Stuck In the Middle With Who?

This morning I became re-acquainted with a book I had not read in some time, The Prophet Khalil Gibran. This little tid-bit from the book prompted this post…

“Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world…as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. Like a procession you walk together towards your god-self. You are the way and the wayfarers. And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay,and he falls for those ahead of him, who, though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone.”

For a professional devils advocate and self-proclaimed skeptic I have a hard time committing to one political party, let alone a single candidate. I am a Christian, and as such am terribly sympathetic to altruistic sentiments like the ones expressed in Gibran’s passage above. However, like many know-it-all college students, I also went through an objectivist, libertarian, and/or “Ayn Rand Phase” that has shaped much of my political perspectives. So here I am, caught between two world views, flip-flopping, if you will, between ideologies, and not finding much comfort in either

As I see it there are two main institutions that take up the cause of the collective, one being The Government and the other being The Church, the fundamental aim of both being to procure justice through ensuring rule of law, personal rights, and ultimately…judgment. Now, that last statement is awfully black and white, and may or may not be correct for a good number of reasons, however that was my thought process and it lead to the following questions:

1. If the two institutions ultimately have the same fundamental goal, do we as citizens require them to fulfill that goal through the same means and methods, i.e., do we have ideologies for one and ideologies for the other?
2. Do the The Government and The Church fulfill different needs of the collective, or the same?
3. Where do these two bodies overlap in responsibility?
4. The quote above from Gibran is poignant when applied to one’s spiritual journey’s. However, if it appeals to your spirit, should it also appeal to your politics?

There are two books that sit next to each other on my bookshelf, one is The Bible and the other is The Constitution, I often wonder if they speak to each other, and if so, what do they say?

bkingsley