Hubris Comes Before a Fall

For those who argue that the "health care reform" (sic.) being rammed through the United States government is a mandate of the gospel, my dispute is this: the entire process from beginning to end has not been ostensibly a clearly stated way to "love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength" - the First Great Commandment with a mind to care for all of God's human children, imago dei. Neither has it been done with the explicit mandate of the Second Great Commandment: "love your neighbor as yourself."

At most, it has been done with murky humanist motives - a slathering of benign concern for every single American citizen - legal or illegal - as a lump sum: all of the "humanity" in our country. But, as usual, "some animals are more 'equal' than others" in Orwell's inimitable turn of phrase from Animal Farm. And, as we know from common sense, there is no such thing as "humanity", only persons, and many of us.

What is being ramrodded is not that all human beings stand on the same level at the foot of the Cross of Our Lord. Rather, a lump sum totality of American citizenry stands a-begging at the foot-stool of the Executive Branch and, soon, the Legislative Branch.

How concerned should persons be by this ramrodding? Mutatis mutandis. The best of our land, our governance, our civilization can be retained if - IF - we put the Cross and the gospel first:

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." - Jesus, Matthew 6,33

But anything, no matter now monumental and monolithic it seems, is liable to falling and crumbling (cf. Genesis 11) so long as it puts forth a puny ideological pipe dream with no regard to the Kingdom of God and putting first things first.

Hubris indeed comes before a fall.