In the modern epoch, the collective consciousness has slowly drifted from the anchor of objective truth, drifting toward a seductive but ultimately destructive substitute: the idol of safety. When safety is elevated from a mere practical outcome to the highest moral virtue, it ceases to be a condition of well-being and becomes a jealous god. This idol demands a specific form of worship, and its liturgy is the systematic dismantling of individual liberty. Without the grounding of objective principles—specifically the immutable laws of cause and effect known as Natural Law—safety becomes a fluid concept defined by the whims of authority, inevitably requiring the sacrifice of freedom upon its altar.
The nature of this idolatry is rooted in fear. When a society abandons the Logocentric perspective—the alignment with the Logos, or Divine Reason and Truth—it loses the capacity to navigate risk with moral courage. Instead of trusting in the objective morality that governs human interaction, the fearful populace turns to the State as the guarantor of existence. However, the idol of safety is insatiable; it views human agency, with all its inherent unpredictability, as a threat to be managed. To ensure total safety, the idol demands total control, transforming citizens into wards and rights into revocable privileges granted only to those who comply with the ever-shifting mandates of the “greater good.”
My treatise “The Logocentric Christian” posits that true order is not imposed from the top down by human legislation, but is inherent in the fabric of creation. This is the Logos: the objective reality that exists independent of human opinion. When we sever safety from the Logos, we detach it from reality. We begin to believe the lie that we can legislate away the dangers of existence by surrendering our autonomy. Yet, history is a graveyard of civilizations that traded their essential liberties for temporary security, only to find that without liberty, there is no mechanism to hold power accountable, rendering the population profoundly unsafe from the tyranny of their own protectors.
True safety, conversely, is a byproduct of objective morality. It is not the result of a police state or a sanitized environment, but the natural consequence of a people living in alignment with Natural Law. When individuals adhere to the objective principles of non-aggression, property rights, and truth-telling, safety emerges organically. This is the distinction between the artificial “safety” of a prison cell, where one is protected from the outside world but stripped of agency—and the robust safety of a free society where order is maintained through internal self-governance and mutual respect for God-given rights.
The false dialectic presented to the modern mind is that we must choose between dangerous freedom or secure servitude. This is a deception designed to obscure the reality of the Logos. In truth, freedom and safety are not opposing forces; under the governance of objective principles, they are symbiotic. Liberty is the condition in which morality can be exercised, and morality is the constraint that makes liberty sustainable. Without the freedom to act, moral agency is impossible; without moral agency, safety is merely the stillness of the grave. The idol of safety offers a counterfeit peace, a unity based on conformity rather than the organic unity found in the Truth.
When we worship safety, we engage in a spiritual regression. We outsource our conscience to experts, bureaucrats, and leaders, believing that obedience to their dictates constitutes virtue. This creates a moral vacuum. As the reliance on external control increases, the capacity for internal self-regulation atrophies. A society that cannot govern itself according to objective principles invites external tyranny to fill the void. The pursuit of safety as a primary end creates a fragile, neurotic civilization that sees a threat in every shadow and demands a cage for every neighbor.
A person who believes their freedom comes from authority has already surrendered it. ~Mike Fairclough, “SOVEREIGNTY – John Mappin – The Restoration of Sanity”
To shatter this idol, we must return to the Logos. We must understand that natural rights are not gifts from the government to be suspended during a crisis; they precede government, rooted in the objective reality of our created nature. A Logocentric worldview recognizes that risk is a component of life and that the elimination of all risk is the elimination of life itself. We must be willing to accept the responsibilities of freedom, understanding that the only path to genuine security is through the rigorous application of objective morality. We do not need more rules and laws to make us safe; we need more adherence to the Law that is already written into the universe—and in our hearts.
The path forward requires a rejection of the fear-based mind control that sustains the safety idol. It demands that we place principles above expediency. If an action violates the objective rights of an individual—such as bodily autonomy or freedom of movement—it cannot be justified by an appeal to safety. True safety is moral; it cannot be purchased through immoral means. By realigning ourselves with the Truth, we dissolve the illusion that we must be slaves to survive. We recognize that the only thing that produces a civilization that is both free and safe is a people that loves the Truth more than it loves the comfort of the lie.
It behooves us to remember that men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. If from lawlessness or fickleness, from folly or self-indulgence, they refuse to govern themselves, then most assuredly in the end they will have to be governed from the outside. They can prevent the need of government from without only by showing that they possess the power of government from within. A sovereign cannot make excuses for his failures; a sovereign must accept the responsibility for the exercise of the power that inheres in him; and where, as is true in our Republic, the people are sovereign, then the people must show a sober understanding and a sane and steadfast purpose if they are to preserve that orderly liberty upon which as a foundation every republic must rest. ~Teddy Roosevelt, At Jamestown Exposition, April 26, 1907., Mem. Ed. XII, 593; Nat. Ed. XI, 312.
We can view this trajectory through the lens of the American founding, where the Founding Fathers functioned as a type of Moses. Just as Moses descended from the mountain with the Ten Commandments—a codification of the Law of God necessary to guide the people to morality—the Founders provided the US Constitution, a framework designed to shackle the government rather than the citizen. This “law” was an advanced attempt to align human governance with the archetypes of Natural Law, establishing a nation where the people were Sovereign, answering only to the Creator. However, like the Israelites who grew weary of the responsibility of freedom and longed for the fleshpots of Egypt (Exodus 16:3), modern Americans have lost their way. They have grown tired of the vigilance required by sovereignty and have turned back to the old idolatrous gods. In this era, the Golden Calf is safety itself, and the people are all too willing to trade their divine birthright of liberty for the perceived security of the state’s embrace.
In conclusion, this idol of safety is a false god that promises deliverance but leads only to the desert of totalitarianism. We must smash this golden calf and return to the altar of the Logos. Only by embracing objective principles can we secure the blessings of liberty that the Founders sought to preserve. We must realize that safety is not the absence of danger, but the presence of justice, and justice is impossible without the freedom to adhere to the objective moral laws of the Creator. It is time to stop sacrificing our liberty for the illusion of safety and embrace the Truth that sets us free—for it is only in that freedom that we are truly safe.
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THE UNITY PROCESS: I’ve created an integrative methodology called the Unity Process, which combines the philosophy of Natural Law, the Trivium Method, Socratic Questioning, Jungian shadow work, and Meridian Tapping—into an easy to use system that allows people to process their emotional upsets, work through trauma, correct poor thinking, discover meaning, set healthy boundaries, refine their viewpoints, and to achieve a positive focus.
