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The Requirement of Censorship with the Separation of Church and State: The Truth of the Bible Requires Institutional Adherence
Recent Twitter Files reveal widespread and coordinated censorship there. Where vile language acceptable, those speaking truth have lost their jobs. Long before, state institutions censored the most important truths in human history without recrimination.
Before you continue, I offer you a guide. This post will move outside of most people’s box. I ask you not to delve into the establishment clause of the first amendment of the United States Constitution. Before you jump to practical ramifications, consider the truth of the post.
The Truth, the Logos
When you read Genesis 1 in the Bible, you are reading the account of the beginning of all time, space, and matter. Everything originates with God out of nothing. That is the explanation for everything. It does not even exist without Him, but He also sustains it.
The Bible record is truth as well as is the truth. Scripture presents itself as the truth. Jesus, God the Son, said to His Father God in John 17:17, “Thy Word is truth.” It might make you feel good and help your life, but that is just a byproduct of its truth. It works because it is the truth. The truth is one, because God is one. Nothing in this record contradicts any other part. God does not deny Himself.
God created man in His image and with His likeness. He intended man to reflect Him in his nature. Men should treat and look at the world in every aspect like God would. They should follow what God says, the truth, for and about everything. God expects men to view the world, see it, like He does.
Modernists speculate a fully naturalistic origination and continuation of all things. They opine this as progress from the superstition of ignorance. In fact, the premoderns had it right. It never was a natural world. The Greeks were right in their concept of cosmos, which they called logos, an intelligence that permeated all space and matter and in contrast to random and chaotic naturalism.
People in John’s day understood his Logos in John 1:1, who He said was Jesus Christ, was the source for this cohesion, intelligence, and order. Paul wrote that in Christ were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3) and that by all things consisted (1:17). That was the Logos.
No Bifurcation of Truth
Paul was also emphatic in the truth of Christ’s bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Jesus showed Thomas the wounds in His hands. He was one, whole Person. A physical body was the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Both body and spirit glorified God. This contradicted a pagan dualism, that separated truth into separate spheres of the spiritual and physical.
This New Testament presentation matches the Old Testament concept of truth, “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). Every aspect of knowledge falls under the purveyance of God’s truth. Even though someone may divide the truth into various fields such as government, economics, math, and biology, it still is one cohesive, orderly truth proceeding from the one mind of one God.
Whatever field or region under the sovereignty of one truth splinters from the one, or whenever it does, it becomes distorted, superficial, meaningless, and subjective. The greatest advancements today in philosophy and science come in what Stephen Meyer calls “the return to the God hypothesis.” The universe is fine tuned. A cell is irreducibly complex. In philosophy, only God explains the existence of everything that exists. It’s impossible for something that exists not to have a reason for its existence.
Separating the truth from government, art, music, and economics, leaves any one in chaos and moral relativism. The gospel does not stand apart from all the truth of the Bible. And the gospel itself cannot and should not be divided into separate components of different degrees of subjective value. For instance, it is good for social reasons and perhaps psychological ones but not to reconcile to God and appease His holy wrath.
Religion the Truth, Equal with Facts
The state is good with religion as long it isn’t the truth. If it becomes the truth, it is equal with facts, science, math, and engineering. True religion cannot just stop with the true definitions of a man and of a woman. Next it says you go to Hell if you reject Jesus Christ. Even worse it limits your marijuana use.
Much of the philosophical conversation today revolves around what I here write. One faction, even considered conservative now, bemoans the loss of Western Civilization and its advantages. It is the water in which we swim, even if no longer Judeo-Christian ethics.
Classically liberal intellectuals warn readers and listeners. They won’t like the disappearance of Christianity, hearkening Nietzche’s prophecy about the death of God in the 19th century. However, if you remove the resurrection, ascension, and second coming of Christ, the consummation of all things in the future literal, physical reign of Jesus Christ, you eradicate all of Christianity. It is a whole that cannot be separated into disjunctive parts.
Total Truth
For a long time Christians self-censored by backing away from total truth (the title of Nancy Pearcey’s book). They stopped bringing the truth to all the subjects and every institution, all ordained by God. The dismissal of one is the dismissal of all.
