So you know it’s going to be from the Amazing Disappearing Governor. Because, really, who else?
I started to put just the emphasized words (emphasis mine) because they are so strange, almost koan-like, but that didn’t seem fair, so I included the entire paragraph. It makes everything so much . . . clearer.
“But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and don’ts, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.”
Plainly the man was upset and rambling, but even so, I don’t what is scarier; the “the biggest self of self is indeed self” bit, or the view of God’s law, not as a pathway to help us deal better with each other, to find the best parts of ourselves, the angels of our better natures, so to speak, and make the world better; but a series of security protocols designed to wall us in a protect us from the dark ravening urges.
This concept explains a lot.