Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Tenets

  • Is it human nature, or just good, that there is no escaping the introspection that comes, ardent believer or not, with major religious observances and dominant tenets?
  • As kids, were we much saddled by the faith of our family and, now, squirm as we might, down deep, ride on despite less distinct tenet trails?
  • At this 2024 time of Easter and Ramadan, tenets so much alike, so much opposed, so historically bloody, are we uplifted or downcast?
  • Has the God of our fathers left it for us to sort out and we’re not doing very well?
  • Is it enough to be tolerant, enough to affirm and allow, belief of choice as long as tenets, real (or interpreted ) and actions in the name of, don’t force adherence or threaten with physical harm, pain and death?
  • Are failures to “turn the other cheek” and “love thine enemy failures of faith itself or does a cafeteria tenet concept comfort?
  • Is it all too simple, too scary, since evil, or that labeled as such, must be confronted and anything goes? Holy Terror, how violently convenient?
  • Are we tenet tested too from a secular standpoint?
  • For America, are our sacred, secular tenets contained in the Constitution with presage and purpose in the Declaration of Independence and summated by, what should be, sacrosanct rule of law and the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg?
  • After almost two hundred and fifty years, despite shortcomings and struggle, has spectacular American achievement created a touchstone of freedom and success?
  • Do the features and factors of that success reflect a fractious implementation of our founding documents coupled with an economic system rewarding energy and excellence plus the power and necessary societal glue of judicial review?
  • Always reacting, sometimes reeling, from forces within and without, does America, on this Easter Day, require an affirmative redeclaration of certain bedrock tenets designed to sustain and advance the nation?
  • Is the ReDeclaration of Independence (www.ReDeclaration.org) a worthy addition to our Easter basket of tenets? Think so?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The answers and actions remain yours.