If we can remember we are ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,’ our nation will endure
On Feb. 5, the Herald Leader printed an essay by Daniel Beasley entitled “’Fearfully and wonderfully made’: Our gay teens don’t need conversion torture.” In quoting Psalm 139:14, Mr. Beasley upholds a foundational principle of American civilization and the American republic that had been all but washed away in the last half century: That as God’s creation every human being is of inestimable worth.
Psalm 139:14 is an idea hard to take in when the history of humankind up to the present has been one with little respect for others or life itself. Ecclesiastes 9: 3 says “The hearts of men… are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts.”
Echoing Jewish and Christian holy writ that depicts man as a fallen creature living in a fallen world, Eric Hoffer writes that human beings are the only incomplete creature on earth. Every other is fully what it is, nothing to be added, not so with men and women.
The ancient Hebrews’ God, who existed outside time and nature and who defined good and evil (the giving of the LAW), had by doing so separated man out from all other sentient beings. Humans were moral beings. Consequently, men and women were earth bound but dreaming of and striving for Paradise, a place of wholeness and good.
Some of our greatest and most beloved myths are about this never-ceasing striving after the Holy Grail or the Unreachable Star. The great 18th-century French atheist Voltaire insisted that society had to have a God of right and wrong, or man’s incompleteness would cease as he sank back into being an animal indistinguishable from other animals. Man, to be Man, could not cease striving.
Otherwise, it is as Machiavelli wrote many centuries ago: “Men rise from one ambition to another: first they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack themselves.” Beasley’s quote upends all this hopelessness.
But always there have been men and women who weary of constantly striving for a place they cannot get to. Such people set out to have their own glory and the Promised Land of wholeness here and now. Thus, we have had the French and Communist Revolutions in which distinguishable humanity was lost. Despite these historical warnings there are many Americans today railing against the United States for its failings but really railing against their own human nature and their own tragic condition.
That is why Beasley’s quote is so important. It is a reminder of American history and its striving toward freedom and equality of worth. John Adams said the American Revolution, which sought not perfection, but to secure a measure of liberty people already had, began with the 1730s and 1740s Great Awakening, in which preachers preached a message that all human beings were equal at the foot of the cross.
That religious tenet set the American people on their own multiple paths in search of the Holy Grail. Without that truth there is no Declaration of Independence with its words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” No Lincoln’s words about man’s last best hope and a new birth of freedom. No Kennedy’s “ Let the word go forth.” No Rev. King’s “I Have a Dream,” and “Let freedom ring.” No Reagan’s “Morning in America.”
The political/cultural disputes we have today are deep and sometimes they engender rage. But if we can remember that each of us is a Child of God “Fearfully and wonderfully made” the nation will endure.
J. Larry Hood is a retired state government employee who presently teaches world civilization at Midway University and American and Kentucky courses for UK’s OLLI program.