Answers to Lawmakers' Objections

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This article was started by Dave Leach R-IA Bible Lover-musician-grandpa (talk) 04:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC). Interaction from other writers will be distinguished from my writing with horizontal lines above and below. Your response to anything you read here is most welcome. Please add your response next to what you are responding to. If your reaction is not to any specific part of this article, please add general comments on the "Discussion" page.

Introduction

So far the objections to the plan of "How States can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts" are not that the plan is legally incorrect or politically unrealistic. Rather, they are mostly justifications for not studying it. If a challenge emerges to the legal correctness of the plan, that will be addressed first. The lawmakers who raised these objections are not identified except by code.

“We don’t need your theories. We are already paying for legal minds to work on it. Thank you.” - RGC

A state lawmaker doesn’t want any information about how to end legal abortion because “we are paying lawyers to figure this out?” What is scary about that statement?

This man is a “Law Maker”. How happy can we be that a law maker is comfortable understanding less about law than a lawyer?

A judge’s role is to understand law only enough to apply it, not enough to write it. A lawyer’s job is only to bend the law to his personal interests. A Law Maker’s job is to write laws which can’t be bent for personal interests, and which can be sensibly applied to life situations.

We are all human, not knowing everything, so it is understandable that a law maker might know less about some areas than others. But this lawmaker doesn’t merely admit how intimidated he is, thinking he cannot understand the laws he enacts as well as a lawyer; he abdicates any responsibility to learn any more than he already knows! He has hired a lawyer to study so he doesn’t have to, so there is no need for him to take his precious time to examine the research I offer him.

Furthermore, it cannot be that any other human, than the one he has hired, may have valuable information on the subject. It is a waste of his effort to even try to understand what he has hired a lawyer to understand.

Not that he is less responsible than the rest of us; he merely articulates what probably most Christians feel. Intimidated. Not qualified. Therefore, not responsible.

Creepy, that not feeling qualified to understand law until a lawyer tells you what it means seems somehow irrelevant to the struggle of so many activists to become Law Makers!

But just as creepy that the rest of us feel so little responsibility to even try to understand law and lawmaking yet without any sense that our competence to elect lawmakers is thereby diminished!

The fact is the Rule of Law requires all of us to think for ourselves at least a little. To the extent we allow ourselves to be intimidated from even trying to question the experts, or from looking for better solutions than the old familiar, comfortable, official solutions which do not work as well as anyone wants, then even if we hire a lawyer to think for us, how will we trust the very lawyer we hired, when an EXALTED JUDGE rules that your LAWYER is wrong?

Even when you hire a lawyer, you need to understand your case as well as you can, or you won’t have any idea whether your lawyer is even doing what you want, and frankly, your lawyer won’t know either.

One other problem is that even if the Law Giver Himself, Jesus, were the one hired by a bunch of lawmakers who expected Jesus to do all their thinking for them, so that we could be confident that everything He advised was a 100% answer to everyone’s prayers, Jesus would still face the resistance of lawmakers who don’t understand what He offers, and who therefore will not support it. Two examples of God having to diminish the blessings He wanted to give mankind are 1 Samuel 8 and Matthew 19:8. By the same principle, any expert advising lawmakers must consider not just what bills should pass but what bills will pass, given not just the resistance of ideological enemies but the mental inertia of friends.

Civilization: specialists serving each other. Civilization is a structure made of of specialties; we develop our own area of expertise and serve others, as others with their specialties serve us. But whether we are hiring an electrician, carpenter, computer geek, or auto repairman, to the extent we don’t understand what we are asking them to do, we are at the mercy of both their integrity and their competence, and moreover, our lack of understanding will create many problems for which we will have to hire them back again and again.

In the case of abortion, law and precedents are so tangled up with twisted rulings which people who know better have been too intimidated to plainly expose, for so long, that the only way to unravel Mr. Death is for a lot of prolifers to jump off the fence about what certain plain words mean, so they can recognize, in significant numbers, the next time judges ignore plain evidence and law, and hold them accountable.

God calls us to think, decide, and act for ourselves. Christianity is a thinking man’s religion. Proverbs is a 31-chapter call to seek wisdom.

Proverbs 4:5 Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. 6 Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. 7 Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. 8 Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. 9 She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee. Proverbs 8:1 Doth not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? 2 She standeth in the top of high places, by the way in the places of the paths. 3 She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. 4 Unto you, O men, I call; and my voice is to the sons of man. 5 O ye simple, understand wisdom: and, ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. 6 Hear; for I will speak of excellent things; and the opening of my lips shall be right things. 7 For my mouth shall speak truth; and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.

By contrast, Hindus don’t think anything is “true”, but rather, all is “illusion”. The goal of their meditation is to remove all cogent thought from their minds.

Ancient Greeks, observing how persuasively “rhetoric” is employed by politicians to promote lies, asked with Pilate, “What is ‘truth’?”

Moslems establish what is “true” by beheading anyone who tries to submit "insulting" evidence.

The Loveliness of Truth. Millions of Christians truly “love” (Proverbs 4:6) truth so much that it is harder for them to renounce it than to bear being tortured to death. Even though no man knows all truth! We Christians, many of us, are willing to die for devotion to the little glimpse of truth we have, even though many of our questions remain unanswered!

Jesus told Thomas, John 20:29 “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Thomas had not lacked for evidence. A man born blind, seeing; a stormy sea walked on; 10,000 or more fed from a single lunch box; three dead people raised to life! Yet Thomas was determined to stay on his safe comfortable fence, about whether Jesus was actually alive, until every last question had been answered – until every last excuse for doubt was vaporized.

