I assert there is a moral fabric running throughout the universe. It matters not whether your human eyes or human logic can see it. It works. I’m not so much offering proof here, as offering illustrations, to show how it scales large and small.
First the small. This year’s wild blackberry harvest is huge, more than I could possibly gather alone. Rather than keep it to myself, I posted a little notice on our community bulletin board offering to teach what I know, including locations, to anyone who asks. Motives don’t matter; it was the right thing to do.
Yesterday I grabbed what was easily picked from the vines along the well tended grassy margins of a divided boulevard running through a barely-begun ritzy development just to my west. It’s been the primary source of my blackberry picking for several years. This morning I was headed out on a six-mile ride to another site I found last year, where the berry vines clustered along the cut sandstone facing along one of our main section line roads.
Just two miles out, I spotted a scattered flash of red dots in the landscape just off to my right near an intersection. It was loaded with ripe berries. I had to watch my step, as the berries were that thick, and huge. Standing in one spot, I picked a whole quart of them, leaving the smaller berries. I lifted one after another vine so loaded I had to empty my hand three times or more. I left with a gallon, having barely put a dent in what I could see.
I have no doubt had I not been willing to share, I would not have seen this patch. I’ve passed it dozens of times already over the past three years not seeing the berries. The thickness of their placement indicates they’ve been left alone for quite some time. On the way home, I stopped to share some of them with a couple of kids I know. I have every reason to believe Creation itself will respond with an ever greater load of berries, much of which I’ll have to share simply because I can’t eat them all.
This moral principle scales large, as well. As a point of reference, you might take a moment to read my short study in Amos 6, a chapter from the Old Testament prophet. Amos confronts the Northern Kingdom, whose capital was Samaria, just a couple of decades before Assyria invaded and carried the nation away to exile (Fall of Samaria is dated 722 BC). Aside from the business of how the government is disciplined, you can see close parallels with many Western governments today. Amos was fussing at a ruling class of plutocrats utterly out of touch with the people. They had increased the taxes to a crushing load to increase their comfort while the peasantry was suffering from the effects of Creation’s response to massive violence and sin. They were arrogant and oh-so sure they could handle anything.
That is, the economy was going down hill, but the plutocrats refused to scale down their consumption to match it. To those producing it all, they say: “You must make do with less so we can have more.” Nor does the form of government have anything to do with it. Is there any difference in effect? There is not a single government agency which can conceive of the notion of trimming back on bureaucratic overhead. If anything, each demands it be allowed to grow like a metastasizing cancer. All this while, just as with Amos’ audience, there was a pretense of being faithful to empty religious ritual and extravagant worship spending.
I won’t pretend the exact same consequences will follow, but you can be sure, if it was evil then, it’s evil now. It’s the same God, the same moral fabric, and nothing has changed in that realm. Precious few of my readers won’t be around to see the moral consequences of all this abuse.
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Contact me:
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ehurst@radixfidem.blog
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