There is no God like the God of the Bible. He has laid his heart out before all mankind, nakedly describing his love like a mother shielding her chicks, his rage resounding like thunder in the night skies, his crimson passion staining a rugged cross. The Lord welcomes with open arms those who dare to challenge him like Abraham, wear him out with complaints like Job, or drench their couch with tears like David. No one can honestly read the Psalms without knowing that this is a God like no other-open, honest, listening. There is no comfort like he can provide.
And yet, when I open up to the first page, I read "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," and I wonder what else he's not telling me. What happened before that first day of creation? What did Jesus draw in the sand when the woman was caught in adultery and brought before him? What does heaven really look like? What are those mysterious things that Daniel and John were forbidden to tell, that no man can know?
What I am saying is, God cherishes his privacy. Heaven is by invitation only. In the creative genius by which God invented dirt and air and the entire universe are sacred recipes never to be shared. We'd call that intellectual property in its highest sense, just as the entire universe is property in all its vastness. Of all the worlds in the expanse, God has sublet earth to man. We are to care for the earth and tend it and make it flourish.
Man's authority over the earth has two parts, hand in hand-right and responsibility. He has the right to work the ground, build upon it, improve it and the responsibility to care for it and not cause undue damage to it. It is property. God has seen fit to parcel this property into nations and states and parishes and estates and subdivisions and tribal lands and shopping centers and rights-of-way. At times past and present he has upended leases and driven peoples to flee his wrath, bringing in new tenants. Just like an apartment landlord, God has chosen to take a gamble on various tenants, some who meticulously tend their own plots while others use crayons on the walls.
In this great enterprise called life God has let us buy in. From owning your first baby toy to leading a great superpower nation, we have the right to own, to claim, to protect. Life. Liberty. Property. Pursuit of happiness. "Mine" is not a dirty word. It would be preposterous for God to call us to be generous if he did not first allow us to have things of our own to CHOOSE to share!
Our first, most treasured and inviolate property is our inmost being. Not even God will violate a man's will. We were given the choice in the beginning to love and obey God or eat the forbidden fruit, for love without a choice is no love at all. I say this not to preach the gospel at you, but to point out our first freedom is of the soul. The gospel is offensive because it reaches so deep and so personally, to our most basic right to decide who we are. The man who is free in his mind can never be imprisoned. This extends to religious thoughts, to philosophy, to love, to creative genius and art. This is the pursuit of happiness. One does not need health, sight, hearing, a tongue, or even physical freedom to have liberty in the mind. Indeed, life is most precious to the man who is at liberty in his inner being.
Of course, these freedoms within are useless to a man without a vehicle for the practice of them. Hence God has granted man the right to life, and a strong curse upon those who shed the blood of man. He also has the right to property. Whether it be the justice of his cause to keep the stone knife he has carved with his own hands, or the force of law behind his sale of millions of copies of his invention, or the right to his own address if he can raise the money, God has blessed man with the rights to a home country, a home, a home appliance.
As I write, the more I understand the miracle which our forefathers wrought upon this new land. They put quill to scroll and crafted a shelter for natural rights. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword, because in our nation the pen was given charge over the sword. The founders included patent rights to protect the property of one's mind, the right to retain one's life and liberty and property, and the right to pursue one's happiness. The shelter they built became the most fertile garden of liberty in all of history.
The freedoms were given by God, but they were first and best protected by the Constitution and Declaration. Suddenly, there was a thinktank a continent wide, property available for anyone willing to work for it, a No Trespassing sign pointed at the government. A church on every corner; something we take for granted. Because this nation was conceived in liberty, with man's highest good in mind, man was able to achieve his greatest accomplishments here. Government, primarily, stayed out of the way and guarded the shelter so the citizens could tend it.
That era is no more.
In the land where freedom fighters crafted the Declaration of Independence, it is now dangerously close to illegal to repeat the process. Most recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. demanded that our nation pay up on the promisory note of unalienable rights. Now is the time, once again.
The US Patent Office was created on Constitutional authority for the purpose of creating a safe deposit box in which a citizen could place their new idea for protection. The inventor could market and sell their product so as to pay for the great investment in creating it without theft, and thereby be encouraged to continue to innovate. It is the closest thing to a security fence for the mind and the pursuit of happiness.
This concept has been replaced by license plate scanners, fingerprinted ID cards, fusion centers, unwarranted surveillance of our computers, nude airport scanners and TSA molesters, and government spies watching us right now, live. If you doubt their malicious intent, remember that there were live feeds of the Bengazi attack and nothing was done to rescue their own.
The problem is not the use of technology by government. I am excited that the US remain the greatest source of invention and advancement the world has ever seen. I wholeheartedly bless any and all efforts to use the greatest technology to perform all the proper roles of government with greatest efficiency and effectiveness. The Constitution and Declaration fully support this action, creating just such the environment to develop these capabilities. However, our founding documents were conceived to restrain government's power.
I said earlier that God cherishes his privacy. He cherishes ours too. He honors the privacy of the marriage bed, the darkest extremes of your inmost thoughts. The Lord grants you solitude in your soul and a sanctuary so you can be free from within. The 4th Amendment says it best: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To add my inadequate words to those of the founders, the government DOES have the right to do everything in its power to pursue justice and prosecute criminals, even to the point of depriving them of life, liberty, and property through due process of law, as the 5th amendment says. Clearly, though, they must have probable cause. There can be no doubt that the kinds of surveillance activities currently being performed and pursued by the government at all levels are the same as what were called general warrants, performed by the redcoats, and unconstitutional.
From the 5th: ...nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
From the 14th: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
To our president, governors, mayors, police chiefs, sheriffs, and school officials, I say pursue justice vigorously. You are forbidden to surveil We the People in any way without probable cause and warrant.
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