LETTER

The Church, God and the Law

 

Every time someone like Robert Thompsett starts blathering about law and other aspects of civilization only having “validity from God”, I have to ask, “Which God would that be?” The Muslim God? The Jewish God? The Mormon God? How about one of the Gods of the Hindu pantheon? Or the Gods of the Romans and Greeks whose existence we have as much proof for as any other personification of God. Or why not one of the spirit guides of the First Nations peoples which have always struck me as being more compassionate and reasonable than the God forced upon them by their European conquerors? From Thompsett’s egocentric point of view the answer might seem obvious, but given the uncounted thousands of splinter sects that Christianity has fragmented into since the founding of the Roman Catholic Church by Peter the apostle, it isn’t. Christians can’t even decide on the nature of the “Christian” God (ironically, I just read about the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church which was really just another power struggle between men trying to force their interpretations of God upon others). And “heaven” help you if you believe in the wrong iteration of God, because at various times throughout history you could and can be persecuted, tortured and murdered for your beliefs. Secular society may not be perfect, but I for one would rather live in a society governed by laws that have evolved from reason, tolerance and compassion than the arbitrary, incomplete, inconsistent (often contradictory) dictates written, not by God, but by human beings seeking to control other human beings for the sake of power and wealth.

David Desjardins
Aylmer