Letters to the Supreme Court

Episode 1

Dear Chief Justice Simon Silverstein:

I write to you as a concerned citizen of the United States.

This past week, my wife and I decided to pull our two young children from the public school system. They had been attending for nearly three years and were getting good grades. Unfortunately, though, the more I learned about the public school system in America, the more doubtful I became of its benefits to my children.

What spurred me on to my discoveries was the recent action that a well-known member of my community took. This man — a pediatrician in his forties who has children in the local school system — raised a complaint at a recent parent-teacher association meeting. This man is an avowed atheist (which I did not know before), and he took issue with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each school day. Specifically, he took issue with the words “under God” as he said he was raising his children to believe that there is no God. A few days later, I found that although the school has now made the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance a voluntary action, the doctor has sued the school district to ensure that it will not be recited or posted anywhere on school grounds. He cites as his defense the separation of church and state. This case, or others like it, may in the future rest in your hands.

There are many other issues which weigh upon my mind as a relatively young father who aims to raise his children in the sacred vein of honesty, hard work, faith in God, and patriotism that our country has long espoused. I will write to you and your colleagues of those issues in the near future.

For now, I ask that you bear with me as I disclose the primary issue which burdens my heart and mind. It is this: While in our free and democratic society the rights of every man to live and believe as he so pleases (as long as he does not harm others or the larger society) should be defended, it worries me that so many seem to think that there is no such thing as an absolute — that morality and law are relative to human desires and wishes. Not only are people challenging conventional human laws that human governments have laid down in what they believe to be the best interest of the public, but people are challenging ancient standards which are laid out in religious writings such as the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran.

Some people seem to think that God should have no say in the operation of his world and in the lives of the people he created. I vehemently disagree. But rather than burden you with my own reasonings, I ask that you look back nearly three-hundred years to the grounds out of which the laws and systems of the United States government have grown. I appeal to the writings of Sir William Blackstone, the preeminent English jurist with whom our founding fathers were greatly familiar. In Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, which were republished numerous times in the formative years of our Republic (1770-1783), he points to God as the source of all law, stating that “man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being.”

How then does man derive his laws from God? Blackstone believed from two sources — nature and revelation.

What did he mean by man being able to derive laws from nature? He meant that man, by observing the natural courses of life, could discern that some things were just and right and that aberrations and deviations from the normal course of nature were evil at worst and should be held suspect at best.

For example, I am sure you would readily agree that the normal course of nature shows us that for a child to be born — and for the human race to continue — a male and a female are necessary to facilitate the conception of that child. Therefore, it follows that there is something aberrational and deviant about two males or two females being together in the same way that a male and a female get together. To use the words of Jesus Christ, “It was not so from the beginning.” A homosexual union cannot produce a human life. If such unions were the norm, the human race would be wiped out within a few generations. Therefore, since it is not natural, it is (and should be) against the law. (I mention this as I know you will soon be considering a case regarding same-sex marriage. I plan to write to you and your colleagues in more detail on this issue in the near future.)

Back to my main point: What did Blackstone mean by being able to derive laws from revelation? Revelation is, of course, the specific communication of God to man. When God called Moses up onto Mount Sinai and gave him the Ten Commandments, that was revelation.

So from nature and from revelation, mankind gains the knowledge of the laws of God. Blackstone summarizes: “Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”

What prompted me to write this letter, your honor, is the apparent lack of respect that many in our society have developed toward God and the natural laws which have been adhered to unquestioned for centuries. As I think about the atheist doctor in our community who is now seeking to have the Pledge of Allegiance eradicated from use in the school district, I can see how many with similar views will seek to not only have the name of God, but the laws of God removed from public life. Many of these and similar cases will rest in the hands of you and your colleagues.

I bring my concerns to your attention, Chief Silverstein, because, as you continue in your tenure, I ask that for the good of this nation and the children of this country that you keep in mind that laws ought not to be based on the whims and passions of men, but on eternal and immutable laws of God as revealed through nature and revelation.

With deepest respect,

Michael Elderson