I often sit down and read short sections of the Bible. A friend of mine, who became a pastor, once told me that the Bible was God’s authorized word; and written by those under God’s direction. I never thought much one way or another about who wrote the Bible. I’ll even go so far as to accept that those who wrote the Bible were listening to God as they inked the pages and bound them together. But now that I think about it, it is not who wrote the Bible but who and how it has been interpreted through the ages, particularly the New Testament.

The same is partially true for our Constitution, our legal Bible so to speak. We know who wrote the Constitution, and we know that before the ink had dried the framers were already debating various interpretations. Particularly differing views from Hamiltonian Federalists and banking and Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans in foreign land purchases.

Early Christians/Jews could not agree on a lot of things from Mosaic law in keeping the sabbath holy to allow believing Gentiles to convert to Christianity. They debated the existence of Jesus as a man of virgin birth; or was he pure spirit; to some was he the Messiah; and then what was his relationship to God. These early Christian churches from Carthage in Africa and the Coptic church in Egypt to Roman Catholic churches in Europe to Eastern Orthodox churches of Byzantine and Antioch in Asia Minor all had differing opinions on Jesus and other conflicting dogmatic matters. It is interesting to note that Christianity is not the major religion in most of these geographical locations today.

Unlike some scientific laws, like Newton’s Laws of Motion or Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, religious and political laws always seem to be up for debate. Debates that in most cases end up having somebody losing a head. As Pontius Pilate said to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar: And what is ‘truth’? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?

Much like the early Christians, Americans tripped over some of the same truths. For instance, for many the Constitution was nothing without a Bill of Rights. Since the first Ten Amendments the Constitution has been amended 17 times. But like early 1st Century Christians who were debating who could be a Christian, 18th Century Americans within ten years after becoming a nation were arguing the same point: who could be a citizen, who could vote and who was only a partial person.

Congress, in 1798, passed a series of laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act, included in the Alien and Sedition Acts, upped residency requirements. To become a citizen, a person had to reside in America for 14 years, up from five years. It seems most arriving immigrants sided with Jefferson and his Republicans. Voting immigrants caused some electoral distress among Federalists.

In addition there was the Alien Friends Act. According to History.com, this “Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the government, even in peacetime.” It is a good thing the mob that invaded the Capitol on January 6 were citizens open to pardons instead of deportations.

But the Act that probably had the most sting was the Sedition Act. This Act, “took direct aim at those who spoke out against the president (at the time, the thinned-skinned John Adams) or the Federalist-dominated government.” History.com says, “Altogether, the federal government tried and convicted ten people under the Sedition Act, including four top Jeffersonian-Republican newspaper editors. Although the Federalists won convictions, they lost politically by creating martyrs and giving defendants a platform to defend freedom of speech and the press.”

 Ironically the Sedition Act, like one of Kepler’s planets, reappeared in 1918. According to the National Constitution Center the 1918 Sedition Act “imposed harsh penalties for a wide range of dissenting speech, including speech abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution, and the military. These laws were directed at socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists.” This is sort of an American Casablanca moment when Captain Renault orders: Round up the usual suspects.

The rounding up the usual suspects could be said of Christianity’s interesting interpretations of Christianity. The Romans had no trouble making sport of Christians in the Colosseum. Christians of later years learned from the Romans. Christians had no problem slaughtering and burning each other at the stake for heresy. Inquisitions were a common occurance well up into the 1970s in Ireland. Being saved was open for debate.

It took more about 300 years from Jesus’s death for churches to start singing from the same hymnal. Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire with he Edict of Milan 313 A.D. Before that, the official Roman view of Christianity was religio prava: an evil or depraved religion. It gives new meaning to putting Christ back in Christmas and Nativities down at City Hall.

I am not trying to be sacrilegious but just because Christianity or the Catholic Church was street legal in Rome did not mean the various churches agreed on a lot of issues. Again, it took the Roman Emperor, Constantine, to knock heads together and get bishops in a room at the First Council of Nicea in 325 to hammer out their differences. He basically said your not finished until you come out with some sort of consensus. Hence, we got the Apostles Creed.

