Who owes us “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”: (a) Our Creator? (b) Our country? (c) Our community? (d) Our family? Where do you go to find these things, especially happiness? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 743).
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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.... (The
Declaration of Independence).
“Life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are needs created in the
heart of humanity by our creator. Sometimes it seems strange to think
that needs are a gift. Surely some kind of surfeit must be a gift.
And gifts, we think, should not have strings attached; but clearly
the attainment of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
is shrouded in a matrix of strings. God in his grace gives us dignity
by instilling in us this need; it is up to us to seek and find how
this need can be met. An accommodating government is a necessary
though far from sufficient instrument in helping to fill this need.
Many other institutions are also needed – the family, the church,
the private sector graced by entrepreneurial creativity. The largess
of government comes replete with strict limitations imposed on its
citizens to ensure that needs are universally met, and not just met
for a few. ”Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
inherently imply a significant degree of individual restraint. Too
often we think that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
are like gates opening up to the plains of full abandonment. We come
to find the hard way (and too often tragically) that we need the
structure of home more than we need the abandonment enticing us with
the delusive urge “don't fence me in.” Too often we have a lust
for liberty and not a love for it.
Thus
we find that the defining needs of man are gifts of the creator. But
we find these gifts have little resemblance to the new-found notion
of entitlements. The
story goes that as Benjamin Franklin emerged from Independence Hall
at the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on
September 18, 1787, a woman asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we
got, a republic or a monarchy?”. Mr. Franklin replied, “A
republic, madam – if you can keep it.” (Source)
There
is a sense in which the Constitutional Convention owed the American
people a republic; but the greater truth is that this gift comes with
great responsibility and the need for discipline – above all the
discipline of humility. In short, what the founding fathers gave us
was a “honey do list” without end and without a completion date.
Likewise, God's gift to humanity of “life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness” is a “honey do list” with no end in sight. It is
a gift requiring tremendous effort and the tremendous grace of God.
