Over the Christmas holiday, I read this little article about Rupublican politicians who are supportive of First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity efforts.
Of course, since the issue at hand is a political one, the article devotes much of its space focusing on Obama’s detractors, notably the magnetic Sarah Palin. Since the horrific shootings in Tuscon and the grotesque political posturing in the shooting’s wake, the verbal spats found here seem petty and inconsequential. Still, there was one comment by Palin that deserves mentioning.
According to the article, Palin appeared on talk-show host Laura Ingraham’s radio program in order to promote her new book. At one point in the interview the conversation turned to Palin’s criticism of Obama’s efforts to encourage individuals to voluntarily fight obesity by changing their eating habits. This rubbed Palin the wrong way. She perceived it as indicative of a nation gone soft and an attack on a person’s right to choose whatever they want to eat. Politicians (or anyone else presumably) should:
“get off our back and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions” (emphasis mine).
It matters little to me that it was Sarah Palin who made this statement. What matters to me is that it is indicative of a common and severe theological confusion on matters of freedom and individual rights. Palin, and she’s not alone in this sentiment, seems to be suggesting that as individuals God has given us the freedom or right to do whatever the hell we want and no one, let alone any politician or government, has any right to say otherwise. Our freedom to do as we please is written in the very DNA of creation and any attack on this liberal freedom is not only an attack on freedom but an attack on the very God who granted this boundless freedom.
From a strictly Judeo-Christian perspective, this is wildly false. Now, I will admit that in one regard we are free to behave as we choose. We’re morally responsible free agents. But in the end we’re accountable for those choices. We’re accountable because we are given directives by God as to the patterns in which we live our life. Those God-given patters of living take specific and concrete forms. To put it another way: we’re not free to do whatever the hell we want. We live under the authority of the Word of God, i.e. Jesus Christ as he is attested in Scripture. As people who live under the authority of the Word, we have a limited and contingent freedom dependent upon God’s total claim over our lives.
Even excluding my interpretation of God and freedom, I don’t think Palin or anyone else holding her libertine position of a freedom derived from our “God-given rights to make our own decisions” would allow the purposeful ending of another person’s life. Doing whatever the hell we want doesn’t allow for that.
Perhaps what Palin meant when she voiced the conventional wisdom that we have a “God-given right to make our own decisions,” she was referring to trifling matters such as the food we consume. In a Kantian sense, maybe there are some universals that we just should never do (e.g. purposely and maliciously taking another’s life) but in smaller matters such as the food consumed there is a God-given right to do whatever the hell we want.
But again, this isn’t correct. The Old Testament devotes an inordinate amount of space to what God’s covenant people could and could not eat, when and where they could eat it, and how it should be prepared. Simply put, what they put in their mouth wasn’t a matter of a “God-given right to make their own decisions”.
While many of the dietary restrictions of the Old Testament were restricted or abolished by Jesus, there is an even more demanding call: total obedience to the command of Christ. This call to total obedience is one of moderation and submission (even to *gasp* political authorities). Jesus’ command is one of total loyalty to his claim over our lives. This is hardly the type of “God-given rights” Palin seems to think we have.
Perhaps I’m reading the situation incorrectly. Perhaps she meant something entirely different. Perhaps “God” was simply an archaic deistic injunction to natural law philosophy. If so, please leave God out and call it what it is. But if I’m right, please leave God out it and leave the theology to those better equipped.
