it Just?” Yes, as a Christian I have to acknowledge the justice of “the wages of sin is death.” My entire hope for redemption is based on an execution/sacrifice. (Although, the fact that Scripture teaches that all who ever sin deserve death makes me wonder how such just killing could every be accomplished by any society) Morality is different from policy, although they should be related. Recognition that greed, gluttony, smoking, or adultery are wrong does not necessitate that it is good for our society to make them crimes. Similarly believing that a despicable person or group of people deserves do die is quite different from claiming we should kill them. Similarly, it may be true that it would be “better” for many people if we killed an inconvenient minority. Any benefit (real or imagined) or removal of threat no matter how great does not justify the crimes we commit against those few. If we could cure poverty by eliminating the poor, could we really imagine we had done any real good for our society?

At this point the only justification I could imagine for killing another human would be self-defense (in the face immediately attack: not preemptively or retroactively) and even then, as Chris pointed out, we should be "saddened by death even if it is justified," rather than celebrating such violence.

As a convert to Consistent Life politics, I am no Utopian who imagines that somehow making these changes in our policy would suddenly create a society of perfect harmony and happiness. The human condition will always be deeply flawed, and humans will still suffer and someday die. I also recognize that spiritual redemption is far more valuable physical life. These policy changes, however, could be attainable if the political will existed. If it is the duty of a citizen to improve his government, then spreading and supporting Consistent Life is what I will do for my country.

I don't know if I yet have a great argument that would convince others that it is good policy for our government and society to abstain from all killing. (I realize that a majority of my argument above is “slippery slope”) I still ask myself how much of my shift towards supporting total non-violence is based on personal emotion. Over the recent years I have seen a lot of people die, which has no doubt affected me. I also wonder how my feelings on lethal force might be now if the war in Iraq had gone as smoothly and Iraq were now stable? I wonder if my own fear of losing the person I love the most (my wife) and the prospect of having children of my own have lessened my ability to accept the sacrifice of any life? Emotion does play a role in my change of mind, but in whose mind is emotion not a part of understanding truth?

While I still have a lot of contemplation on this subject to do, I feel certain enough to declare that these are my politics. As far as I know I am in a very small minority, and I must give up on finding any home in Democratic or Republican Parties. But several hundred years ago those who opposed slavery were a similarly small minority, and now the almost the whole world has accepted their policies.

Weariness

I've been in the hospital a lot lately (hence the lack of recent posts). It is interesting to reflect that my formal medical training ends in 4 months. Nearing the end of almost a decade dedicated to becoming a physician I feel more weary than anything. I came in an idealistic young man, certain there could be no better way to "help people" than being a doctor.


I still love the actual experience of caring for my patients, but in the real world paperwork is the majority of my job. About 60-70% my day is filling out forms and notes documenting medical care. All this paperwork is governed by so many laws and regulations that mistakes in paperwork could end up hurting my patients or having me lose my medical license or get sued. I still hold to the ideals that drove me into this field, but as I look for a job I find that there are very few places that I can practice the kind of medicine that I had hoped. Even volunteer opportunities to serve seem out of reach. (I recently got turned down by two places I where offered to work a month for free.)


The disconcerting reality is that this is more a job than a calling, an often exhausting and frustrating job. In this job most of my time and energy will end up being put into insuring the practice I join stays financially stable and doesn't get sued. Do well at this and you might get 10% of your time to do that "making a difference in people's lives" stuff I dreamed about as an 19 year-old when I suffered through Organic Chemistry in order to graduate pre-med.


A decade ago I had seemingly endless energy and idealism. Now I'm tired, in debt, and skeptical about how much good a doctor can actually do. I can't help but wonder, if I might have invested the last 10 years of my life better doing something else.


Hopefully, this is just a phase I'm going through --the uncertainty of starting out to practice on my own after so many years of training. The idealist and optimistic 19 year-old inside of me says that once I start practicing I'll find out again that I love this job and wouldn't want to do anything else. I hope he's right.

The Death of Community

My sense of isolation after talking to the homeless man the other day reminded me of this that I wrote about a year ago. Perhaps a bit more organized discussion of modern isolationism:

Modern advances in transportation and communication have changed many of the basic ways humans live together, by giving people the ability to move and speak long distances with ease. For much of history a most human society was composed of small tribes or towns. People rarely left family and friends behind. The people someone interacted with and saw everyday were the people he had known his whole life.

This is no longer the case. Today the adult American moves many times in a lifespan, and lives far from his extended family and old friends. The people he works around are not the people he lives near, and neither his co-workers or his neighbors are his friends. Our American ideal of "individualism" teaches us that, despite our loves and friendships, life is essentially a solitary act. Our modern cities are usually not large communities, but places where thousands of individuals live in isolation. TV and entertainment distract us from spending time with each other. Instant communications allow us to connect with those we know who are thousands of miles away, but it also allows opportunities to hide ourselves. Long ago an isolated human was an exception; now isolation is the rule.

The isolated modern man can become a master of disguise. He can hide his pain, his failure, his disappointments quite easily. He can present different versions of himself at work, at home, with neighbors, in church, and to distant family and friends thousands of miles away. This is something people years ago who were rooted in tightly-knit communities could not have done very easily. The isolated individual at first embraces this isolation. It protects him from showing his weakness and flaws to others, but before long he realizes that there is no longer anyone who knows or understands him. Before he knows it he has descended into loneliness and despair.

