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: 6. Courage

The Qualities of a Leader:
6.  Courage
One person with courage is a majority.

Caution:  This quality may be hazardous to your career.  But then, without it, you won’t amount to much anyway.
  
                We’ve all seen movies or read books about heroes, that person who risks life and limb to save a life or to save the world.  We admire them and may secretly even wish we were like them, but often these same qualities that cause one to rise up in a crisis are the same qualities that rock the boat in lesser circumstances.

                “Courage deals with principle, not perception.  If you don’t have the ability to see when to stand up and the conviction to do it, you’ll never be an effective leader.  Your dedication to potential must remain stronger than your desire to appease others.” p. 41

Growing up, we are always told to get along with others, cooperate, share, and obey your superiors. All admirable, important qualities to have.  So much of our advancement in our careers is based on our ability to “get along,” which usually means to “go along,” to be a “team player,” which often means that your contribution to the team is limited to doing what somebody else wants rather than being a pert of the process to decide what we should all want.

“The most striking thing about highly effective leaders is how little they nave in common.  What one swears by, another warns against.  But one trait stands out: the willingness to risk.”  “Whenever you see significant progress in an organization, you know that the leader made courageous decisions.”  p.40

A courageous person is a person with a deep sense of conviction, of principle, of confidence.  In a crisis, they may not think about the dangers of the situation before acting.  They know what has to be done, the right thing to do, and they just do it.   On a smaller scale, when lives are not at stake, however, they may have arrived at the conclusions, they see something that needs to be done, and they will do it, at whatever cost, because it is the right thing to do.  The right thing to do is not always the popular or the most expedient, but in life we will often have to choose which we will do.


                ”Courage is contagious.  When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.”  A show of courage by any person encourages others.  But a show of courage by a leader inspires.  It makes people want to fellow him.  “Leadership is the expression of courage that compels people to do the right things.”  p. 41
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