Making The Wrong Separation

"My daughter and I came in the house, and our cat came in with us. He immediately ran to inspect the cedar chest in the hallway. There was a little mouse behind it, and we began to try to run the mouse out. It ran up under my skirt."

This writer continues: "I was kneeling on the floor, and my skirt was full, so it seemed like a safe harbor to the mouse. Anyway, when it ran up under me, I began to laugh and squeal. I was turning around and around whilst on my knees, trying to get away from him. Every time I'd turn, my skirt would uncover him, and he'd run right back under me.

Her sister also has a cat and mouse story. "Years ago, our Old Puddy Tat believed in 'bringing 'em back alive.' Enthralled with her prize from one expedition, she gently dropped a little mouse onto the living room floor and waited for it to skitter away. Nine-months pregnant and barely able to move, I somehow executed a lightning-fast leap to the safety of the couch. Screams ensued, distracting old Puddy, and mousie escaped."

Funny how two sisters can be so different.

Fear can thus galvanize or paralyze. In his first inaugural address (March 4, 1933) Franklin D. Roosevelt confronted a nation under the heel of the Great Depression. What could be done? Address the problem: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified, terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." They did, and America prospered.

Our little son's favorite Bible story was David and Goliath. Knowing that Goliath was about nine feet tall, he would sometimes be afraid that Goliath could see in his second-story window. But he loved the story, and my reassurance that Goliath was long gone would calm his fears... until the next telling.

Still, fear is not always bad. It has a practical role in society: fear causes men to depart from evil. The breakneck struggle to build prisons fast enough should make us wonder. Has the rabid determination to "separate church and state" actually separated would-be offenders from the fear of consequence from either God or man?

Like the scurrying mouse under the twirling skirt, criminals find plenty of safe harbors. Those who have selfishly, flagrantly stripped others of their rights clamor for their own. The legal process moves at a glacier's pace. Even nonsensical appeals persist for years, denying victims and families any sense of closure. Unrepentant thugs are put on the street for want of prison bed space. The system is not working.

Without a healthy fear of speedy, decisive consequence, the criminal element flourishes. Thus separated from the tranquility that should pervade a restrained, moral society, the law-abiding live in fear, and safe harbors are few. Our lawmakers have misjudged the source of the problem and have made the wrong separation. They need to restore some "Thou shalt not's"--and mean it.

Copyright 2001 James McAlister

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