Tonight, Mike and I attended a graduation, and I was inspired for tonight's post by the speaker. Tad Armstrong is a lawyer, professor, and author with a focus on the Constitution. As the speaker at the graduation ceremony, he gave out pocket copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I was thumbing through it, and the initial paragraph of the Declaration of Independence caught my attention.
Photo from www.archives.gov
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
This is the part that comes before the part that everyone quotes, "We hold these truths to be self-evident...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." and so on. As I read it, I thought of how in these modern times, we view the world as a global community, highly interconnected, largely because of the technology available to us. As a whole, western society espouses a world view that holds in high regard a respect for other cultures and nations. Reading the beginning of the Declaration of Independence for the first time since college (I'm sad to say), I'm noticing that the authors viewed themselves as a part of history, members in an interwoven global community, and, even while establishing their independence as a nation, espoused a similar respect for the people groups who were already established as known entities.
"In the course of human events" - this was not the first time, nor the last, that people would rise up to declare themselves separate from those who once ruled over them,
"It becomes necessary" - things have gotten so bad that as a people, they could no longer bear up under the restrictions and requirements placed on them
"to dissolve the political bands which have connected" - throwing off government which had overextended itself from protecting the rights of the people to oppressively lording power over them.
"to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station" - recognizing the established governments as valid in their own rights, but establishing a new identity
"to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them" - rights and freedoms, not granted by this document, but rather by a higher power and identified and protected by the written word
"a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" - with value and respect for the nations of the global community, state the case for a separation of colony from mother country
Then, as I looked line by line, something else stood out to me. In the course of the human events of my life, I was living in bondage, oppressed by a sin nature that had grown to enslave me. It became necessary for me to find a way out of the bondage of sin, to dissolve the connection between my inability to keep from doing wrong. Nature's God prepared for me a new identity, with rights, privileges, and freedoms, through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus that simply needed to be accepted and declared. Out of respect for others already established in a new identity and those who need hope for escape from their own captivity, it is imperative that I take time to tell of my experiences.
The first paragraph of our Declaration of Independence is a beautiful picture of the birth of our nation and the quality of the founding fathers who authored it, but it is also a template to show the indescribable beauty of a changed life in Christ, where the old is thrown off and all things become new.
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