Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Preamble to the Constitution

I was helping my son work on his "Citizenship in the Nation" merit badge for scouts today, and we read these words:

"WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

I was struck by how much they wanted this preliminary paragraph to tells us.
They spell out all the things that they planned for the Constitution to do. They want to secure all these blessings to their posterity--to you and I; then comes the interesting part to me, they "do ordain and establish this Constitution..."
Now ordain means to order, I understand that, but I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in my faith, ordain has a different meaning, as I believe it does in many ecclesiastical circles; to ordain means to set apart for God, or for God's work.

It struck me that the Founders wanted us to know that THEY believed the Constitution was a Divine document; that they wanted this nation set apart for God.
We have a book of modern revelation called the Doctrine and Covenants. I know this book to be of Divine origin. In section 101 verse 80 the Lord says "And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood."
The Lord has told us straight forwardly that HE established the Constitution; He raised these men up for this purpose. The Constitution IS of Divine origin; the Founding Fathers KNEW this, and their wording suggests that they wanted US to know this; to remember this.

We have pushed God out of every arena in our so called modern society. We worship things instead of Him. We can allow condoms in school, but not Prayer. We have allowed the secular humanist movement to have a larger voice despite Christianities larger numbers. We Christians tend to take a pacifist attitude, and in so doing have let the minions of the Adversary walk all over us and force God out of the center of society. But that's another post.

My point here is to help us all to remember that God ordained this country by the raising up of wise men to establish the Constitution of the United States of America. We have an obligation as the beneficiaries of these blessings and liberties to learn, teach and uphold the Constitution.
We have to speak up, write letters, and get involved in even the smallest way. We can no longer sit back and be silent.

2 comments:

Audra M said...

You are 'on fire' with the truth. I love it. It is really helpful for me to watch your blog since I am currently in the 'baby black hole'.

Ritsumei said...

I really like this.