A moral statement is either true or false. True moral statements come from the Word of God. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, nothing else the Bible says is true. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 15. You cannot chop the Bible up like that. The moral values become meaningless without the truth of the history and the scientific declarations.
The table of nations in Genesis 10 is the truth. The prophecies of Daniel 11 are the truth. What scripture says all over about men and women is the truth. These are not subjective and relativistic. They are objective. They are true. All these writings should be taught everywhere as truth, not in religion class as an alternative along side the lies of other religions.
The separation of church and state, which is not in the United States Constitution, necessitates censorship. Anything church related is only church related and stays in the church. Only state stuff belongs in the state, which as many of you know, includes everything in the world, including biblical issues like marriage and parenting practices. Then the state labels all of theirs science and facts and outside of the state, unless cooperating with the state, subjective, private, and even conspiracy. If it is truth, it is your truth, subjective truth, which is fine as long as you keep it outside of institutions.
Take Moses into the Supreme Court Building
For awhile the state has been fine with a sculpture of Moses with the two tablets on the Supreme Court building. It is a decoration. It is a ritual. Maybe it’s even an archetype into which you read whatever you want. They cannot use it as grounds for decision making, even if its self-evident truths form the basis for logic, argument, and morality.
Perhaps a government and big business or oligarchical complex now joins in widespread censorship. Let’s just say that complex does censor the citizenry of the United States and other Western countries. Christians already censored themselves by segregating themselves away from God’s world and keeping the truth away from its institutions, whose very existence arises from that truth.
God requires more than talking about the truth at church. He requires adherence to the truth in every institution. This is the teaching of all nations. True discipleship requires national adherence. Churches at least should adhere, but their goals are further than that. They want the knowledge and dominion of His truth everywhere.
Is Substantive Due Process Anything? What About This Court Arguing for a Substantive Right to Life? The War Begins
The founding fathers of the United States, the authors of the Constitution, also ratified by the states, wrote to limit the powers of the federal government. They listed the powers and reserved to the states those they didn’t. They included a bill of rights. This guaranteed to everyone in the entire nation those rights. The Constitution imparts all the powers of the federal government and all the rights guaranteed to all the people of the United States.
Are there other rights in the Constitution of the United States other than those enumerated in the bill of rights and its other amendments? The history of Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution both from loose and strict constructionists says, “Yes,” there are other rights. They call those substantive rights. They relate to life, liberty, and property, those three appearing only in the amendments, but assumed or implied rights from the history and tradition of the United States.
In Dobbs, the Supreme Court decided no right to abortion occurred in the Constitution, overturning Roe. In the 213 pages of Dobbs, the term “substantive” occurs 39 times.
Justice Alito Argues
Justice Alito writes the first usage of “substantive” on page 2 in this sentence:
The underlying theory on which Casey rested—that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause provides substantive, as well as procedural, protection for “liberty”—has long been controversial.
Casey argued that a liberty or right to abortion did exist as a substantive right in the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. In its next usage also on page 2, Alito defines substantive rights as “those rights deemed fundamental that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution.” Alito then on page 19 argues for the majority in Dobbs that the fourteenth amendment protects two categories of rights, first those “guaranteed by the first eight Amendments.” Alito continues on page 20:
The second category—which is the one in question here—comprises a select list of fundamental rights that are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. In deciding whether a right falls into either of these categories, the Court has long asked whether the right is “deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and whether it is essential to our Nation’s “scheme of ordered liberty.” Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 3).
Alito explains on verse 22:
In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to “liberty,” we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy. That is why the Court has long been “reluctant” to recognize rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution. Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 125 (1992). “Substantive due process has at times been a treacherous field for this Court,” Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 503 (1977) (plurality opinion), and it has sometimes led the Court to usurp authority that the Constitution entrusts to the people’s elected representatives.
Alito goes on to write (p. 41) that, based upon the “specific practices of states,” abortion did not fall within even the “outer limits” of these so-called substantive rights. Alito makes this important statement then on page 44:
[D]espite the dissent’s professed fidelity to stare decisis, it fails to seriously engage with that important precedent—which it cannot possibly satisfy.
