God and Country From "Write On" by Peter S. Ferrara, 2006 One of my strongest childhood memories is being told without words to clean up my room. My mother would stand at the doorway to my private world and say nothing. But I could see by the exasperated expression on her face as she glanced about what I was meant to do. Now, half a century and a lifetime of experience later, I look at this country-- our room-- and feel my mother's gaze once again. Why is America so messy? Who will clean it up? Why is the process never finished? For the child I once was, cleaning my room meant simply putting away what I had taken out. It also meant making my bed, putting dirty clothes in a laundry bag, doing my homework, washing my face and brushing my teeth. And yet, every time I did all of these things, somehow my room and my person would again become unkempt and I found myself resenting the endless repetition of self care. So it is in this great and perilous experiment in which we live together. America was created by men and women who believed they could better manage their lives than could a distant monarchy from across the Atlantic. What these pioneers in self-government dreamed of was a country which had freedoms never before imagined in the history of mankind. These were visionary people who had a great knowledge of history. They had studied the teachings of the ancients who had invented the very idea of democracy. They appreciated what the Jews set forth in their radical notion of a single God in a world of idolatry, the accepted and strictly-enforced worship of objects as gods. The folks who thought up America knew that men could have lofty ideals and be venal and susceptible to base instincts at the same time. Because they knew history better than most of us ever will, they understood the strength of the dynamic tension between patriotism and self-interest. If you build a fortress, it is easy to think you are going to be immune from attack. Yet, before the cement has even dried, your fortification comes under assault from wind, water, weather, and wear. America was built when the human spirit yearned to be free from tyranny. Over the course of two and a half centuries-- a mere blink of the cosmic eye at the top of the pyramid on the back of our dollar bill-- this fortress has been tested time and again by the forces of change. Like the cycle of birth and death which is life, America must be constantly re-invented. We stand at a peculiar yet familiar crossroad. One signpost points to what people believe is a path to heaven. Another sign indicates that this country must follow a rule of law conceived and enforced by humans. How can we go down two different, divergent roads at the same time? Those who say that their interpretation of God's law must be what we follow-- the Constitution be damned-- feel that with the Bible in their hand and their Savior in their hearts this path alone is the road to national salvation. Those who say that we must govern ourselves with the tools the Founding Fathers gave us, tools which arose not from the Bible but from English Common Law, are confident that theirs is the way which will lead to the fulfillment of the American Dream. Who's right and who's wrong and does it matter? It is confusion about the nature of dynamic tension that confounds people of principle on both sides of this profoundly difficult issue. What we continue to see right here at home over posting the Ten Commandments in our courthouse typifies the national dilemma. Proclaiming America a Christian country may satisfy the souls of some, but it also clouds the minds and hardens the hearts of many. Equally, claiming that God has no place in our system of society turns our backs against the very wind under our eagle's wings. How to resolve this difficulty? If America is to survive, and I believe that is what is at stake, we are going to have to clean up our room. I believe that we must be a nation which aspires to equal justice under our Constitutional laws. Anything less is a betrayal of our basic rights. It is to our laws and not to our belief in God that we owe our citizenship. Yet those same laws were and are being written by people of faith with few exceptions. Our leaders rightly draw upon their sense of the divine as they lead us. The lesson of our history is that these two competing forces-- the divine and the secular-- must be harnessed in balance in order to propel our destiny. Understand that America does not rule the world. What we live in is an international cauldron of competing ideas and systems and religions which, when disharmony reigns, leads to war and cataclysm. Perhaps it was once acceptable to be rigid and supremely confident of one's own views when all we could do was slaughter humanity in bits and pieces. If it ever was so, that time is long since passed. Today we have the capacity to end life on the planet. Momentous miscalculation can destroy every living thing here, taking with it the air we breathe and the thin atmosphere which is all that stands between us and a cold, harsh, and so far otherwise lifeless universe. What we do now will have a lasting impact on the future possibility of freedom and of life. It is a heavy responsibility. Nobody should expect to get everything they want. The present status of take-no-prisoners politics mirrors the disastrous effects of religious fundamentalism which claims exclusive ownership of heaven and of God's blessing. Yet I believe this "war" between science and religion is basically a phony war which I blame on ignorance and a lack of compassion. To clean up our room, we had better put away the dirty clothing of religious intolerance and self-righteousness. Into the laundry bag also must go political intractability-- especially the my-way-or-the-highway divisiveness of recent politics. Your opponent is not a traitor for disagreeing with you, any more than the people in the church, mosque, or synagogue down the road are going to have their souls burn in hell for believing something different from you. It is precisely here that we will enhance or terminate the dream just begun in this room of ours called America. If we fail to embrace differences, if we cannot allow others the freedom to think and pray and dream in ways other than ours, then surely the light of liberty will go out. History will quickly move on to other nations' importance and other ideologies' relevance in the world of tomorrow. America will be reduced to a footnote at the bottom of the page of "Life on Earth." Like the hollow bodies we bury in our cemeteries, this country will die and its grave will be overrun with weeds until at last, like the fortress we thought we had built, it disappears beneath the sands of time. Upon our tombstone shall be written: "Here lies the body of hope and the death of tolerance." It doesn't have to happen, but it will if we cannot change.