Shakespeare Was Right

In Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2, Shakespeare has Dick the butcher say, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” While no Christian could never accede to such wickeness, it being a gross sin and all, there are times one wishes for something like the scene from the Ten Commandments where Moses in disgust throws the stone tablets at the licentious Israelites and the ground opens up and swallows them all. No, not really, but sometimes I do pass by the thought as a temptation.

This story comes from Jay Nordlinger’s article in the National Review Online.

Fifth-graders were assigned to write Thanksgiving poems, and one girl penned, “Pilgrims thanked God for what they were given. / Everybody say . . . Happy Thanksgiving!”

But one word, “God,” was edited out before the poem was displayed in the school hallway.

As the Becket Fund says, “Fortunately, the school changed its mind and decided to reinsert the word ‘God’ into the poem after the child’s mother expressed outrage and the school consulted with attorneys.”

Despite the fact that the poem is factually and historically true, this little skirmish in the war of secularism against religious belief is illustrative of how far things have gone and how controlling the opinions of attorneys have become in even the miniscule aspects our public lives.

When we live by the letter of the law, the spirit that brought it into being dies, and the law itself loses any semblance of humaneness as it becomes razor-sharp object code for the class legal(), calculating its continually refined definitions to edge of absurdity.

We are quickly reaching the point where even lukewarm Christians will begin to pray ever more loudly, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20)