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

Friday, March 16, 2018

affordable housing: a letter to my village board


I understand the Village Board will hear a case for an affordable housing development on April 10, 2018.  I would like to express my opposition to the plan. 

I only learned about this project and meeting from the latest Wilmette Life, so I have only the facts that article articulated.  But my objections are two:

1)         When you talk about affordable housing, you are either talking about housing that is cheaply made and thus costs less, or you are talking about subsidized housing.  I am sure they mean the latter, and I would appreciate it if they would just be a little more straightforward about the nature of the project.

So, if it is subsidized, then it must be taxpayers who are paying toward it.  The article mentions that they are seeking state and federal funding.  That is like asking your drunk uncle for money.  He probably won’t turn you down, but he has no business giving you any money in that condition.

The state is approaching $200 billion in debt, while the federal government is over $20 trillion in debt.  Neither has any intention of paying these debts off.  They are content to just waste billions of dollars a year paying interest on these loans.  They cannot be trusted anymore to make wise and responsible decisions, particularly when it comes to spending other people’s money.  Asking them for money is like asking them to use my credit card without asking me if that is how I want to spend my money.  They are as complicit in this abuse of power as any politician.

Winning state and federal funding probably shouldn’t be difficult, but their wasting of other people’s money I find immoral and criminal. 

To approve this project means that you are approving the government’s total mismanagement of the public’s resources.  If your credit card is maxed out, you need to start passing on spending opportunities, even though someone may argue that the case is worthy.

2)         My second objection relates to a comment the WL attributes to a supporter of the project.  It is said that, quoting the article and not a person, “the project would bring needed diversity to Wilmette.”

The project purports to be about the elderly and disabled of Wilmette, but it seems the larger intent is to bring more diversity to Wilmette.  And so, my question is: why is this diversity needed?  Needed for what?  Is anybody asking for it?  I have lived here since 1975, and I never thought to myself that what we need here is more diversity.  Are we somehow diminished as a village without more diversity? 

I object to the government and people telling me what I need and then deciding for me to give me what they think I need and then telling me to like it or I am somehow a bad person.

Perhaps it might sound like I am overreacting or seeing more in this than there is, but I have long learned that most change happens slowly.  Either it is in the right direction or it is in the wrong direction.  And because it happens slowly, even over generations, the changes are minimized, but for those who live long enough, the little changes add up to big changes.  And then people wake up and ask, what happened? 

So I am opposed to this project, and as opposed as I can be.  I hope you will at least consider my objections when you discuss and vote on this project.

Thank you

Posted by at