By Dave Daubenmire
It is hard to find a more poignant dialogue than the brief give-and-take between Luke and the prison guard in the old classic movie Cool Hand Luke.
Luke, played by Paul Newman, had just spent a hot afternoon working on a chain gain in the sweltering heat. As he was heading to the bunk house for supper and recovery, one of the guards softly called out his name.
“Luke?”
Cool Hand Luke stopped in his tracks, gave a weary sigh, and slowly turned to face the guard who had just uttered his name.
“Night in the Box.” The guard sheepishly spoke.
Luke dejectedly turned, rolled his eyes, and followed the guard into the “box” which served as solitary confinement for those inmates who had violated protocol.
The clearly conflicted guard opened the wooden door, sat a metal pot on the floor that served as a toilet, and ashamedly said:
“Sorry Luke. Just doin’ my job.”
“Ah Boss.” Luke retorted. “Calling it your job don’t make it right.”
Cool Hand Luke could never have uttered more appropriate words for the times in which we now find ourselves living.
That’s what the Nuremburg Trials were all about. Obedient soldiers were held accountable for simply following orders. But the Judges ruling over the trials determined that “calling it one’s job” did not make something right. In fact, one had a DUTY to disobey an illegal order.
Before he was chosen as the First President of our Country, already elbow deep in civil disobedience, George Washington once quipped that Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God. He knew of which he spoke as he bravely and boldly stared down the most powerful military force in the world.
His buddy, Patrick Henry, brazenly stated in a session of Congress, “Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Both men meant what they said. Both men followed the rough road of rebellion against tyranny. Both men chose to do the right thing in the face of authoritarian wrong.
No matter how often men may try and justify their actions there is never a right way to do wrong. The Constitution grants no inalienable right to do the wrong thing.
Our leadership has let us down. They couldn’t even understand the basic premise that Cool Hand Luke so clearly explained. Blaming immoral actions on the false virtue that somehow following tyrannical orders was “the right thing to do” is how the conscience of man is enticed away from the un-written moral code stamped in the heart.
There is no moral right nor obligation to do wrong.
Many years from now as historians endeavor to catalogue and explain the blind obedience to tyrants so readily exhibited by those whom Almighty God charged with opposing evil, our posterity will gasp in amazement at the ease with which Godly men capitulated to the forced surrender of individual Liberty.
“It’s for the common good” will be the curtain behind which cowardly and confused men will justify their obedience to those who slapped chains over the shoulders of them and their posterity. Cowardice has consequences. Cowards die a thousand deaths.
Samuel Adams, the firebrand of The Revolution stated:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
I wonder if Mr. Adams would have complied with Dr Fauci and his band of Luciferians?
As I look over my shoulder at the events of the last two years, I can’t help but search my own soul as to my own compliance with the illegal edicts of unrighteous government.
Bonhoeffer famously stated, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
In the face of tyranny, cowardice often masquerades as virtue. Fear is hidden in blind acquiescence. Cowardly compliance is no virtue. Obedience is no excuse.
Perilous days lie ahead for America. The chains will not hang lightly. Our children and grandchildren will pay a terrible cost. The children of the Greatest Generation have gone down without a whimper.
Pastors, Teachers, Doctors, Lawyers, Clergymen, Parents, and Policemen have let us down in the most critical of hours. Adherence to fear is nothing more than subtle suicide. The death of a million dreams occurred while we huddled in fear. God cannot be pleased. Fear is the fuel of compromised capitulation.
“Just doing my job,” will ring hollow in the annals of history. “I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Calling it your job” will pave our road to serfdom.
