David McElroy

Have you ever heard of a “trusty” in a prison? It’s an inmate who earns the trust of his jailers and is given special privileges. Some are even allowed outside the prison for certain tasks. Before court rulings ended even more elaborate systems, some states — Mississippi, most notably — had elaborate hierarchies in which some inmates were even trusted with guns to guard others while they worked in the fields.

Although the trusty might be given certain privileges, he’s still an inmate. He has to “be good” or he’ll lose his privileges and be punished. He’s not a free man doing a job. He’s an incarcerated man doing something to make his time behind bars more bearable.

I’d like to suggest that most of us in this country are trusties, but we’ve been in this prison so long that we don’t even realize the bars are there.

It’s accepted as obvious among many of us that “government is force,” because without force or the threat of force, governments couldn’t compel anyone to obey their orders. So every piece of legislation is ultimately backed up by a gun that that state points at you.

As long as you’re obedient, you won’t directly see the gun — and this seems to confuse some people. When I mentioned to a friend a couple of years ago that the state is nothing but force backed up with a gun, he seemed genuinely surprised.

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IRONDALE, Ala. — I’m writing this on my iPhone in a small monastery chapel before I can forget what I’ve been thinking about — because no matter how many times I learn the truth I experience, I let it slip away and I forget.

I keep forgetting what the truth is. I keep focusing on the wrong things. I keep forgetting who I am. I keep forgetting what’s important in life. I keep forgetting who and what God is. I forget because God has to be experienced in the silence, not drowned out by the din of a world that’s not especially interested in experiencing Him.

I feel as though I know less about God than I did when I entered this world as an otherwise ignorant and innocent child. I suspect children are born knowing more about the truth than we realize, but they forget it as they’re taught how to think and act like the rest of us. Sometimes, though, I can catch a glimpse of a child’s knowledge through my experiences with God.

I’m in the chapel at Our Lady of Angels Monastery, which is located less than 10 miles from my house. Although I’m not Catholic, I find their chapel to be a wonderful place for contemplation and prayer. The picture shows the view from my back-row pew right now.

I don’t believe that certain places are actually “sacred space,” but some music, some art and some environments make me feel as though there’s space inside of me that’s ready to connect with God. This is one of them.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the differences between the world of the rational and material and the world of spiritual experience. I started out in life pretty close to being a complete rationalist. (My earliest serious career interests were engineering and law, if that tells you anything.) But the longer I live, the more I trust my subjective experiences — and the less trust I place in what used to seem so solid and logical.

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I’ve always been a rebel at heart. I’ve never dealt very well with authority. I chafe at having to obey orders. And I delight in small acts of rebellion. (That’s me on the right touching where it says not to touch in a restaurant a few years ago.)

I also oppose coercive government. I say it’s because of my reasoned principles — and I can explain the principles easily — but I wonder sometimes how many people who come to oppose government (to one degree or another) are really just acting out their dislike of rules and authority.

I believe that the system we have — by which a majority imposes its will on the rest of us — is immoral. But the immoral thing about it that’s wrong is the imposition of rules by force. When I listen to discussion among a lot of people who consider themselves libertarians or anarchists, I get the feeling that many of them aren’t just opposed to rulers. A surprising number seem to hate rules, too.

But when I think about the kind of world I want to live in, I realize that I want rules. I want order. Most people do. So how do we resolve those two — and is it possible that we need to be more honest with ourselves about our psychological feelings about rules themselves?

At the heart of many individualists who oppose coercive government is a personality that believes — deep down, whether it’s spoken or not — that “I know better than other people.” As a group, these individualists are very, very smart and can also tend to be very, very arrogant. We don’t always play well with others.

But I want rules. I simply want to live with rules that make sense to me.

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