There were six more councils with the last or the Second Council of Nicea in 787 dealing with with icons and relics. Some religious scholars of the time, iconoclasts, believed praying to icons was parting from the Second Commandment–worshiping idols, a no-no that got the Jews in trouble with the Golden Calf while waiting for Moses to lead them into the promised land. Iconophiles, on the other hand, where a little more lenient in their views saying God told the Jews to put two Cherubims on the Ark of the Covenant. And, that icons were real proof that Jesus was a real person.

I wonder what these bejeweled bishops would have thought of Rastafari. According to Britannica. com, Rastafari “is a monotheistic religion that originated in Jamaica in the 1930s. It is centered on Africa and is based on the interpretation of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Rastafarians believe in a single God, Jah, and that Haile Selassie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.” Can you imagine them imparting their religious views on ganja as the sacrament. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper could have been the first pot party.

When it comes to religion and politics we rarely end up agreeing on one or two things. In most cases, we agree upon nothing most of the time. Eventually the bickering come to an end and people part ways. In 1054 the churches chucked the common hymnal. The Roman (Latin) Catholic Church split with the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox church. It had as much to do with religious dogma as shifting political winds on who would rule portions of the now defunct Roman Empire. The Roman Empire in Europe was a pile of dust that brought life to a new Holy Roman Empire with Papal powers. Also large swaths of Christian Africa and the Middle East left the church for Islam. There was a Muslim Caliphate in Egypt. In-between these two sat an Eastern Greek Orthodox,the Byzantine Empire. Religious clashes now included diametrically opposing views of God’s intentions more often than not settled with the sword.

But one good schism deserves another and the Catholic Church was not through with the splitting process. In the late 1500s the Protestant Reformation spun of all sorts of new religions into orbit. In many ways this reformation was as much a political revolution as it was an attempt at reforming religious thought. The reformation was also causing inner strife within ruling kingdoms of the time–aka Henry the VIII and his wedding/divorce woes. If you don’t like the divorce court’s rulings, start your own religion. And, oh by the way, make yourself the head of the religion.

Eventually some of those religions managed to land upon the Eastern shores of this country bringing their religious strife to the New World. Fortunately for us, political heads prevailed over fundamentalist religious preachers of the time. However, there was one Old World concept that still resonated within the New World: slavery, our original sin so to speak. Much like the Catholic Church during the Reformation, America eventually had s schism in the way it viewed the Constitution

Throughout our history we have had various and changing sects (political parties) and their absolute interpretations of the Constitution. Take the slavery issue and the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision Taney ruled that basically African Americans (free or otherwise) had no rights under the Constitution. Sticking to the prevailing thought at the time, Taney believed that slaves were property, and hence had no rights he or anybody else needed to respect. The only real reference to African Americans in the United States legally was that they were three-fifths of a person, an economic/political concept that worked for almost 100 years. The Civil War forced a major shift in dealing with more than four-hundred million freed African Americans. They went from property to voting citizens within a decade.

The aftermath of the American Civil War completely altered the way we would look at the law and the Constitution. It was Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity for social sciences. According to howstuffworks.com Einstein’s theory “remains an important and essential discovery because it permanently altered how we look at the universe. Einstein’s major breakthrough was to say that space and time are not absolutes.” The Civil War changed the way America would look at human rights. It threw America’s absolute views into a world of uncertainty.

How was America to view the recently freed slaves? It is sort of like Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. According to scienceexchange.caltech.edu “the uncertainty principle states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle’s position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa. Post Civil War politics never nailed down African Americans positions in a freed society. The speed of this transition however, was known. It was slow and backwards to those halcyonic antebellum times.

In order to rectify the concept that slaves were property, the Constitution had to be amended. It had to upgrade the African American population to citizenship 3.0. They had to be set free from serving the peculiar institution they were forever indentured to. They had to be made citizens. And, they had to be given the right to vote. Most middle school civics class students would know that this is the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, amendments needed to make Roger B. Taney’s decision null and void.

