The door was not locked. It was closed. A housekeeper babysitting a 2 year old looked up suddenly as she felt a cold breeze. Someone unexpected had come through the back door. Someone had walked through the unlocked backyard fence gate and entered the unlocked back door of the house. The man stood there well-dressed but confused and disoriented, eyes dancing to and fro. And then things changed in an instant. The man’s color changed from pale to flush red. His pupils enlarged and he started demanding the housekeeper and child get out of his house.
In utter fear at the surprise guest, the housekeeper grabbed the little one; grabbed a coat and backed out through the garage entrance. She immediately went to the neighbor’s home where she frantically grasped at her cell phone to call 911.
It turns out the man had walked away from a rest home. He was a dementia patient. Somehow in his mind the house he invaded looked like memories in his mind. To him this was not aninvasion. To him he was getting rid of his home of invaders. There was little or no time for kindness or consideration on the part of the housekeeper. Hers was the priority of protecting the child and distancing him and herself from any potential physical danger however unlikely.
It is not hard to come to the conclusion that the poor interloper was not at fault. What he did in his limited way of thinking was to secure what he thought was his place. And perhaps the fault was in the homeowner because he had not locked the gate to his fence. And the housekeeper should have had the back door locked. These small things would have been deterrence to the invasion. And certainly those things would go some ways to prevent intentional invaders from causing harm, especially when considering the safety of a 2 year old.
Now let’s consider a larger perspective. If our nation is our home, our domicile, our castle per se, then if we look at the above story, we must think about the relative reasonability that there be a clear border, a door, a gate through which those who cannot claim a right to claim it as their home would have to ask permission. Even in the case of an individual or aggregate of individuals who come to the door under duress, permission must be sought. The permission is required for a country as in a home because of the duty that the fathers of the country have to keep the entirety of the country safe from intrusions that have long term deleterious effects on the members of the household. Intrusions fall into broad categories with terrorists at one end, and economic hardship at the other.
If in the case of a homeowner who simply unlocked his door, unlatched his gate and opened his door to all who would want (as benign as they may be), imagine the long term impact on the lives within that home. The same goes for a country.
To establish a public policy that first ensures the safety and long term wellbeing of the members of the national household, is moral as it emulates the duty of household protection heads of households have. The second responsibility is subordinate to the first because the potential goodness of that household beyond its borders depends on the integrity of its fundamental superstructure. Any God-given graces, success, and resources of such a household to do all possible to provide for interim needs of those knocking at the gate are dependent upon its constitutive stability. As in the case of the benign intruder in our home invasion story, his situation (however emotionally it may move us), does not create the pathos that should negate common sense. It is common sense for the leaders of a household to do more to prevent intrusions into the boundaries thereby weakening structural integrity of that household. Structural integrity is what allows for a constitutive and basic economic, spiritual, political, and emotional health to thrive among the members of that household.
This position is not a political one. It is one that follows the logic of applying our situative local experience as in the case of the story of local intrusions, to the greater society. This position is also not a religious one. It is one that follows the familial sense that as families must do their utmost to protect the safety of their situative relationships differently between family and non-family members, so to it should be the case for the differences in defining relationships that are clear and present within our domestic and international laws.
However, I do believe there is a spiritual character involved in allowing the logical approach as opposed to the emotional approach to govern our discernment of both what we do in and for our homes, and what we do for and in our larger national domicile within the context of nations. All of the aspects of employing ethical and moral standards are important. They must be infused in the conduct of any relationship or decision which affects behavior at the individual and at the aggregate level. However, ethical and moral standards must be seen as employed, not in some spiritual vacuum, but in the reality that surrounds us – in the paradigm of household that by virtue of having walls, doors, gates, and entryways for the protection of those who live there are indeed necessarily exclusionary by purpose. Exclusionary is not necessarily a pejorative term. Not even Jesus intrudes into the household of the soul; he knocks. (Rev 3:20, John 10:3),He recognizes the boundary of free-will through which he will go if allowed to. But the door is necessarily there. Once we recognize this, we can turn to the door and the windows and look with kindness at the options that are there for those who seek entry in the context of their own reasons for gaining entry.
In the end, the vitriol and political grasping at who has the moral and ethical high road is all show and of no utility. I know I will be called to task for this approach; but having been caught in the heat of the emotion that is out there among clergy, the church, liberals and conservatives alike, I know that individuals must try to approach the questions of intrusion and exclusion keeping in mind the rule of subsidiarity. I argued oppositely in the past concerning the border wall, but found my emotion to be untrustworthy in terms of the logic that can only be understood in the context of the common sense experience of living in a house with a little child that was once invaded.
Comments
Post a Comment