The Consistent Life Ethic is Like Salt


Consistent-Life Ethic is like salt. You don't need a whole lot to be effective. But it's essential to have it present . . . spread out here and there to spice up politics, to add a little flavor to dull single-issue groups.

But it stings, like when you wash your mouth out to cure a canker sore. It smarts on the wound. It makes you sit up straight and take notice that something's different here.

And then it heals if you leave it there long enough. The "liberals" need it to cure contradictions and the "conservatives" need it for incongruities. And we all need it to cleanse and purify us from self-righteousness. Yes, consistency is good for what ails the Left and the Right.

Salt forms new compositions and breaks up ice. Like consistent-life-ethic it warms cold and hardened opinions and makes slush . . . soft and malleable. The fragile unborn child becomes the person on death row. We abandon our stale ideologies that leave somebody out. The homeless on the war torn streets of Afghanistan become the homeless unwanted child in the womb.

Home. That's where consistent-life-ethic brings us. No hidden agendas. It allows us to be whole, to be ourselves again.

In the print and online Issuu copies of the Journal, this piece was mistakenly attributed to Rose Evans, who did us the great favor of sending it in. However, it was indeed written by Carol Crossed.

