Aliens in America: Day 8

Law of the Heart 

‘As aliens, live in reverent fear’ (1 Pet. 1:17) 

A group of psychologists didn’t agree with my premise that same-sex unions weren’t the optimal expression of human sexuality. I responded: ‘Why can’t we aspire to more, to grow into creative commitment to the opposite sex?’ As I reasoned with them about how I, and thousands like me, have aspired and discovered, happily, our potential for real complementarity, they came around.  

I just appealed to what they can’t not know. Without railing at them with a large Bible, I appealed to our bodily design, which declares freedom for committed communion with this other. Only the one like me but wholly different from me can create something akin to wholeness with me. Anything less issues from a fracture, which frustrates the ‘becoming’ that whole-enough opposite-sex unions invite. 

We can’t not know that. That law is ‘written on our hearts, our consciences bearing witness,’ declares St. Paul (Rom. 2:15). Philosophers call this ‘the natural law.’ We as humans possess an awareness of moral order—the truth of how things are—even though that truth is obscured by the disorder in and outside of us.  

We can employ our powers of reason and observation to clarify this reality. Natural law, in turn, helps inform how we make decisions—in our private and public lives, including the political sphere. 

Archbishop Charles Chaput writes in his excellent book Render to Caesar: ‘Natural law teaches that all creation has a nature, an inherent order and purpose. By using their reason, men and women can know what conforms to their human nature and is therefore good. This knowledge doesn’t require a theology or law degree; we all instinctively sense it. Murder, lying, cheating, stealing, exploiting the poor, abusing the weak and elderly—these things are universally seen as evil whether a person is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, or agnostic, because they violate a natural law written into the human heart’ (83).  

For example, natural law makes an excellent case for why adults should have every freedom to pursue psychological support and advocacy for integrating the good of their ‘natural’ capacity for opposite-sex relating. That was my point to the psychologists; the truth in their hearts agreed, even if their clinical statutes didn’t!    

Chaput details how America’s founders drew deeply upon natural law in writing the early documents that still guide our country, especially the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence. I contend that a wise use of natural law reasoning can help guide us as aliens in America today.  

‘Restore our good use of reason in this election. We must pray and weigh thoughtfully what’s at stake in this election. Help us, O God. You see in full, and we woefully in part. Still, You give us a share in representing You on earth. May that count for something as we consider how to vote and why.’   

‘Jesus, You are the King, and we are first citizens of Your Kingdom. Would you free us for You in this election season, not to hide but to shine? You’ve always asked nothing less from Your elect whom You have made ‘strangers in a strange land’ (Ex. 2:22). Here we are, a people who don’t know what to do but who look and listen to our King.  

“Father of all holiness, 

guide our hearts to You. 

Keep in the light of Your Truth 

all those You have freed from the darkness of unbelief. 

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son.”’ 

Amen