Justice Kennedy got to the heart of Health Care Reform-it signals an anti-American shift away from the philosophy of government by the consent of the governed to that which requires the State over the individual. The basic premise of America’s governmental system is the inalienable nature of human rights provided by a creator entity higher than all government making the human person inviolable.
Not only do we have a colossal economic dilemma which exists in large part because of a consumer culture but that culture is driven by a materialistic philosophy (also known as humanism where man is the center and measure of all things in the universe and not God). The manner in which materialists treat each other and determine the value of a human is through a moral system known as utilitarianism which attempts to maximize physical pleasure and minimize physical pain because physical or material reality is the only reality. It is precisely this humanism that has been made the official position of government, of education, of medicine, of business, and practically speaking even of many churches. When this happens the moral authority shifts from an objective external code (the Bible) to a subjective social code determined by that small set of powerful elites who comprise government. The resulting change in the belief about the nature of man first appears subtle and maybe even compassionate but nevertheless forces a shift in human rights. The once inalienable (intrinsic and non-transferrable) nature of individual rights superseding those of the State morph as derived from and subject to the State. The healthcare reform act is all about this most basic of issues and many are missing it.
If the Supreme court decides that the healthcare reform act is constitutional specifically with regards to any individual’s inability to refuse purchase without penalty it will be the official watershed moment in American history when democratic liberty transformed into democratic tyranny. And it is not only America that hangs in the balance. This will signal a shift in international affairs as to what government is and how despotic States, not nations of free peoples, interact.
But alas, it seems the church barely notices the coming civil Tsunami. Our minds may be so far out to sea in the leaky dingy of our Christian-hedonism it could pass listlessly under us traveling at bone-crushing speeds toward the shore of our current reality.
There is one wild card in this whole thing and that is ‘the people.’ Is the moral fabric of America now so thin as to create mass chaos such as happened in Louisiana during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Or can we together somehow return to simpler, smaller communities full of people who govern their own behavior according to the Judeo-Christian ethic? Either way the only answer is a Christian revival-a revival of theism-a belief system that by definition stands in antithesis to secular humanism. And so I remind myself with a little comfort that God’s Kingdom is not of this world knowing that the reconciling work of the Messiah continues and does so through His disciples-the fodder for both martyrdom and spiritual fecundity.