Because Gene Cranick had failed to pay a $75 fire protection fee, firefighters in Obion County, Tennessee, were ordered by their superiors to do nothing while Cranick’s house burned down. They only responded to the fire when it threatened to spread to the property of a neighbor who had paid the fee.
Now let me say that Cranick should have paid the fee. Whether through negligence or risk-taking, his failure to pay was extremely foolish.
But aren’t there other principles involved here– like basic human decency? Like caring for one’s neighbor? Fortunately nobody was hurt in the fire, although three pet dogs and a cat were killed. But what if people had been trapped in the house? I hope the fire department would have been willing to make an exception then.
Cranick’s wife Paulette said some of the firemen– who were ordered not to respond to the fire– have called to apologize.
What’s especially notable about this incident is that it’s become something of a cause celebre among some on the political Right– who are saying that by allowing Cranick’s house to burn down, the fire department did the right thing. Facing the consequences of your failures and mistakes, accepting personal responsibility, and all that.
On his radio show, Glenn Beck and his hilarious sidekick Pat Gray had lots of fun mocking Cranick’s misfortune and his rural Southern accent.
And (via Little Green Footballs) there’s this remarkable statement from the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer:
The fire department did the right and Christian thing. The right thing, by the way, is also the Christian thing, because there can be no difference between the two. The right thing to do will always be the Christian thing to do, and the Christian thing to do will always be the right thing to do.
If I somehow think the right thing to do is not the Christian thing to do, then I am either confused about what is right or confused about Christianity, or both.
In this case, critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is clear that we must accept individual responsibility for our own decisions and actions. He who sows to the flesh, we are told, will from the flesh reap corruption. The law of sowing and reaping is a non-repealable law of nature and nature’s God. …
This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.
I’m going with mature, robust Christianity on this one.
Fischer can speak for himself about about his interpretation of Christian tradition, but there’s nothing Judeo about having the means to help a neighbor in distress and not using them. Quite the opposite.