For those of us unschooled in the history of our U.S. constitution, Jill Lepore, in The Whites of Their Eyes, offers some fascinating information. It seems, for example, that the only people who did not hold the constitution as immutable were those who created it. James Madison, for example, in Federalist paper 14, wrote:
Is it not the glory of the people of America that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience
The invitation is clear: not to discard the laws and principles and brilliance of the nation's founders, but to work with the tension between those as they were formulated at that time and our own "good sense," "knowledge of our own situation," and lessons from our own experience."
The rigidity of the constitutional purists strikes me as similar to that experienced by middle managers who, when torn between the conflicting priorities of those above them and those below them, rigidly align with one side or the other. They are either firmly aligned with the boss and in tension with those below, or they are firmly aligned with those below and in tension with upper management. In either case, they are more rigid, more difficult to deal with than those they are aligned with. In their "borrowed" positions they lose the flexibility to adapt. They are the rigid guardians of other people's positions.
I can envision the writing of Genesis as being its own form of constitutional convention. Wise, thoughtful, well intentioned men (and women?), grappling with the big questions, hammer out what seems like a reasonable story of how all this came to be. Now, those founders are gone; there is no way to ask them what their story would be given today's knowledge and circumstances. My guess is that they would be more open to change than those who are rigidly aligned with them.
I hear a voice from the past, speaking in an ancient tongue. "So, mister smarty pants, you got a better story?"
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