Can You Believe It!

Can you believe it!

Once upon a time god was supposed to know, omniscient as he is, who was the closest living heir to Adam himself in each and every country, province, county, city in the world.  That direct descendant to Adam—and here you thought that we were all direct descendants!—was the rightful king of the country, prince of the province, count of the county, sovereign of the city.

 

That’s what Sir Robert Filmer, writing in the mid-17^th century, asserted in defense of the divine right of kings.  His book, Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, wasn’t published until 1680, however, so it was alas too late to prevent the people of England from rebelling against their god-appointed king, Charles I, trying the king for treason against the nation, beheading him in 1649, and declaring England an electoral commonwealth rather than a kingdom.

 

So much for divine right.

 

Still and all, we live in a world where the idea that god intervenes in human affairs in that kind of direct, physical, determinative way still buzzes in the minds of a great many people.  It’s not kings that we think about anymore.  Even the grand monarch of England, Charles III, more or less direct descendant of Charles I, is king by parliamentary concession and, more importantly perhaps, agreement on the part of the British people.  The execution of 1649 and its aftermath put England, and then Great Britain, on the path to becoming a parliamentary democracy, after all.

 

No, it’s not kings.  It’s billionaires.  Surely god’s hand is at work in the accumulation of so much wealth!  And it’s presidents.  Surely god’s hand is at work in Crooks’s bullet missing Donald Trump.  And it’s nations.  Surely god’s hand is at work in making the US that shining city on a hill.  And it’s individuals.  Surely god’s hand is at work in saving Joe Blow from dying in the flood and saving Jane Doe from being squashed when the façade of the fifty story building fell right in front of her on the sidewalks of New York and she survived with nary a scratch.

 

Can you believe it!

 

And the converse must also be true.  Surely god did not love the slob who lost all his wealth or JFK who did not dodge the bullet or Bangladesh that has no hill to shine on or Billy Bob who sank away in the tsunami or Susie Sapp whose body parts are still being gathered on the highway where the tractor trailer ran into her SUV.

 

Can you believe it!

 

Personally I’m on the side of the citizens of London, who in 1641 forwarded to Parliament the so-called Root and Branch Petition.  The petition was all about abolishing episcopacy, which is to say the Church of England, and making members of each congregation self-governing rather than subject to the authority of the episcopos, the bishop, appointed by the god-given king.  Tearing out bishops’ authority root and branch was a step towards tearing out the king’s god-given role.  In a god-besotted world, the Root and Branch Petition was a step towards the rise of common persons as arbiters of their own destiny.

 

So too with billionaires and presidents, nations and individuals.  It is as we behave that we become who and what we are.  There is no hand of god moving us in one direction or another.  If that Mac truck rams into our SUV, it’s not god guiding it and our own death or survival, only the irresponsibility of the drivers and pure unadulterated chance.  Kings are not appointed by god.  Billionaires are made mostly by inheritance from their parents or by canny investing and good luck.  Nations become great by the bounty of their geographical place and by the pluck, luck, and social habits of its people.  Rome did not rise and fall because Jove favored it and then Yahweh did not.