Thoughts on the Constitution

I suppose today's thoughts are a bit off the usual path I try to plod along, but although their subject matter relates more to the ways of the world rather than the Way to the Kingdom, it still has a substantial impact on how we live our lives. Even though Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, as Christians we must still live our lives in the world. We are not called to seclusion, for that would bar us from carrying out Christ's commission to evangelize all nations (Mt 28:19-20). And so it makes perfect sense to think about the human constructs we have put in place to govern how we live together as citizens. After all, you can't "render unto Caesar" unless you know what rightfully falls under Caesar's governance.

As Americans, of course, we don't accept the authority of kings or emperors or Caesars; for us, the people are sovereign, the people are Caesar. To support this claim and to assist us as we act on it, we have a Constitution. And it's this document that I'd like to focus on today. Actually, I won't focus too much on the document itself; rather, I intend to address how it is received and understood (or misunderstood) by those who live under its guidance.


Perhaps the most apparent truth about our Constitution is that it does not, in any way, describe our nation as a democracy. And yet I would wager that most Americans, if asked if the United States were a democracy, would answer, "Yes." And they would, of course, be very wrong. We are rather a constitutional republic, in which the people elect representatives who, in theory at least, carry out our wishes under the constraints we have placed on them and ourselves through our Constitution.

The founding fathers were a remarkable group of men, for despite their willingness to engage in revolutionary activity, they were also capable and wise political philosophers. Their application of this wisdom led them to be extremely leery of pure democracy. Indeed, they found the idea of simple majority rule abhorrent. For pure democracy, without any governing reference, leads to governance by the feeling of the moment. Whatever the majority wants at any given moment becomes law. It is restrained by neither precedence nor morality. Minority rights are ignored, leading to persecution. The majority comes to realize that it can vote itself special privileges and benefits, leading to corruption. And, ultimately, pure democracy leads to anarchy, violence, and the nation's destruction.

Driven by this awareness, the founders worked long and hard to create a system of governance to protect the nation (i.e., the sovereign people) from lawmakers and law enforcers...and from the people themselves. And so we have the Constitution. It is not a permanent document, fixed and unable to be changed; but the framers made it very difficult to change. This was intentional. By making the process difficult and time-consuming, problems related to any intended changes would more likely be identified and solved, ensuring the original intent was not subverted and that the people's rights were not undermined.

This process, indeed the Constitution itself, has upset a lot of people over the past two centuries. And these naysayers are still with us. They have pretty much ceased their efforts to change the Constitution itself, opting instead to take the easier path and infiltrate the courts with like-minded people. There is no need to change the actual words of the Constitution if five of nine Supreme Court Justices can simply agree to re-interpret those words to mean something else. The results of their reinterpretations have led to radical changes in how we live and will no doubt lead to serious consequences for our nation.

Religion, for example, has been almost totally excised from the public square, despite the fact that the courts, for the first 150 years of our nation's history, expressed near unanimous acceptance of its presence and its benefits. Even worse, abortion, the willful killing of an unborn American has become a constitutional "right" without any constitutional support whatsoever. And so it goes...

The point, I suppose, is that regardless of the knowledge and wisdom that formed the Constitution, and its built-in constraints and limits designed to protect our God-given rights, it is still a human document and is, therefore, subject to all the human frailties that afflict any human institution. We should not place our faith in any human activity, but instead look to the Kingdom. By this I don't mean that we should abandon efforts to live together in society in a way that is fitting and proper for disciples of Jesus Christ. No, indeed, for we are called by our Lord to transform the world. And that means we must continue to sow the seeds of hope in our confused and confusing world. But the hope, the real hope that we yearn for, will not be found in the things of this world. Our only hope is in the Kingdom. Come, Lord Jesus!