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

Saturday, October 11, 2014

A Voter’s Guide to American Elections

A Voter’s Guide to American Elections

Politicians have made things very easy for voters, except, or course, in primaries where you might really need to ask a lot of questions with candidates from the same party running against each other,  But other than that, you are voting for the party and not the candidate.
Gone are the days when you could evaluate candidates by comparing their views on a long list of issues.  The two major parties have solidified philosophies that guide their overall decision making, and they are polar opposites.  And while individual politicians are all unique and have positions all across the spectrum, they still vote with their parties the vast majority of the time, which is why they are in that party.  So while there will always be individual exceptions to these characteristics of the parties, they are still pretty true overall.
Democrats believe that the government has the responsibility and the ability to solve every problem of society.  This is done through regulations, laws, government programs, and executive orders.  These all come with economic costs and losses in personal freedom. 
Democrats see society as groups of people all with unique and specific needs that require government intervention to see that everyone is taken care of.  Rights used to be things that you could do without government intrusion or things that the government could not do to you.  Now rights are defined as things that you are entitled to and that it is the government’s responsibility to see that you have them. 
A distinct part of Democratic strategy is to identify a group of people and give them something.  It doesn’t matter what it costs, if it can be paid for, or how it affects everything else.  This group will then vote for them forever to keep that one thing regardless of how this affects anything else.
These beliefs about the role of government drive the need to always seek new sources of revenue:  higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, more things to tax, more fees for regulation, more penalties for noncompliance, and more loopholes (I mean deductions) to close.   A former President described the government’s view of the economy this way, and this was at a time when the Democrats and the Republicans had a lot more in common: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Democrats believe in diversity, pluralism, and multiculturalism.  That essentially means that Western or American culture is no better than any other culture, and there is no need to teach it in our schools to our children.  All cultures, religions, and traditions have equal value, except Christianity which is viewed as Western, white, and oppressive.  
To respect all these different cultures, the guiding moral philosophy of Democrats is equality, tolerance, diversity, and fairness.  The only responsibility of the citizenry is tolerance, which is meant to discourage personal involvement in the problems and life of society.   Government has the role of overseeing society and making sure that everything is equal, diverse, and fair.  Individual success and achievement is not as important as the success and achievement of the groups as a whole.  
Democrats believe that the basic governing principle for the founding of our country was equality, though the government didn’t always have the power to enforce it.  Evil, greedy people and corporations have always been able to take advantage of a weak government to take advantage of others for their personal gain.  We are now seeing government with the strength and tools necessary to correct these inherent flaws to the American system.
The vision of Democrats for an ideal society would still have the richest 1%.  They can’t get rid of them, but they are always a good source of tax revenue and campaign contributions.  Below that would be a large and growing army of government employees.  These are, to be sure, paid above the private sector to gain their loyalty, political support, and firm opposition to any attempts to shrink the government.  As for the rest, the goal is to have as many people as possible receiving some kind of government assistance, because they will always vote for the ones providing and protecting it.
Democrats think Americans have an inflated view of themselves and need to think more globally and blend in more with all the other nations...  It wouldn’t hurt if we reduced our economy if others could gain.  The success of the United States economically in the past was essentially due to greed, exploitation, and racism.
Republicans see the Democrat’s narrative as a new invention, reinterpreting the history and values of our country in an attempt to make something entirely different.  Republicans believe we live in the greatest nation in the world, but we have been declining for generations under Democratic policies.
Republicans see the country as losing its original vision and sacrificing its greatness, while the Democrats see the country as finally regaining its original vision of equality.
Republicans use the word ‘traditional’ a lot in public, but it is code for religious or Christian. 
While the Republican Party is hardly Christian, the traditional values were distinctly Christian values, and these values were embraced as they were seen as the cause of our country’s rapid and enormous economic prosperity. 
Republicans believe in religion, particularly the Judeo-Christian ones, because they teach love and morality, which reduces crime and promotes a strong bond in our society.  Religious people are less dependent on the government, because they have a strong support system and believe they are responsible for their friends and families and people in need.
Republicans believe in Christian morality, because it teaches values that built our country, like love, compassion, sacrifice, giving, responsibility, hard work, honesty, integrity, courage, and loyalty.   Christians believe in loving your neighbor; tolerance is just another way of saying ignore your neighbor.
Republicans believe in traditional families, because people who are married work harder and are less likely to live in poverty.  They believe that children raised with both of their natural parents do better in life.  They believe that strong families reduce the need for government programs that take money out of other people’s pockets.
Republicans are pro-business, because they believe the best way to help a poor person is not to give him money but to give him a job. 
Republicans see any money given to the government as money taken out of people’s pockets and lowering their standard of living.  They do not see government spending as a boon to the economy, because it leaves less money in the pockets of everybody else, and any borrowed money to finance this ends up devaluing the money we already have.
Equality for the Republicans is an equality before the law, where there is no longer a royal class as they still have in parts of Europe.  To a Republican, Democrats would rather everybody be equally poor, dependent on the government rather than everybody being free and encouraged to achieve their best.  They believe that every individual working to achieve their own success will produce more prosperity for everyone than any other system, though certainly some will always end up with more than others.
The Tea Party, though separate from the Republican Party, aligns itself with the Republican Party, because our politicians have made having more than two political parties unworkable in our elections.  A third party would usually require a runoff election or some equivalent to get true results.  Now a third party candidate allows someone to win an election with less than a majority vote.
But the Tea Party has the same basic beliefs as the Republicans, but they believe that our country is near a breaking point economically and morally and that we need to act quickly and decisively now to avoid some very serious consequences.  Republicans have not tried hard enough to support these principles.  The Tea Party believes that if your spouse has a spending problem and has maxed out all the credit cards, the answer is not to take out a new card with a lower limit but to stop using credit cards altogether. 

Every election is becoming more important than the last one, as policies that are enacted shape our society in ways that make reversals harder to imagine.  
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