After returning home from church one recent Sunday, my wife and I took our baby girl for a walk. It is a Sunday afternoon routine that we relish as a young family. Capitol Hill is a great place to live. We walk by the Supreme Court, across the Capitol grounds and down the national mall and back. While my wife and I talk about many things during these walks, one of us invariably mentions the anticipation we feel for the day our daughter is able to understand the significance of her existence and the great history of our country.
On this Sunday, our attention was drawn to two signs we hadn’t noticed before in the window of a row house right around the corner from ours. The first was a bright yellow sign from NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion advocacy interest group. In large black letters the sign asked, “Who Decides?” This philosophical question is powerful and particularly pertinent as Election Day approaches. Next to this sign was a Kerry-Edwards 2004 sign.
I believe there are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who marvel at the unfathomable beauty and complexity of the heavens, the Earth and the human body, accept their intellectual and physical frailty, and look outside themselves in their honest search for truth. Then there are those who regard all existence as a giant cosmic accident, lean on their own understanding and, like a famous pied piper of secular humanism, Bertrand Russell, live on a “foundation of unyielding despair.”
There is certainly variety within both groups. Plenty of -isms, denominations and doctrinal variation which prescribe different belief systems from which to choose. From universalist monotheism to nihilism. From deity to nothingness and everything in between.
But back to those words that demand a response. Indeed, “who decides?” Whether we want to admit it or even take the time to think through the implications of this question, everyone depends on a source for strength, hope and truth. God or man? Supernatural or natural?
What is your truth source? How reliable is that source? Certainly a truth source is fundamental. Without absolute truth there can be no real moral order in society. When the question becomes a choice between individuals who seek to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” I am mightily concerned about the source upon which the candidates depend.
I want a president with the strength to admit his fallen nature and weakness of his finite self, a hunger for eternal truth, the conviction to express, explain and defend his beliefs, and a faith that is energized by prayer and thirsty for the will of God.
Our walks are hardly ever significant beyond the joy of quality time spent together. That Sunday walk and the poignancy of those signs proudly displayed side by side, however, was profound. It led me to prayer and thanksgiving for our daughter and the beautiful gift of life. It generated tremendous joy and security in knowing that my search for truth ended in the shadow of the Cross. It also affirmed my belief that a gigantic philosophical and moral division exists in America which makes this election pivotal.
One’s truth source, however anathema to politicians and explosive in the context of a presidential election, is an important issue to many voters. For those who believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible and accept it as their truth source, the contrast between the candidates in this election on almost every major moral issue could hardly be more stark.
The BreakPoint website website, a division of Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, posted an article this week by Allan Dobras titled, “Why the World Hates George W. Bush: The Secular Drive to Marginalize Faith.” Mr. Dobras offers the following analysis:
The answer to the “why,” is really part of an issue that simmers just below the surface but nonetheless evokes a level of hatred – and fear – that can only be understood in the context of the conflict between enduring truth and spiritless relativism. That is, a clash between two mutually exclusive worldviews – one driven by religious faith and the other driven by secular humanism.
America’s choice is between two very different men with different worldviews. The image of the most powerful man on earth on his knees before the Creator of the universe is one that gives me great confidence and peace. Who decides?
Joseph Summers is a legislative assistant to Sen. Richard Shelby. He handles appropriations in the areas of defense, foreign operations, military construction, veterans affairs and NASA.
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