Why did Jesus say people are “happy” (the meaning of “blessed”) who don’t stay on their fence that long? Why does God especially value the willingness of people to jump off the fence between conflicting positions before every last question is answered?

The evidence that Jesus died and rose again is overwhelming, but only for those willing to look at, and think about, the evidence. (For example.) The fact that Jesus did that, and no one else did, proves that what Jesus says about God, and about what happens beyond death, is more reliable than what anyone else says. But it only proves that to those who think about that evidence.

Why does God want us to think? Why did God leave Adam and Eve alone with the devil, or at least so they thought? Why wasn’t God right there visibly, refuting the devil – better yet, silencing if not killing him? Why does God leave our faith at the mercy of our thinking?

A condition of Heaven is helping the least of Jesus’ brethren.

Matthew 25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:....45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 1 John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. 15 Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. 16 Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

Jesus’ brethren are destitute and tyrannized partly because of natural conditions, and partly because of evil within humans. Delivering the destitute is therefore as complicated as humans are. Since we are humans that means delivering those in need stretches us to our full capacity. It requires thinking. It requires sorting through the evidence for and against each step of how to proceed.

The American model for Christian activism is half a dozen people per issue per state becoming expert on an issue, sending out fundraising letters with no more wisdom than will fit in four pages, in order to get salaries so the half dozen can keep studying, but who are too busy to process the flood of suggestions they receive from people who are not credentialed, qualified, certified, official experts.

This system rules out better solutions than the old familiar, comfortable, official solutions which do not work as well as anyone wants. But it is the preferred system. It has a very important advantage.

The Advantage of old, tested, official, failed solutions. This system spares most people from responsibility for deep, independent thought. Deep thinking – especially when the only people it benefits is other people – is costly.

Even when we are in the best of health, deep thought can be as physically exhausting as heavy manual labor. When we are sick, or in pain, the very idea of thinking deeply just for the benefit of others can be quite offensive.

Independent thinking, by definition, is lonely. It separates us from friends and even, sadly, sometimes, family. Matthew 19:29, Luke 14:26. (The Greek word μισει translated “hate”, means “love less”.) To independently understand some truth which is critical to helping others, and then to articulate it openly, both because you love truth and because you want to bless others, makes you the target of those who want to continue oppressing those you want to help, as well as the target of those who share your concern for the oppressed but are not ready to take the action which your truths demand.

That’s why God values those who are ready to jump off their fences and help, without waiting until reality sends fire ants up every last board. God wants Heaven full of people who love each other so much they are willing to suffer when that will help.

The Solution to Old, Tested, Failed Solutions. God offers a solution in one word: in Greek, He wrote the word, εκκλεσιαν. We translate the word “church”, but we define the word quite differently.

By the word, we today mean a large crowd gathered to hear one man speak, where decisions are rarely made by the group, nor action taken whose effects reach very far beyond the group. For example, action needed to deliver those being led away to slaughter with the blessing of government, Proverbs 24:10-12, may not be addressed, nor disagreement resolved through reasoning, nor action steps strategized on church premises, because that is both “politics” and “controversial”.

By contrast, the Greek word εκκλεσιαν meant, to Greeks, the gatherings of all the people of the city for the sole purpose of making political decisions as a body, with no single voice dominating the rest. This view of εκκλεσιαν is supported by an honest reading of 1 Corinthians 14, the Bible’s most detailed description of the format of a worship service, in which seven different verses call upon “all” to verbally contribute.

Obviously, were this what we mean by “church” today, the world would be blessed by a forum where real solutions would be discussed, vetted, perfected, and implemented, along with the personal spiritual development necessary to shine Light out where it is darkest. Fellowship would become a laboratory where participants could practice reasoning with each other in love, building the relationship skills needed to heal marriages, and to reason with unbelievers to bring them into the fold. “Church” would become CHURCH, a lighthouse for the land, an engine of healing for the culture.

Meanwhile. Until that next step in the progress of Daniel’s “stone...cut out without hands” (Daniel 2:34 – compare with Luke 22:25-27) takes root, consider that my book, “How States can Outlaw Abortion in a Way that Survives Courts” may not be the only original idea or solution offered by Christians struggling to get their solutions looked at by the very people praying for them.

Consider, when someone offers you an opportunity that is so close to matching your bravest prayers that you are suspicious that it is “too good to be true”, that God explicitly promises happy endings that are “too good” to believe, but which are indeed true. Romans 8:28, 1 Corinthians 2:9. Be suspicious, instead, that you and your friends may be rejecting God’s answers to your very own boldest prayers, just because they are gift wrapped in hard work, a little persecution, or are delivered by a messenger you would be ashamed to bring to your country club.

You say you don’t know that the solution being offered to you will work? Until you have actually studied it enough to be certain it will not work, and cannot be made to work with some attention and prayer, you may be frustrating God’s efforts to bless you.

Get off the fence. Open it. Test it. See if it is real. Think for yourself. If the experts aren’t paying attention to it, find out if they have good reason, or are merely suffering from mental inertia.

That is a process that will expose you to a lot of nonsense, but at least you will thereby confirm that it is nonsense. That is also the process by which you will finally recognize God’s answer to your prayers – the means to finally bring down the mountains of evil (Matthew 21:21-22) that have tempted you to ask why a “God of Love” would allow them. You will learn the answer to that question: God has left them there for you to have something to pull down, to fill your own life with meaning.