Putting People in Place

There are always those who are eager to live other men’s lives for them, and there are always those who foster the philosophy that all men should be forced to conform to a predetermined design. This idea sometimes seems to sound good: Let’s put every man in his place. But, sane as it may sound, it raises many difficult questions, such as, who shall fix the pattern, and who shall put every man in his place? Putting every man in his place means that we must have someone among us who is wise enough to judge what every man’s place is. And surely such an assignment would require a godlike wisdom. But one of the best evidences that the Creator didn’t intend to force all men to fit an arbitrary pattern is that He Himself has not made all things alike, least of all men. Of course, the practice of classifying men is often a necessary convenience. Obviously it would be practically impossible always to deal with each of the world’s multimillions of men on a strictly individual basis for all purposes. And so we classify men into races, nations, physical types, professions, ages, and in innumerable other ways. But such lumping of individuals into arbitrary groups for statistical or other purposes should never let us lose sight of the fact that every man is an individual, with his own life to live, and with his own right to live it. And whenever there is any attempt forcibly to crowd individuals into artificially created systems, to rob them of their right of choice and of their individual initiative, there is violation of inalienable rights and loss of human dignity. Any artificial pattern that is based on what someone’s arbitrary rule book says rather than on what is best for people is an unsafe pattern. And any man who had wisdom sufficient to dictate to other men everything they could do and couldn’t do would also have the wisdom not to try to. We may counsel others, teach them correct principles, and labor long with them. But it is a dangerous practice to presume by force to design the lives of other men, as all history has proved and will continue to prove.