The Tribune ran a major article on a disputed tax break for
pastors (Thursday, Nov. 1).
It seems the whole issue stems from a common mistake that is
prevalent today: “the First Amendment requirement of government neutrality on religious
matters.”
If I had to summarize the basic, fundamental, founding
principle of our nation it would be this paragraph from the Declaration of
Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Our Founders considered it self-evident that people were
given unalienable rights by God. The courts
today would call that a religious statement.
The Founders called it a fact.
Religious statements today are considered opinions or
personal preferences, like your taste in movies or food. The Founders based the existence of our country
and the cause of our war with England on a statement they considered true and
our courts today would call an opinion.
But then you have to ask: how did the Founders know that God
gave people rights, and what God were they talking about? It wasn’t Allah, or Krishna, or Buddha, or Moloch,
Baal, or Thor. It was the God of the
Bible, and Christianity and the Bible were the vehicles of God revealing His
will and purposes to humankind.
Our Founders also believed that liberty requires a strong
moral code, because freedom comes with responsibility. That is why the Ten Commandments, love your
neighbor as yourself, and do unto others as you would have others do unto you
were the moral code for our country for almost 200 years before the courts
ruled that unconstitutional, and now we have secularism, which offers us tolerance,
equality, fairness, and diversity as the supreme moral code.
If you separate our country from Christianity, then you don’t
have unalienable rights. You have only
those rights given to you by the government.
You also don’t have what made us unique among the nations. All governments give some rights to their
people.
Our country is in the midst of shifting from unalienable
rights to government-given rights, because the courts have ruled that talking
about God in our schools and government is unconstitutional. We have cut off the anchor that made us what
we are, and the ship of state will be pushed by the waves to socialism, and maybe
communism and totalitarianism.
It will take a few generations until the old people who
still remember the truth die off, and the kids who were never taught the truth and
the millions of people who have moved here who we certainly don’t teach them
that either run the nation, and it’s good-bye America.
