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, April 15, 2014

Voting Laws

Voting Laws
Letter to the Editor

Greetings!
You recently had an editorial that I thought I should write you and express my appreciation and support for the ideas you presented.  But I hesitated, thinking that you probably get too much mail as it is.  But then it seems a shame to only hear from people when they disagree.    Well, I forgot what that other editorial was about, but I have to respond to this one.
If our state senators think our state needs a constitutional amendment to prevent citizens from being denied the right to vote or register due to some long list of things, then I am very disappointed in my state senators.  What the bleep were they thinking? 
There is nothing going on anywhere that would in any way deny anyone the right to vote.  The wording of this proposed amendment as you frame it uses the word ‘citizens’ which I still take to mean what it has always meant, and that is the only place where challenges are being made. 
But you showed concern because of certain other measures being proposed around the country.
You believe voter ID laws are a hurdle to voting.  You say that 11% of eligible voters don’t have a government issued photo ID, and so we shouldn’t require one.  So how do these people even function in society without them?  Heck, we would be doing them a favor by requiring a photo ID if they really wanted to vote in the first place.  Don’t they drive?  Don’t they have bank accounts?  How do they cash checks? 
You say most of these people without IDs are “those with low incomes, the disabled and the elderly.” 
People with low income need help.  In more ways than one.  I am sure the government is trying very hard to help them with all kinds of assistance, as in money.  Well, how can they cash these checks without a government issued ID? 
As for the disabled, there are two kinds of disabled people: there are those who are pretty well self-sufficient and those who are not.  I have no doubt that those who are self-sufficient would already have IDs, because they know how important they are. 
Those who are dependent on others either are being cared for by those who love them or those who don’t.  If those who are being cared for by those who love them wanted a photo ID so they could vote, I have no doubt that this would be worked out.  If those other disabled people who have no way to get a photo ID, because their caretakers won’t let them or help them, how will they ever vote in the first place? 
As for the elderly, how have they survived this long in this country without a photo ID?  They know better than not to have one.
I would dispute your contention that “no evidence that IDs are needed to prevent voter fraud,” but you seem quite willing to wait until there is evidence of voter fraud before doing anything about it.  Do you really think an election would be held over if fraud was uncovered?  It would be held up in court for years while the wrong person could be serving in office. 
You mention voter drives as well.  Anybody who is interested enough in what is going on and who wants to vote can have no problem registering anytime they want.  Frankly, voter drives only increase the number of registered voters, which to me only makes voter fraud easier, because there are more names on the register of people who are unlikely to vote in the first place. 
Making registering to vote easier will not raise voter turnout and certainly won’t increase the likelihood that the voter knows what’s going on in the first place. 

The banner on your editorial called voting a sacred right.  Sacredness generally implies a certain worthiness on the part of the partaker.  Nobody is asking for anything unusual or burdensome for any potential voter.  But the potential for mischief is great.  Being in Chicago, I am surprised you aren’t questioning more the integrity of the voting process.   Wasn’t it a famous Chicago motto: Don’t forget to vote early and vote often?
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