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, December 23, 2014

Questions from my Senator Part 4 defending our country

Hi Mark

As per your latest questions:

 Do you believe the United States should use military force to fight terrorism?
The question is not worded correctly.  We are not fighting terrorism.  That is like saying that we are fighting random killings and bombings.  We are fighting Muslim jihadists, specifically al-Qaida, ISIS, Boko Haram, and any number of other organizations. 
The fact that, say, Boko Haram is in Africa and is no threat of mounting an attack in the United States does not make it less our enemy.  These groups all have a common goal: a world Islamic caliphate.  Each of these groups is working in specific nations at this time.  If we allow them to take over any of them, 1) we are standing by while evil people are murdering innocent people, and 2) they will in various ways in time unite with other nations so run to work in ways against the interests of the free world.  You can fight them now, or you can fight them later when they are much stronger.  But the fight is inevitable.  If they are able to attain a nuclear weapon, you know they would use it.  The world is not safe until these groups are neutralized.
So, yes, the military should be used to fight Muslim jihadists.  And our Congress should declare war on them, and then identify the particular groups.  And then we need to fight it as a war.  We fought and finished World War 2 in four years.  The rules of engagement that we have fought under in Iraq and Afghanistan were treasonous.  We should not put our soldiers at such risk. 
I understand the desire to minimize civilian casualties, but you don’t endanger the lives of our soldiers to do that.  There is a difference between targeting civilians and targeting an enemy with civilian casualties.  With a declaration of war, we put the world on notice who our enemies are and that those who collaborate with and give aid to the enemy are in danger.  If we fought World War 2 with the same rules of engagement today, we would not have won the war.
Do you support increased economic sanctions against Iran to apply non-military pressure which would increase the chances of an acceptable nuclear agreement?
This whole Iran situation is a joke.  How long has this been going on?  When you take years without resolving a problem, you allow the enemy time to prepare so that any military options now become more costly and eventually prohibitive.  Iran must be dealt with firmly and decisively.  You apply every sanction you can.  There is no room for negotiation.  There is nothing to negotiate.  We have reason to believe that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, and that is unacceptable.  If they don’t want the sanctions, then they need to prove to us that such is not the case.  And now.
How important is the United States’ strategic partnership with Israel?
Israel is our only real ally in the Middle East and one of our best friends in the world.  I wouldn’t even characterize it as a strategic partnership.  That makes it sound like our relationship is built only on a contingency basis, viz. we need them to help us secure our interests.  I believe our relationship goes beyond that.  It’s more like, say when one’s spouse has a stroke, and their partner continues in the relationship even though they might be the one doing all the giving. 
Do you support ending sequestration?
Yes, but probably not for the reasons you might think.  The Constitution gives the House the power of the purse.  All spending bills have to originate in the House.  Sequestration tells the House how to budget the money.  The House should be deciding that.  If they want to give the military more money, then they should.  If they don’t want to fund Obamacare or amnesty, that’s their right.  But they have lost the will to do their jobs.  They are afraid of the press and what the Democrats and the President will say about them.  The Republicans have had control of the House for two years, and spending and fiscal priorities are still out of control.  They wait until the last minute to do an appropriations bill, yet they were not in session for several months preceding the election and have hardly worked since.  This is totally irresponsible.

Merry Christmas!

Larry


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