Alito does not reject the concept of substantive rights in the Constitution, but he writes for the majority, especially four Justices in the majority, that Roe failed on that important precedent.
Justice Thomas Concurs
Then Justice Thomas writes in his concurring opinion (p. 118):
As I have previously explained, “substantive due process” is an oxymoron that “lack[s] any basis in the Constitution.” Johnson, 576 U. S., at 607–608 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); see also, e.g., Vaello Madero, 596 U. S., at ___ (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3) (“[T]ext and history provide little support for modern substantive due process doctrine”).
Furthermore, Thomas writes (p. 118):
Because the Due Process Clause does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion.
Thomas argues that no substantive due process rights even exist. The various Supreme Courts invented these out of whole cloth.
As a result, Justice Thomas writes (p. 119):
For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is “demonstrably erroneous,” Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we have a duty to “correct the error” established in those precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.
As an example, the Supreme Court argued in Obergefell a substantive due process right of same sex marriage based upon the fourteenth amendment. Thomas concludes (p. 123):
[I]n future cases, we should “follow the text of the Constitution, which sets forth certain substantive rights that cannot be taken away, and adds, beyond that, a right to due process when life, liberty, or property is to be taken away.” Carlton, 512 U. S., at 42 (opinion of Scalia, J.).
Apparently substantive rights themselves exist in the constitution in addition to stated rights, but not substantive due process rights.
The Substantive Right to Life in the Constitution
What are substantive rights?
Substantive rights are rights to life, liberty, and property. Do we not agree that the Constitution guarantees the substantive right to life. Should the Supreme Court not have gone further with its ruling? Should it not have argued that abortion is in fact a violation of the right to life found in the Constitution of the United States? That is an argument based upon the Constitution and deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the United States.
I am sure that no state allowed abortion when the fourteenth amendment was ratified. States provided an unborn child a right to life. At the time of Roe, 30 States still prohibited abortion at all stages. Less evidence existed then than does now that life begins at conception. An ultrasound detects a fetal heartbeat at 6 1/2 to 7 weeks.
Some ask why Kavanaugh disappoints Trump? President Trump sees fear in Kavanaugh. The Democrats in the confirmation hearing framed him as a criminal, accusing him of sexual harassment when he was 17 years old. They intimidated him. He famously broke down and cried in that hearing. If Trump sees weakness, a language or decision that reflects that weakness, he questions it, using what I call, Trump-speak. Whatever pressure comes from the other side, he counteracts from his side. I understand it. If you don’t see it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Kavanaugh wrote the following in his concurring opinion (pp. 125-128):
On the question of abortion, the Constitution is therefore neither pro-life nor pro-choice. The Constitution is neutral and leaves the issue for the people and their elected representatives to resolve. . . . Because the Constitution is neutral on the issue of abortion, this Court also must be scrupulously neutral. . . . This Court therefore does not possess the authority either to declare a constitutional right to abortion or to declare a constitutional prohibition of abortion.
Is the Constitution not pro-life? Is it really neutral on the matter of life? Does the Constitution not protect life as a substantive right? On the other hand, Kavanaugh sees same sex marriage as a substantive right. He implies that the Constitution is not neutral on same sex marriage, when he writes (p. 133):
First is the question of how this decision will affect other precedents involving issues such as contraception and marriage—in particular, the decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438 (1972); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1 (1967); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015). I emphasize what the Court today states: Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.
Along the lines of substantive rights in the constitution, consider if Kavanaugh applied his Roe test to Obergefell by writing the following: On the question of same sex marriage, the Constitution is therefore neither pro-sex marriage nor anti-same sex marriage. He doesn’t see a substantive right to life, but he does see a substantive right to same sex marriage. Can this be true? Kavanaugh reads like a lie.
Dobbs was but a first battle in a war for life in this country. In one sense, it is a pretext for the actual war that must occur. We must all start by telling the truth, not only about abortion itself, but about the Dobbs decision. We can all celebrate what it did do, but we also must be realistic about what it did not.
Dobbs didn’t do away with abortion. The United States aborted almost a million babies last year. Everyone of those can still happen if someone wants. This war is far from over.
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