In a weird twist of property rights and logic the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case in 2010 ruled that money was free speech. Interesting because money is also property. And corporations are loaded up with money. These monied interests are now granted Second Amendment rights under the law of the land. They can spend their money on elections like a kid at the county fair. Can you imagine after seeing the Israelites dancing around the Golden Calf Moses decided to amend the Second Commandment. What absolute will dissolve away next? With Artificial Intelligence right around the corner, Citizens United may have pushed the concept that if money is property will my laptop eventually get the right to vote. I am just wondering.

I am going to go off on the deep end. I think history is a lot like curved space time, not linear. History events are like Halley’s Comet. History is a giant mass. And it is not so much that history repeats itself, it is that certain fundamental so-called absolutes, human issues, rights, whatever keeping coming back around in time. These issues are caught in history’s gravitational pull spiraling in on us. Until we sort these issues out, nail down their position and velocity, they basically will keep coming back around and around until they crash in on us, whether they are religious or political.

A family moved into the neighborhood not too long ago. Shortly after they moved in a sign appeared in their front window proclaiming that Jesus Christ and the Second Amendment was protecting their new home. I thought this is an absurd statement. I also thought is there a crime wave in the neighborhood that I don’t know about. A year or so ago we did have bears in a neighbor’s backyard.

There is a mutual compatibility in believing in both Jesus and the right to own a gun, and protect your property. When Jesus sent out 70 or so of his disciples to spread the word he sent them out as lambs among wolves, and unarmed. He also told them when they enter somebody’s home they should first say, “‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them…”

I just can’t help thinking there appears to be some sort of fallacious reasoning going on behind the window. First off, I am not questioning or condemning anyone’s Christian beliefs or the Constitutional right to bear arms. It is the mutual exclusivity that confuses me. It is the lumping Jesus Christ with the Second Amendment as protectors of a house.

I thought maybe it was the Fourth Amendment, the one guaranteeing us the right “to be secure in their (our) persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches…” But for some reason this does not include internet searches and hacking–something Madison and Friends were unaware of at the time of ratification. After all, this was a time of Mercantilism. The Industrial Revolution was just on the horizon and the information age a space age away.

But the Fourth Amendment really deals with government warrants and the “deep state.” Those who wrote the Constitution, in their infinite wisdom, foresaw a billowing government turning into a hidden futuristic monster. The Fourth, however, lacks the punch that the Second provides. I do not think the Fourth protects you from someone busting through your sliding glass door at 4 a.m. It would be at this time the Second Amendment might kick in.

What I find fallacious in the above sign is we are comparing a man, notably the Son of God, to 27 words in a Constitution. This fallacious equivalence makes it almost impossible to make a sane comparison. It goes way beyond “apples and oranges.” It is more like apples and orangutans. It is this sort of reasoning that is running rampant today, particularly among politicians who operate in the thin, upper stratosphere of reasoning. In this case, there is not a single shared characteristic or attribute that I can see between Jesus Christ and the Second Amendment. It is as if Jesus Christ sat on the First Congress’s Joint House Senate Conference Committee of the United States and voted to send the 12 proposed Bill of Rights Amendments to the States for ratification.

Believe me, if you are a devout Christian and you believe that you can never be out of God’s or Jesus’ watchful eye, I get it. I will not argue that point. As the song goes: “He’s got the whole world in his hands…” Using that logic it would seem to indicate if he has the whole world in his hands, and if the house is part of the world then I can see how Jesus would protect the house and those inside it, even at 4 a.m. As the psalmist says: “if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”

It reminds me of when his disciples were huddled on a boat in a “great tempest.” Nothing like water coming in over the gunnels and no life preservers on board to get your heart racing, to put the fear of God in a man’s soul. Those swimming lessons at the YMCA would have come in handy right about now. For those disciples they did not have to search far for God. At some point in the storm they decided it was time to wake Jesus up yelling, “Lord, save us: we perish.” Jesus sat up, looked around and said, “‘Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?’ Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.” If you have faith that Jesus can calm a storm I think you can go ahead and cancel your homeowner’s insurance. Unfortunately, mortgage companies do not have that kind of faith.

