Cyndy and I sat down and watched a play this week. Yes, a play in our living room! Brad Shoup, a member of Bear Creek, recommended it to us. It’s a play called “What the Constitution Means to Me”. I know, sounds kind of boring, right? I mean who wants to watch a play about the American Constitution? Sounds like some speech we were asked to write in our American Civics class. Some speech sponsored by the American Legion that gave out a $100 scholarship if you won!
Well, guess what? That is exactly how the play starts! And Cyndy and I were about to give it a thumbs down and turn it the “telly” to “Derry Girls” (Our new favorite), when all of the sudden things started to get interesting, and before we knew it we were riveted to the screen as we watched and listened to Heidi Schreck, the author of and lead actor in the play, started to go “off script” and share how she, as a woman, has been deeply affected by our constitution. I mean to tell you, when you get done watching this you will have so many feelings (mostly of anger) and questions about our constitution! This play will blow your mind!
One of the things that is shared about the constitution is that ours, unlike other constitutions, is a “negative” rights document. Maybe this might help explain a little bit better:
The United States has a constitution that is written in the negative. Many other countries have positive rights constitutions. They sometimes will grant the right to housing or to food, which the government must meet. But in our country, on our constitution, the government can only do things that do not infringe the spheres of protection that the constitution has enumerated. Namely, life, liberty, and property.
You will have to watch the play (it’s currently on Netflix, by the way) to really get the power of all of this, especially for women, but this revelation that our constitution was written with negative rights, has caused me to ponder my faith and how we perceive it. For so many of us our faith is written in a sense of “negative rights”. For too many of us, our faith is a thin line that we must suck and tuck parts of our body and our souls in, in order to fit! Our theological pasts are tormented so often by someone like one of my babysitters when I was young, who would sit us all on the couch and then point fingers at us and say, “if any of you move from this couch while I’m gone God will literally strike you down!” That may be an exaggeration for us, but underneath our understandings of God, that negative shadow is lurking! For example, many of the Ten Commandments are written in a negative sense. “Thou Shall Not Murder” for instance. What would happen if we did some work on turning that negative right into a positive one? Doesn’t it mean more to us if we say, “Every human being should be respected and listened to,” instead?
If I were ever to write a book about Christ, it would be one that would explore the understanding of Christ as a prism. As a person and spiritual force that when light shines through it, this person and spiritual force doesn't narrow the colors of who we are but enables us to see even more colors and opportunities. God, through Christ, allows us to be so much more, not something less!
Please take the time to watch this play and do some digging into your own theological imprint. Is the God you have imprinted in your soul, negative or positive? And if it is negative, what spiritual and theological work do you need to do to change that?
Your friend and pastor, trying to look at life through the prism of Christ, Brook