Guest Post by Al Stout
In 1970 Five Man Electrical Band released a song titled Signs.a In the second verse, the lyricist laments the fence a homeowner adorned with a sign:
And the sign said anybody caught trespassin’ would be shot on sight
So I jumped on the fence and-a yelled at the house
Hey! What gives you the right?”
“To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in”
“If God was here he’d tell you to your face, man, you’re some kinda sinnerb
A couple of hundred years before Five Man, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote that civil society was founded by simpletons who consented to a guy, putting up a fence, and said, “this is mine.”c A hatred of fences and boundaries is not merely about private property and the 9th commandment, though it is about that. Ultimately, it is about who gets to say this or that particular boundary is good or that this fence makes for good neighbors. We are not just yelling at the house, but at the resident who pounded the stakes and hung the sign.
Cultural fences are equally important. They too are set by the Lord of the manor and when they are challenged by those who hate the Lord, you can bet the culture will not last very long.
I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer with over 20 years active Naval service. Living on a ship with a bunch of men who at times do dangerous and deadly work can lend itself to a coarse culture. Gallows humor, harsh ridicule, and graphic descriptions of your best friend’s physical presence are all commonplace. The phrase “cursing like a Sailor” used to mean something.
For that language to exist onboard a ship full of men is one thing. It is, however, the mark of a declining culture when the warfighter’s obscenities find their way to the mouth of the homemaker, high-schooler, and the neighbor at the community pool. “Cursing like a Sailor” has its force. We can now say, “Cursing like a middle-schooler,” or “Swearing like a stressed out mother.”
When you hear the father at the pool curse his 5 year old for refusing to get out of the water and come eat his lunch and no one stops him, barriers have fallen. When someone else defends such a dad by saying, “I have heard just as bad from the Sailor” we have shaken our fist at the One who said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for a millstone to be tied around his neck and he be cast into the sea.”
We yell at the keeper of the house, “What gives you the right” to keep my culture from your living room? We have decided that the sin of the fence and proper boundaries is the only sin God will judge. We are mistaken. We are worse for it.
Pastor Stout serves as the Associate Pastor of Providence Church alongside his career as a civilian in the Department of the Navy, Center for Information Dominance.
- I am expanding on a quote I provided for an upcoming book by Oliver North and David Goestch. You may preorder, Veterans’ Lament: Is This the America our Heroes Fought For? here: https://bn.com/w/1136889999 (back)
- https://www.cshf.ca/song/signs/ (back)
- Jean Jacques Rousseau On the Origin of the Inequality of Mankind pt 2, 1754. “THE first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, “Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” (back)