There is so much going on in that sign. I just don’t get the juxtaposition of a cross with a gun, and not just any cross, the symbol of Christianity. As if one is dependent on the other. If this were a Venn Diagram where would the Jesus circle intersect with the Second Amendment circle? It would seem to me that if Jesus was protecting the house, Jesus, a man who could cast multiple devils out of one man, head those demons into a herd of swine and then off a cliff; a man who could feed thousands would have little need of a gun. If guns were around in 33 AD. So, protecting a house would be nothing to him.

Then there is the Second Amendment. It is only 27 words:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It could easily be said that they are the most picked over 27 words written in the Constitution. Some argue that the Amendment is anachronistic and incongruous with the present times. The Second Amendment was written when powerful European countries were perched on our borders like alligators hanging under an Egret’s nest waiting for a falling fledgling. It was a time when a well armed “regulated “(and I use regulated losely) citizenry was the first line of defense. Taxing for a standing Army and a 300 ship navy, national defense, wouldn’t come until post WWII.

The British have come and gone and we have been at peace with Canada for the better part of 200 years. The National Guard is our well regulated militia today. If the Russians are coming they are not coming by land or by sea. Red Dawn was a great movie but I do not think Cubans and Russians–Iranians or North Koreans–are going to be falling out of the sky any time soon. It will more likely be through cyberspace.

Yes, it could be argued that things are not so swell south of the Rio Grande. We are dealing with what some would call a “crisis,” an invasion at our Southern border. However, it is not an armed-hostile attack. It is not even like 1916 when General John Pershing and the 13th Cavalry were chasing Pancho Villa all over Mexico after Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. The Second Amendment may have kicked in with armed citizens rallying in a moments notice to defend hearth and home. Villa wasn’t escorting new settlers. It was probably the last time individual Americans had to face down a foreign attack. My question is why did Villa pick a town where an US Army base was.

But it really is not so much about foreign invasions today that our personal weapons would supposedly be used for. Some will argue the Second Amendment is the only thing keeping the “deep state” from enslaving us all into some sort of socialistic, DEI, wokism state. Take away our guns and you take away the right to protect our freedoms. This sort circular reasoning is pointless. The Second Amendment will never be repealed so we will never know if owning guns or not goes beyond fending off Big Brother or Pancho Villa. If anything, it enhances the belief without any real proof that God, guns and guts made America free–let’s fight to keep all three–and Jesus will lead the charge. A nifty statement but is it really provable.

Now here is where it really gets dicey. Some Second Amendment advocates try to use the Bible to back up their beliefs that Jesus would be an advocate of gun ownership. Depending on what Bible you want to use there are nearly 800,000 words, give or take a couple thousand in both Books. The Old Testament ,”eye-for-an eye, has more than 600,000 words compared to the New Testament’s “love thy neighbor’s” 180,000.

Now it is obvious there were no handguns, long rifles, assault rifles in First Century AD. In the Holy Land during this era it’s more than likely that the Roman short sword was the personal weapon of choice. Easily concealed under a tunic or a cloak, and possibly easily acquired on the black market. In fact when the Jews came to arrest Jesus it was Peter who pulled out a sword “and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear”. It would not be until the 1850s that the pistol would be the real choice for in close killing. But a cross? You don’t hear about too many people being clubbed to death with a cross. And crucifictions went out with the Romans.

Of the 180,000 words in the New Testament it is 30 that basically form the intersection of Jesus and the Second Amendment. Luke 22:36: He (Jesus) said to them, ‘But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’” Biblical scholars can pick that verse apart much like Constitutional scholars pick apart the Second Amendment. And since I am neither I am going to let it go at that.

And now it is my turn to make a ridiculous comparison. One might channel Han Solo just after eluding Imperial forces. He tells Luke Skywalker that: “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a blaster at your side.” In our time and galaxy that might be a Glock 19. Or you can channel the father who was seeking out Jesus for relief of his son, who was afflicted with “a dumb spirit.” Granted, it was not Darth Vader. The father said:  “And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.”

Jesus said unto him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” If you believe Jesus protects your house why do you need a gun. Or if you have a gun do you really need Jesus. I am just asking.