poligion: The Qualities of a Leader: 13. Passion

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

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

The Qualities of a Leader: 13. Passion

The Qualities of a Leader:

13. Passion

What’s the number one thing you look for when you hire someone? Experience? Intelligence? Personality? Let’s ask the same question a little differently? What’s the number one quality that contributes to a person’s success? Find that, and you will have answered that first question.

I can’t document the following statistics, but I trust Maxwell. But I also believe them from what I know about people. He says that “more than 50 percent of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in college. Nearly 75 percent of all U.S. presidents were in the bottom half of their school classes. And more than 50 percent of all millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college.” p. 83

So he asks the question: “What makes it possible for people who might seem ordinary to achieve great things? The answer is passion. Nothing can take the place of passion in a leader’s life.” p. 83

Part of our problem is that many of us are doing the wrong things with our lives. We have jobs, where what we need are missions. We have jobs where we ask someone else what they want done and how they want it done. I know, I know. We can’t all start our own businesses, but leaders can find it hard to work for someone else.

Jest saying the word inspires me. Passion cost me my job at Whole Foods. I hope it doesn’t do the same for you, unless perhaps you are not in the place you are meant to be.

Are you passionate about what you do? Do you look forward to going to work in the morning? Do you find it hard to leave at times, because there is so much that you want to do? Do you do far more than is required, just because you love what you do? That is passion.

As a leader, you need it. The thing is contagious, and you want and need your team to have it as well. You have to sell them on the cause, and they have to see that you have bought into it yourself. If you don’t have passion about what you are dong, then you are not a leader. Well, at least not here.

It would be good to ask yourself two questions: the one is, of course: are you passionate about your work? But then, what I think is even more important than that: What is your passion? It may not even have anything to do with your current job. If the answers to both questions are the same, you are fortunate. If they are different, well, I’m not sure if I can tell you what to do. You have to answer that one for yourself.

Maxwell lists 4 truths about passion:

1) Passion is the first step to achievement.

2) Passion increases your willpower.

3) Passion changes you.

4) Passion makes the impossible possible.

I don’t think I even need to elaborate on them. I have a dream. I have passion. Just thinking about this makes me want to stop writing this and get back to working on my passion.

One last quote from Maxwell: “A leader with great passion and few skills always outperforms a leader with great skills and no passion.” p. 85