The Fullness of Time
Abraham Heschel said Judaism is a religion of time. The Hebrew day begins at sunset because time began in a “dark” abyss. (skotos) I can think of no better way to describe what I see in the country to which I gave (at least) six years of my life. As a soldier, I saw a once-great civilization brought utterly to its knees, and it is a fate I can see on our horizon as well.
If it is our soldiers’ labor that produces the fruit of liberty, then veterans are the first in line to collect on whatever debt is named when Americans claim “freedom is not free.” Just because it isn’t free doesn’t mean that people won’t feel entitled to it. Entitlement is the expectation that you should get more than your fair share, that others must work more so that you can work less. One of the oldest contracts was summarized by Psaul in his second letter to a community of believers in Thessaloniki, "If any will not work, neither let him eat.” (3:2)
If the Constitution is a contract, then its defenders are the secured creditors of freedom, our most treasured possession. In probate court, secured creditors are those who have first dibs on assets. The last decade has revealed that soldiers and veterans, and their families in fact are being deprived of the rights their service supposedly secures. GIJustice.com is a testament to that fact.
Whatever we may call our system of government, and regardless of the Framers intentions, we have yet to fully realize a viable democracy. The closest we may have come was between the passage of Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the cessation of conscription in 1974, which created a civilian aristocracy that expected something for nothing. An emperor atop a pyramid is easy to topple, but what about when 90% of Americans expect rights without duties, power without responsibility?
Responsibility requires response, it’s right there in the word. To be true to our American ideals, we have to stop ignoring what’s right in front of our faces; military suicides are the canary in the coal mine. America has been on a slow decline, and the current administration is merely the most fitting avatar of our collective privilege; a stillborn conscience murdered by the promise of something for nothing. At least Donald Trump had to come up with an excuse for his civic absenteeism! But getting to call him CPT Bone Spurs is little solace to those of us whose conscience is far from silent.
There's a phrase from the Bible that I can't get out of my mind lately which brings me back to Heschel and the measure of time. In Galatians 4:4, Psaul says the Messiah of YHWH came to earth in "the fulness of the time." (plērōma ho chronos) Christ loved a parable, he was kinda known for them. As a descendant of Hebrews, he drew primarily upon agrarian imagery, which made me wonder what that might lead him to think of if he were to have used the same language as his follower used.
Imagine a fruit, having ripened all season long, is starting to grow heavy with decay. No worker to harvest it for a meal, the fruit will eventually become so overcome with death that it falls back to the earth, its spoiled corpse becoming fodder for the next crop. That's how I interpret the fullness of time; nobody knows precisely when, but left without tending, our society is destined for the compost heap of history. Our current elected leader is atrophy incarnate, the truth to which our actions testified. What should we expect when we can't even compel a majority of our fellow citizens simply to vote?
This all scares the shit outta me because I surrendered six years of my life to this "experiment" in popular sovereignty. I know others who gave up even more of their lives, only to discover the oaths we made were made out to be lies in the end. That's the nature of democracy; only WE can decide if we believe what we all say about freedom, justice, and the American way. If the majority says "freedom is not free" while devouring the fruit of a minority forced to starve, there are only two options; we never believed it, making us all liars, or we never knew better, making us all fools. Pick your poison, or pick up your picket sign and start acting like a freed slave, as the Hebrew Bible tells us to.
