Monday, July 4, 2016
503 - Dignity in the Dock
Spirituality Column No. 503
July 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
July 5, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Dignity in the Dock
By Bob Walters
Dignitary Harm (legal
definition): The pain of being told by others that your choices are immoral.
Think of it this way. If I steal your wallet, I have committed
“material harm.” If you tell me stealing
your wallet is immoral, you have committed “dignitary harm” on me.
Make sense? Yeah I know, not really …
But, it’s a real term: “dignitary
harm.” Legal academics have invented it
recently – yes here in America – to describe the shocking awfulness of telling
someone that right and wrong matter, that this
is right and that is wrong, and that
I love you enough to rebuke / counsel / correct your behavior.
Never mind
that the U.S. Constitution’s “free speech” clause in the Bill of Rights codifies
and expresses the endowment by our Creator of our mutual right of oppositional
comment. I may not like your actions and
you may not like my religion, but whether
the topic is politics, entertainment, child rearing, global warming, body
piercing, tattoos, gun control, immigration, personal determinism vs.
nationalism vs. globalism, or whatever you can come up with to argue about,
it’s a free country and we are free by God’s grace and by law to tell each other about it.
Except, of
course, in the case of the sex-and-reproduction culture wars where the rights
and legal argument run only one way. Here, any perpetrator of moral dissonance against
God’s clear biblical plan retains his or her (you pick which) right to ridicule
the Creator as morally insufficient while dismissively mocking as
intellectually backwards my faith and trust in God, His Son, His Spirit and His
Word.
To avoid committing “dignitary
harm” for noticing, labeling and defining “sin” as sin, I am free only to
express acceptance and encouragement of these obvious transgressions, lest I
commit the sin of thinking, er, judgment.
The public forum enforces this unholy ban on questioning the morality of
gay marriage and all things LGBT. “Caitlyn,” you may recall, got an ESPN courage
award.
Abortion of course remains a
manufactured but fiercely protected “right” which, oxymoronically, denies the
basic right of life. Material harm? Absolutely; but no foul. Say abortion is immoral, thus committing “dignitary
harm”? That’s an actionable tort.
If we go to
a church that’s worth our time we should all get a good dose of “dignitary
harm” every Sunday morning. It actually
is a pretty effective way to encounter the sin in our lives – my sin, let’s start there – and gaze for
guidance to the moral perfection of Jesus who suffered the ultimate “dignitary
harm” on the cross.
Our lives
are that precious and God’s plan is that perfect.
Telling
others about it is the moral thing to do.
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