Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?

Posted on January 15, 2007
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golden calf The meaning of words is very important to me. As I write, words will flow from my fingertips that seem to express what I want to say, and as a particular word appears on my screen, I’ll question it. I know the word when I see it in context, and the language flows naturally, but do I really know it’s intrinsic meaning? Does the word accurately express my intention? My dictionary is never more than a few mouse clicks away.

Complicating matters is that we are bombarded daily with gross and subtle misuses of language, both from the ignorance of users as well as from nefarious craftiness. Ignorance would not be quite as dangerous as intentional misuse, except the ignorant tend to propagate the misuse of the nefarious communicators. Fox News and the Republican elite, especially, cynically groom the ill-informed to redefine catchwords for their own use.

Take the word “elite.” How did that word, meaning, “a group of people considered to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth,” become associated with liberalism? There would be some overlap among liberals and elites, but the word, whose definition suggests power and wealth, applies far more readily to those who make an epithet of it to fling at others.

In my blogging, I am careful to always tag issuses dealing with violent war and the death penalty with the keyword “sanctity of life.” I also tag procreation and medical research as well as animal rights issues with “sanctity of life.” It doesn’t matter if I’m arguing pro-choice, as I frequently do, or questioning at what stage a human embryo deserves the protection of law — all of these issues dealing with human life, animal life, and suffering, will resolve to some basic questions of finding what is sacred in life. It is both an assertion and an inquiry. The assertion is not of certain knowledge, but of the belief that the inquiry is of great importance.

I tag “sanctity of life” in part because it is a catchphrase used by the Right, having to do with positions against abortion and an individual’s right to die with dignity. By doing so, I hope that a few people who toss around the phrase in that way will find my site and perhaps a few of those will read and get my meaning. I don’t think of it as co-opting their catchphrase, for me it is reclaiming its meaning.

from an earlier post:
We have all these good people in our churches, in public office, and on Sunday morning talk shows who like to talk about zygotes in petri dishes and embryos in freezers, of biomedical research, and of Terri Schiavo. They love to talk about the sanctity of life. That is, that life itself, is sacred or holy. At what point in a man’s life is his life no longer holy? Can his actions negate sanctity, or does the sacred come from God? Why is is so hard to say we abhor a man’s behavior, but the spark of life in him, which comes from God, we can not take away? If we can say it to protect a cluster of cells in a petri dish, why not for a man — whatever the condition of his soul or of his karma?

Likewise, I cringe when opportunistic politicians seek to protect the U.S. flag from “desecration.” The flag is not sacred. It is not God and did not come from God. Americans may feel and even claim to be blessed by God, but how arrogant is it to claim to be more blessed than others? Even most of those with a belief in some kind exclusive relationship with God, would have to recognize that there are other nations where their own idea of faith is followed. Are their national flags equally “sacred?” Is nationalism itself sacred? How scary is that?

It is truly amazing to me that the same folks who accept the word “desecration” for the destruction of the flag tend to be evangelical Christians who are absolutely steeped in the absolutism of the Old Testament. If these “Bible believing” Christians have read Genesis to condemn Darwin, and Leviticus to condemn everything else, one would imagine they’d have a passing knowledge of Exodus ch. 32, and Exodus 20:4:

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” (NIV)

Exodus 32 deals with the children of Israel making a golden calf. What is sanctifying the U.S. Flag if not idolatry? I’m not saying that the flag should not be a powerful symbol, but the symbol, by definition is not the thing itself. We hold the symbol of the flag important and worth our respect because of the set of ideas it represents. Most of us, right and left, agree that one of the most important ideas represented by our flag is freedom.

Two of the fundamental freedoms represented by the U.S. flag are religion and speech. No matter how distasteful the idea, the freedom to mistreat the flag as a form of speech must be protected or the symbol is diminished. One could even argue that specific protection for the flag is itself destructive to the flag—and for those yet unswayed, a desecration.

And as for making a god of the flag — or a golden calf, all are free in this land to do that as well.