where religion and politics meet

Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is what you believe about life: what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what are the rules, are there any rules, what is the meaning of life, what is important, what is not.

If a worldview includes a god/God, it is called a religion. If a bunch of people have the same religion, they give it a name.

Nations have worldviews too, a prevailing way of looking at life that directs government policies and laws and that contributes significantly to the culture. Politics is the outworking of that worldview in public life.

We are being told today that the United States is and has always been a secular nation, which is practical atheism.

But our country could not have been founded as a secular nation, because a secular country could not guarantee freedom of religion. Secular values would be higher than religious ones, and they would supersede them when there was a conflict. Secularism sees religion only as your personal preferences, like your taste in food, music, or movies. It does not see religion, any religion, as being true.

But even more basic, our country was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings. But what God, and how did the Founders know that He had? Islam, for example, does not believe in unalienable rights. It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights, and it was the Bible that informed the Founders of that. The courts would call that a religious opinion; the Founders would call that a fact.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’ have the United States of America.

A secular nation cannot give or even recognize unalienable rights, because there is no higher power in a secular nation than the government.

Unalienable rights are the basis for the American concept of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty require a high moral code that restrains bad behavior among its people; otherwise the government will need to make countless laws and spend increasingly larger amounts of money on law enforcement.

God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments were always important parts of our public life, including our public schools, until 1963, when the court called supreme ruled them unconstitutional, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding.

As a secular nation, the government now becomes responsible to take care of its people. It no longer talks about unalienable rights, because then they would have to talk about God, so it creates its own rights. Government-given rights are things that the government is required to provide for its people, which creates an enormous expense which is why our federal government is now $22 trillion in debt.

Our country also did not envision a multitude of different religions co-existing in one place, because the people, and the government, would then be divided on the basic questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our Constitution, which we fought a war to be able to enact, states, among other things, that our government exists for us to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It could not do this unless it had a clear vision of what it considers to be true, a vision shared with the vast majority of the people in this country.

I want to engage the government, the culture, and the people who live here to see life again from a Christian perspective and to show how secularism is both inadequate and just plain wrong.

Because religion deals with things like God, much of its contents is not subject to the scientific method, though the reasons why one chooses to believe in God or a particular religion certainly demand serious investigation, critical thinking, and a hunger for what is true.

Science and education used to be valuable tools in the search for truth, but science has chosen to answer the foundational questions of life without accepting the possibility of any supernatural causes, and education generally no longer considers the search to be necessary, possible, or worthwhile.

poligion: 1) the proper synthesis of religion and politics 2) the realization, belief, or position that politics and religion cannot be separated or compartmentalized, that a person’s religion invariably affects one’s political decisions and that political decisions invariably stem from one’s worldview, which is what a religion is.

If you are new to this site, I would encourage you to browse through the older articles. They deal with a lot of the more basic issues. Many of the newer articles are shorter responses to particular problems.

Visit my other websites theimportanceofhealing blogspot.com where I talk about healing and my book of the same name and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com where I am posting all my other Bible studies. Follow this link to my videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-RztuRKdCEQzgbhp52dCw

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Larry Craig

Thursday, January 30, 2014

The Single Greatest Danger to our Country

The Single Greatest Danger to our Country

If you had to pick the single greatest danger to our country, what would you pick?  I am sure that if we took a poll, there would be many suggested answers.  My answer would have been different if you had asked me a month ago. 
The reason why this is not obvious to everyone is that there are many issues that are all interrelated.  One affects another, which affects the first one again, causing a spiral effect, leading to the chicken and the egg question: which came first?
Those of you who have read my writings know that I believe our country was founded as a Christian nation and that, when and as Christianity was removed from public life, government expanded to fill the role in people’s lives that their faith and individual responsibility used to fill. 
After several generations of government trying to act as if there is no God (secularism), it has inserted itself into a role not envisioned by our country’s founders: the great Benefactor and Problem Solver.  Every societal problem is now the role of government to fix.  And this is where the slippery slope becomes a cliff, and more and more of our people are jumping over it. 
I say jumping, which suggests that they are doing this on purpose.  It’s true but not exactly accurate.  Spread a table of food, anything, before a group of starving people, and it’s only a matter of time before they all willingly take of the food, even though they know it’s not theirs or food they normally would eat if they had a choice.  So, yes, they ate willingly, but they were played.
So what is the single greatest danger facing our country?
It is a political strategy. 
Now politics is always about strategy.  If you want a law that kills off mothers, you call it the Progeny Empowerment Program, or PEP.  Wording is everything.
In elections, politicians have to sell themselves to their potential constituents as being better for them than their opponent(s).  They make promises, many of which they can’t keep, many of which are beyond their ability to keep, and many of which they may have no intention of keeping.  But this has now been taken to a level that threatens the very foundations of our country. 
This political strategy has been embraced by one of our major political parties.  I will not say that every person in this party embraces this strategy.  I don’t believe most of them are even aware of it.  But I don’t believe that somebody in high places in this party is not aware of it.  I believe, at the highest levels of this party, this is the game plan.  Better to be a ruler in a third world country than an ordinary citizen in a free one.
The strategy is this:  Identify a specific demographic in our country.  It could be the unemployed, seniors, blacks, women, Hispanics, minimum wage workers, gays, parents of preschool children, single mothers, minorities in general.  Then find something that many of those within that group would really like, like a higher minimum wage, gay marriage, free preschool, free contraceptives, years of unemployment benefits.
Make it sound like these are just basic rights, certainly well within the ability of a rich, enlightened, and diverse nation as ours.  It doesn’t matter what it costs, how it will be paid for, or how it affects everything or everybody else.  That segment will become a loyal supporter of that party even though they may disagree with other particular issues, because they really want what is being offered.  And anybody who opposes these benefits is heartless, extremist, rightwing, or bigoted.
It doesn’t matter if the thing is controversial.  Take the issue of gay marriage.  That issue is dear to the gay community, and I can’t imagine there would be too many gays who would not vote for this party at this point.  Now many people are not in favor of gay marriage.  If that was the only issue out there, the opposing votes could cost them the election.  But no worry.  Surely those who oppose gay marriage are members of some other demographic. 
Perhaps they are a minimum wage worker.  Or Hispanic.  Or a preschool parent.  What minimum wage worker doesn’t want to make more money?  This will soon be the issue of the  year as the elections approach, and all the minimum wage workers will vote for this party regardless of their views on, say, gay marriage.  Why?  They want this more, because it affects them directly more.
So piece by piece, demographic by demographic, this party is attracting loyal voters, because they can vote themselves things they want. 
This issue of extending unemployment benefits is now current in Washington.  One side is willing to extend them if all can agree on some other government expenses to cut.  The other side can’t think of a thing to cut, because spending money wins friends, and votes. 
Meanwhile our national debt increases at a rate of a trillion dollars a year.  I don’t know how they think this will all end, but this can and will all come crashing down at some point, and even soon.  And as long as they have someone else to blame, they don’t mind.  And besides, they and all their closest allies are well taken care of.

So I believe this political strategy is the greatest threat to our country at this present time.  Everybody wants something for themselves, and it doesn’t matter who pays for it.  They can print more money, but many of those people who have lent our country money don’t live here, and when they get tired of the incredible shrinking dollar, they will call in their debt, and life here will be changed forever in ways nobody will like.
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