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: 14. Positive Attitude

The Qualities of a Leader:

14.          Positive Attitude

                Thomas Edison is probably most famous for his invention of the light bulb.  And that would be enough to give him a place in history as one of the greatest achievements of all time.  What I remember most about that event is that it took 10,000 attempts to find the right materials for the first bulb.   So how many attempts would you have made?  Or I?   I have a feeling it would have been a lot less. 

                We often call Edison a genius.  He has over 1,000 patents for his inventions.  But he did not think of himself as a genius.  He is the one who said: “Genius is ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration.”  p. 89    When he was working on the light bulb, he did not see himself as having failed 10,000 times, but he saw each attempt as a step in the right direction, a little more knowledge gained.  He knew this could be done, and knowing what didn’t work only brought him closer to finding what would work.  He said: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”  p. 89

                If you really want to do something with your life, you will find that it won’t be easy.  To achieve what you want, you need both to believe that you can do it, and you have to want to stick with it until you do.  As a leader, your team will be watching and they will see what the obstacles are that will fight against your dream becoming reality.  (Your team could just as well be your spouse, your kids, or your family.)

                What sets the leader apart from anyone else is, first, that the leader identifies the goals that need to be achieved and then proceeds to work on achieving them, focusing on the result.  The average person looks at the circumstances and gets discouraged when things don’t go their way or when things get tough. 

                “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind”  (William James, psychologist,  p. 88)  There is a book that came out a few years ago called Happiness is a Choice.  And in the same way, your attitude is a choice.  It’s your choice.  Will I be discouraged?  Will I give up?  Will I be happy?  Will I continue?   Will I  (fill in the blank)?

 It’s not the circumstances that are important; it’s your attitude.  I know.  That can sound like a pile of bull dung at times, but the battle is won or lost in your mind.  And as a leader, your team needs to see your attitude as being always positive.  Edison said:  “If the only thing we leave our kids is the quality of enthusiasm, we will have given them an estate of incalculable value.”  p. 92

When things get tough, and they will, it is easy to begin feeling sorry for ourselves and look at how everything and everyone is against you.  Keep your focus on what needs to be done and just keep moving forward.





“The thing that separates good players form great ones is mental attitude.  It might only make a difference of two or three points in an entire match but how you play those key points often makes the difference between winning and losing. If the mind is strong you can do almost anything you want.” 

Chris Evert . p. 94

 “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”          
David Brinkley   p. 88 


                
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