Suspicion and Isolation

Last night I saw a homeless man bundled on a bench downtown, a rare sight here in Kingsport. It was already well below freezing and late. It was obvious the old man would spend the night outside. I remembered that as a younger man I would have gone to help a suffering person, but older and more suspicious I went to my car. I had plenty of space in my warm home, but strangers could be dangerous.

As I drove away I realized that with my wife out of town the standard excuse that “I can't endanger my family to help a stranger” couldn't be used. The fact that I might leave an old man to suffer to defend only my property made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. It was more shame than kindness that made me turn my car around.

“Hi, do you have a place to sleep?”

“No.”

“If you need a warm place to stay tonight, you can stay at my house.”

At first the old man seemed to smile then frowned again. “No thank you.” It was odd to realize that this man who I had so distrusted also viewed me as a potentially dangerous stranger.

“You sure? It's pretty cold.” He nodded. I waved good-bye, “Okay. God Bless.”

The grizzled old man pulled his coat tighter around him. “I have no god but myself. Thank you though.”

I drove home alone, and watched TV until I fell asleep. I used to hate TV, but these days it is my most frequent companion. I'm sure his night on the bench was miserably cold. It is tragic how isolated we have become in the modern world. For social creatures we are extraordinarily distrustful and detached from each other. We shun each other and even shun God. Our individualism doesn't result in much happiness, just coldness.

The Execution of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein was executed for crimes against humanity last night. Certainly Hussein is an example of the worst sort of criminal, but I cannot help but feel this was pitiful and unnecessary. None of the evil things he did are undone by his execution. He would have died eventually and answered to God for his sins without us taking his life.

In my job I see a lot of people die. I watched a man die at the hospital yesterday. My response to the news was the same as I felt in the hospital: Sorrow. Even with my political opposition to the death penalty, I had not expected to be saddened by the death of someone as horrible as Hussein. I suppose my eyes are too full of seeing death. I want no part in killing, even those who “deserve death.”

The Internet and Identity (Dishonesty in blogging)

With all the fuss these days about personal information on the internet, it is interesting to reflect on the "internet self" many of us create for friends or strangers to see. It seems all this self-expression thrown out into the voyeuristic world of the web, often serves more to hide one's self than reveal. Here is a piece of my journal from a few months back:

It is odd to realize, now that I have my website for publishing thoughts I don't write nearly as much as I did before. Each thing I write is analyzed as it is written: How would this fit on my web page? I seem to have lost that freedom of writing without the burden of a potential audience.

My site is personal, but it is not private. While I never cared too much about my privacy, I do care what people think of me. I know people who read it. I want them to continue to think well of me. I want people who visit my site to find it impressive. All the thoughts are mine, but they are a tiny fraction of what I have written in my life. I choose things I think might be interesting or thought-provoking for those who would visit the site.

But isn't it also true that I choose things that might make me look more intelligent, honest, moral, and artistic than I actually am? The things I keep out of the internet version of myself is the lazy, hedonistic, petty, contradictory, and selfish. The digital "Jonathan Davis" contained in Google, Blogger, and MySpace is, I fear, quite different from the man my wife knows. It is perhaps a fiction similar to the "good doctor" I created my intern year. I think I am growing closer now to the doctor I had hoped to be now. Will the discussions on my blog improve me in a similar way? As a young doctor I think the concealment was a necessary part of the process. But is there any need for concealment on the web other than my sense of pride?

I remind myself that I created my site for discussion of ideas not revelation of character flaws. Private writing and prayer to God is the proper place for confession of sins. Neither I do enough of now. I also doubt the honesty of what I have written now, considering I am likely to eventually post it on my site.

Monty Python and the Modern World

Perhaps the Brits have the most interesting take on the world in which we live. And now for something completely different:

I just figured out what makes Monty Python so much better than any other light comedy. How sad it is! Beneath all the silly absurdity there is a deep, brooding sadness. What makes all the stupid jokes and acts funny is that it is so self-conscious. An idiotic joke is told and immediately it is ridiculed for its idiocy, then the ridiculer is himself revealed as another bad joke. The show becomes fluid as one skit flows into another, as the characters try to escape each ridiculous skit looking for one that is finally funny, but none of them ever work. The result is hilarious. They make fun of their own inability to make anything really funny. It is like watching an obese person make fat jokes; you laugh even harder because of how pitiful it is. You laugh because you are embarrassed.

Monty Python is the ultimate modern comedy. Ancient Comedies ended with joy and celebration. Monty Python mocks the whole idea of joy. It mocks the idea that a man could be whole or wise.

I had previously tried to explain my deep appreciation for Monty Python humor by saying that it is good satire. The problem is that it isn't good satire. (Anyway I couldn't figure out how satire that mostly focused on British society before my birth would be my favorite comedy.) Satire is never as funny as this. Satire has hope. Satire takes the moral high ground as it laughs at the wrongs of the world. Monty Python is a satire of a satire of a satire ...an endless labyrinth of ridicule. They may laugh at the world but not from a vantage point of wisdom. These modernists are most acutely aware they have no access to wisdom. They demonstrate the absurdity of the world, then they laugh at the absurdity of their own demonstration. In the end the joke is on you. You laugh at yourself. You laugh at the absurdity of yourself. You don't laugh because you are happy; you laugh because you are self-conscious.

Monty Python is more than simple comedy. It is a visual demonstration of the philosophies of despair. Generations before last century wouldn't have understood or laughed. We laughed harder than our parents. Most likely future generations will laugh deeper than us. They may laugh so hard that they cry.

*For more Monty Python you really should see The Spanish Inquisition Show, The Silliest Sketch Ever, or the Philosophy World Cup.