poligion: January 2021

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

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Slavery and Slaveholders

The Chicago Sun-Times is spearheading a movement to change the name of a lot of Chicago public schools, because they were named after people who owned slaves at some point in their lives. (A lesson in equity: Many Chicago public schools might need renaming, January 17)

I would like to suggest that perhaps we are judging these people too harshly.

When our country was founded, our Founders could have created two countries, one slave and one free. but they decided to make one and work on the slavery thing later. They did, however, put a clause in the Constitution that put an end date for the importation of slaves.

If you lived in a slave state and didn’t believe in slavery, what could you do to help the people who were slaves?

If you didn’t own any, somebody else would. If you set any of them free, where would they go? Even in free America, they could be kidnapped and sent back to the South. You couldn’t send them back to Africa. They would probably just be sent back here on the next boat. Are you going to send them back on the same boats that are bringing them over here?

I submit that the kindest, most helpful thing you could do for slaves in a slave society could be to acquire as many of them as you could.

If they worked for you, you could educate them, teach them a trade, and prepare them for the day when it would be safe to be black anywhere in America. Above all, you could be sure that they were treated kindly and with respect. If we know nothing more about these people than the fact that they owned slaves, I believe we are doing them a grave injustice.

Removing historical names from our public schools punishes no one, helps no one, and to me just wastes time, energy, and money that can be spent in ways that might actually help somebody.

I think we are being too hasty to judge and condemn people in the past. It might make us feel like we are actually doing something to make the world a better place, but we are not.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

an open letter to the new Speaker of the House in Illinois and House Speakers all across the country

Speaker Welch

I hope you are doing well, and congratulations! You have been honored by your peers in a remarkable way.

I would like to suggest a few things that I believe would soon distinguish you as the best Speaker in the country, and maybe in our country’s history.

Require all bills to be as short as possible and to focus on as few issues as possible. e.g. A ban on police chokeholds. One bill, one item.

So the House might have a list of upcoming bills, in order. say, 1) a ban on police chokeholds, 2) a ban on no-knock warrants, 3) provide medical insurance for undocumented seniors under the poverty level, 4) requiring background check on all gun sales, private and public.

The bill is introduced in the House, and it is then debated. Debate speeches must be on focus, and not longer than necessary. Then the bill is voted on.

If a rep sees that a certain bill should have outside testimony, that is noted and a day scheduled for the whole House to hear both sides of the issue by the experts and affected parties. The bill can then be reinserted into the queue of upcoming bills with a little time to fully digest the testimony.

I would also suggest. I don’t know how things are done now in Springfield, but I would encourage you to omit the rep’s party name as much as possible. They can run on their party name, but once they are there in the House, there is no need, advantage, or benefit to continue to identify House members by party. And certainly not to be seated by party affiliation. If they want to meet outside of House chambers as a party, that’s fine, but they would probably be better of in the chamber itself not to make that an issue.

Simple.

Speaker Welch, I wish you well. If you do these few things, you will be recognized and long remembered as an outstanding speaker who truly served the people.

Friday, January 1, 2021

what to do about gun violence?

I agree with the Sun-Times editorial (Behind the grim numbers on Chicago gun violence in 2020, December 31) that the numbers on Chicago gun violence are grim. I’m having problems with the rest of the editorial though.

I can agree also that this has been a rough year for a lot of us. But going from having a rough year to wanting to kill people is a big step. And the answer to all this, it is suggested here, the way to stop people from wanting to kill people, is, well, the same answer for all our other problems: the federal government needs to spend more money. The answer is always to spend more money.

We forget that whatever money the government will spend on this is borrowed money. Going into debt is not a long-term solution for anything.

I’m going to offer another way, and one that won’t cost taxpayers a cent.

John Adams, our second President, said that: we have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Our country is based on freedom. But freedom only works when people actually care for each other and people care about doing what is right on their own.

Guns are not a new invention, and the right to gun ownership and possession was recognized long before we even had a Constitution.

What has changed is our removal of God from our public life, our government, and our public education. People are no longer beings created in the image of God worthy of our deepest respect. We no longer teach our children Thou shalt not kill (The Ten Commandments), Do unto others as you would have others do unto you (The Golden Rule), and You shall love your neighbor as yourself (The second greatest commandment).

No amount of government money will change people’s hearts to love their neighbors or to respect the lives and property of others.