The Peripatetic Preacher Freedom in Bondage

Those of us who live in Southern California have now been isolated in our homes for seven weeks. Though there have been numerous Facebook memes that have chided us for our “wimpiness”—pictures of prisoners of war, emaciated with a bowl of rice on their collapsing laps coupled with modern photos of us, plopped in front of our TV’s, munching popcorn or savoring wine, or both—for those who have been used to going and doing as we pleased, seven weeks is not a short time. And it is becoming all too clear that our day of release is not imminent, and even when such a day may come, it will not be release into a complete freedom, into a world that we knew last year, but rather a world with masks, social distancing, restricted access of more kinds that we can conjure. As we have been told again and again, there will be nothing like complete freedom until a cheap and ubiquitous vaccine is available, and that day is at least a year away. For those of us who are big baseball fans, that means no crack of the bat, no sitting in the sun with other fans, no bad hotdogs and expensive cokes maybe until spring, 2021, if then. Yes, sports wimp I surely am!

In my part of the world, the natives are definitely restless. Last weekend in Orange County, the originator of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, several thousand people “hit the beach” in a public repudiation of the Governor’s demand to remain at home. His response was to reiterate his demand, and the Orange County beaches were once again closed. In response to that order, several hundred protestors demanded that the beaches there be opened, only to be met be several mounted members of the constabulary, blocking the beaches, and warning them that the sand was indeed still off- limits. Soon, the lawyers went into action, suing the Governor and his minions, claiming that their first-amendment constitutional rights were being abridged, and shouting that the governor can see them in court. A lower court judge ruled that the suit will be addressed, but not until May 11. Meanwhile, various scofflaw surfers have been spotted on various beaches, one of whom received a $1000 fine for his efforts to slip his board into and onto the waves. Here in California, we have fewer protestors toting AK-47’s and AR-15’s to support their demands, with hardly a confederate flag in sight, but their voices are just as loud and just as strident as their weapon-carrying confreres in other states.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is once again the subject of considerable debated interpretation. All citizens of the country, states our central founding document, must have access to all three of these bedrock freedoms. However, the devil is in the details of what such freedoms mean when they are applied in a country of 330,000,000 citizens, all of whom are potential agents of COVID-19 illness, hospitalization, and possible death. The Orange County protestors have made it plain that their individual rights are being abrogated by a government they term “tyrannical.” In the northern part of our state, just yesterday the term “Nazi” was used by a small newspaper editor who was subsequently fired, or who resigned,–the facts remain currently unclear—to describe the state government. Most, I hope, would find such a characterization not only overblown but deeply offensive, but it does indicate the passions being generated by the isolation demands of the state.

But back to the Constitution. Whose freedom is being denied by the state’s conviction that large groups of citizens are, due to scientific study and observable fact, now incubators of the microbial beast that stalks the land? The first promise of the Constitution is “life,” and that means every life. Thus, If I decide individually that my freedom is what counts, and I decide to exercise that freedom by an unmasked trip to the beach to cavort with several of my unmasked buddies, I inevitably put others of my fellow citizens at risk for the virus. In other words, my libertarianism trumps their equal access to life under the US Constitution. For the same reason that I am not free to shout “fire” in a darkened auditorium for my own prankish fun, when in fact there is no fire present, neither do I have the right to endanger the life of any US citizen to satisfy my own individual desire. I thus suggest that our governor is correct in his demand for isolation, and all the state’s citizens should obey that demand, not merely for their own protection but the protection of all the state’s inhabitants, each of whom has the right to life, too. Surely, one definition of freedom in a republic is the right to all for freedom from fear, freedom from the dangers of transmission of disease from other citizens. Only those who choose to live alone, without the possibility of disease transmission, perhaps in an isolated cabin high in the mountains or on some lonely atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, may claim the rights to walk about unimpeded, in effect no threat to anyone or anything. No citizen of Orange County may claim such a right, and I have little doubt that any court will make that crystal clear.

Being the Bible guy that I am, I find this discussion may be rooted in the biblical text in any number of places across the tradition. I find the first commandment of the famous ten to be instructive here. “I, YHWH, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery; there must not be for you other gods over against my face” (Ex.20:2-3; Deut.5:6-7). The God of Israel is first and foremost a God of freedom, but that gift of freedom, we must always note, is a gift to a people, not to individuals. It is Israel to which the commandments are directed, not to single members of the people. YHWH, God of Israel, is forever in the business of bringing the whole people out of whatever slaveries they seem always intent of dropping themselves into. In the case of my Orange County protestors, their slavery is apparently found in their libertarian belief that their individual freedom is the only freedom that counts. That is slavery pure and simple, however they may claim it is the very opposite. Their libertarianism has become their god, a god they hold up over against the only God there is, the God who wills freedom for all, not just for some.

I suppose it is not surprising that Ronald Reagan is a product of Orange County, that president who was fond of saying that “government is not the solution to our problems but is itself the problem.” It is in the final analysis only the individual and his or her freedom that is the final arbiter of all American problems. The airport in Orange County is named after John Wayne, the American actor, and long-time supporter of right wing political causes. Thus, anti-government sentiment is rooted deep in the DNA of Orange County, however much its politics is changing in the past few years.

Seven weeks is a long time to be separated from loved ones and friends, not to mention the beach and its warm sands and cooling ocean, but isolation is the way we must choose if all of us are to enjoy our lives, our liberties, and our pursuits of happiness after the virus has passed into history. Stay home, my friends, and stay healthy. The God of freedom calls you to exercise your freedom by staying in isolation in order that all of God’s people may live and live abundantly.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons)