In a recent reading of "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" by Walter Isaacson I was overwhelmed with the length of knowledge to be had. In particular was the retelling of an incident that occurred between Voltaire and Franklin. The following is drawn from Isaacson’s account.
In 1778 Benjamin Franklin made a trip to see a dying Voltaire in hopes of receiving a blessing for his 7 year old grandson Benny Bache. Franklin, being the practical man he was, desired the blessing of a man that meant so much to the Enlightenment world. Voltaire complied and simply consecrated the boy with, “God and Liberty.”
This scene alone would have produced a scrawling from this author; however, it was the response of then Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that invoked my inner wheels of thought. When news of this benediction made its way back to the governor he responded to the scene by stating, “difficult to say which of those words had been most used to bad purposes.”
This casual response from the governor to a dying man’s most basic blessing captures a spirit that has haunted civilization for centuries. Nearly every war that has ever been thought worthy of the fight has been in the name of either God or liberty. Many corrupt methods in business and government find their justification, wrongly so, in either God or liberty.
The reason I find these two words used in this manner so provocative is due to their nature being of a moralistically good bent, not the corrupted, violent bent that man has spun. God is a term used to represent a divine being that governs the world through his providence. Liberty, on the other hand, does not necessarily depend on a supernatural being, but does depend on an unnatural state for all adherents to live in.
Of the world religions that are in popular practice today a majority contain tenets of love and individual freedoms. They will preach of assertive, not aggressive, methods of the advancement of their beliefs. A call to assist the less fortunate and to sacrifice for the benefit of others becomes a common thread.
In liberty the rules are quite simple: no man shall impede the advancement of another. Adherents to this philosophy, which is the primary philosophy in the U.S., fully believe that we should only take action against others when the others have taken unjustifiable action on their neighbor. Essentially do no harm to anyone when no harm has been done.
In conclusion, I wish I could go into more detail but the words are becoming too great in number. It is time that we as a people realize a struggle that was discovered by Voltaire, recognized by Hutchinson, and revisited today. Our personal interests in a relationship with God compounded with our need for individual liberties should never become the source of our corrupted actions. We are, at the heart of all things, a corruptible people that act in ways that offend our neighbor. When such action occurs understand this is the natural state in which we exist, not the superior state in which we strive. God and liberty lie counter to us, yet through divine providence we are able to achieve both.
In 1778 Benjamin Franklin made a trip to see a dying Voltaire in hopes of receiving a blessing for his 7 year old grandson Benny Bache. Franklin, being the practical man he was, desired the blessing of a man that meant so much to the Enlightenment world. Voltaire complied and simply consecrated the boy with, “God and Liberty.”
This scene alone would have produced a scrawling from this author; however, it was the response of then Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson that invoked my inner wheels of thought. When news of this benediction made its way back to the governor he responded to the scene by stating, “difficult to say which of those words had been most used to bad purposes.”
This casual response from the governor to a dying man’s most basic blessing captures a spirit that has haunted civilization for centuries. Nearly every war that has ever been thought worthy of the fight has been in the name of either God or liberty. Many corrupt methods in business and government find their justification, wrongly so, in either God or liberty.
The reason I find these two words used in this manner so provocative is due to their nature being of a moralistically good bent, not the corrupted, violent bent that man has spun. God is a term used to represent a divine being that governs the world through his providence. Liberty, on the other hand, does not necessarily depend on a supernatural being, but does depend on an unnatural state for all adherents to live in.
Of the world religions that are in popular practice today a majority contain tenets of love and individual freedoms. They will preach of assertive, not aggressive, methods of the advancement of their beliefs. A call to assist the less fortunate and to sacrifice for the benefit of others becomes a common thread.
In liberty the rules are quite simple: no man shall impede the advancement of another. Adherents to this philosophy, which is the primary philosophy in the U.S., fully believe that we should only take action against others when the others have taken unjustifiable action on their neighbor. Essentially do no harm to anyone when no harm has been done.
In conclusion, I wish I could go into more detail but the words are becoming too great in number. It is time that we as a people realize a struggle that was discovered by Voltaire, recognized by Hutchinson, and revisited today. Our personal interests in a relationship with God compounded with our need for individual liberties should never become the source of our corrupted actions. We are, at the heart of all things, a corruptible people that act in ways that offend our neighbor. When such action occurs understand this is the natural state in which we exist, not the superior state in which we strive. God and liberty lie counter to us, yet through divine providence we are able to achieve both.
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