This is the last week of Lent. You know, that time of year where Christians are supposed to examine their shortfalls in their behaviors with regards to their sins? Yup, that stuff. As a result, let’s examine the foundations of morals as God and the law intended. Our greatest gift from God, our maker, is the gift of life. It is not your fancy car, mansion, your degree(s), or any other earthly rubbish: it is your life itself. All that other stuff is fleeting and when you die, matters not. Now, if you are “offended” or you “don’t believe in God”, then you might as well stop reading, right here, as the rest of this article will upset you. Just because you chose “not to believe in God” that doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. That will be made abundantly clear to you at your death, however. But, I digress…
A Frenchman, Frédéric Bastiat (henceforth, “Freddy”), wrote on these matters back in 1850 in his book La Loi, (The Law). Freddy was a “liberal progressive” back in his time who was raised a Catholic in France under a monarch. That sounds especially nauseating to us Americans, as we left England’s reign back in 1776, under George III, and the thought of a monarchy today is hateful to most real Americans. This is why we live in a Constitutional Republic, not a “democracy” as it is often mislabeled, but Satan loves confusion, so here we are… Freddy writes:
“We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources, we convert them into products and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups. Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing. But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.”
What Freddy wrote back in 1850 still holds true to this day. We are all sinful and some of us will do whatever we want for our own personal gain when wishing to live and prosper at the expense of others. This has got to change. Our greatest gift is our life, from God. That also gives us a responsibility to live it to the best of our ability. Unless we use this time of Lent to reflect on our predilection(s) to sin, nothing will change, as we do not start with examining our own conscience. This is exactly what Lent is all about. I encourage you, as the last week of Lent is upon us, to do just that. See where in your life you have fallen short, pray on that, and amend your life for the good and be a better Christian. It is never too late to change and come to Christ. May God reward you all!
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