Choosing Life

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, –  Deuteronomy 30:19

It was an interesting week, and it was an especially interesting Monday.

Early in the day, in Salt Lake City, a young motorcyclist was involved in a serious accident with an automobile. He became trapped under the car, which began to burn. The video was compelling, though the scene was captured without sound. People began to gather–men, women, casually dressed or in business suits, construction workers, office workers, students. You can see their dawning awareness that there’s a man trapped under the car. A couple of them make an unsuccessful effort to move it, but it is obviously too heavy.

Suddenly, as if of one mind, the crowd seems to move toward the car. United in a single massive effort, they succeed in moving the burning vehicle so that the young man can be dragged from beneath it–snatched, literally, from certain death. The authorities arrive. People straighten their clothes, pick up their briefcases or their hard hats, dust themselves off, and disperse quietly. They’ve done their duty. The young man’s life has been saved. He will live, and miraculously his injuries will not be crippling. We learned today, when he was able to thank his rescuers, that he had spent two weeks this summer contributing his time to a housing project for the needy. He’s motivated now to do more work for the poor.

Later that day, the Republican candidates gathered, presumably to edify their Tea Party members (and the rest of us) with a debate. One of the moderators, Wolf Blitzer, had a presumably hypothetical situation for Ron Paul: Suppose a  young man opts not to have health insurance,  and suppose he becomes seriously ill. Do we let him die? The crowd applauded madly and howled “Yeah!”

Turns out the question wasn’t so hypothetical, since Ron Paul had a young aide who died at age 30, uninsured and with $400,000 in debt. It also turns out that he couldn’t get insurance because of one of those dreaded pre-existing conditions. And to Ron Paul’s credit, it further turns out that he and his colleagues gave out of their own resources to help the man and are helping his mother. So they’re doing what they can personally.

It’s those howls of “Yeah!” that I can’t quite get over. They somehow echo other crowds howling across the years. Crowds turning their thumbs down in dusty coliseums. Crowds on an early Friday morning howling “Let him be crucified!”

I think that the two groups–the debate attenders and the Salt Lake City rescuers–can be placed on a balance and weighed out. One group chose life. The other (despite any “pro life” leanings they may profess) has chosen death.

This is a huge country, and nobody settled or tamed it alone. People realized almost immediately that no one would make any headway without neighbors. Some tasks are just too big for one person or one family, even today. We have a long tradition of showing up to help raise the barn, or stitch the quilt. We bring casseroles. We dig into our pockets when the hat is passed. When people decided to go west, they got together and did it in groups. Sometimes it took the efforts of the entire group to get up or down a mountain or across a stream. People who refused to help and be helped didn’t make it. Sometimes troubles are just too immense for the individual. Sometimes the hurricane or the drought or the tornado or the earthquake requires the resources of the entire community, or even the entire country. Sometimes the group can triumph over the cancer or the heart trouble or the illness that would defeat the isolated individual.

The so-called Tea Party Patriots need to trade in their fake George and Martha Washington costumes for the tunics and togas of ancient Rome. That’s a much better model for their blood lust. As for me, I’m a bit old to be pushing cars around. But I’ll stand with the true Americans–the ones who honor the tradition of coming together in adversity for the good of all. I’ll be like those people in Salt Lake City who chose life for a young man they had never met and may never meet again.