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, September 17, 2022

Deciding How to Vote in the Upcoming Election

I don’t like to talk about political parties.  It draws lines in the wrong places. 

I like to talk about ideas and policies.  Ideas and policies should be discussed on their own merits apart from political parties and labels.

In less than two months, we are going to have another election.  If you watch television or read newspapers, you can easily think that this election is and should be decided on the basis of one issue: abortion.

I think we should take a broader look at what this election is all about.

If you think babies are disposable like a litter of puppies or kittens, when unborn children can be killed for any reason up until the time they are born, then, by all means, yes, you need to vote Democratic.  Republicans can’t always get the details right, but they believe abortion cheapens human life, and they think our society has enough of that.

In the last year, we have had 2 million people enter our country illegally.  Yes, many of them claim to be refugees, but then they have been taught to say that, and practically speaking, almost all illegal immigrants are here to stay.  Sure, many of them are nice people.  The problem is that we don’t know who’s coming.  No background checks, no medical exams.

If you have a problem with any of this, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe that a country has the responsibility to know who is coming into it to live and whether they have any serious diseases or evil intents, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

We are having the highest inflation in 40 years, due to our government spending trillions of dollars it doesn’t have.  We are also spending a trillion dollars a year just to pay interest on our federal debt.  That is like burning a trillion dollars a year.

If you have a problem with that, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Our federal government is $31 trillion in debt, and that debt is growing rapidly, and the government is not even trying to stop it.

If you have a problem with any of this, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Violent crime and general lawlessness is out of hand in our country.  Police are demoralized and understaffed all across our country.  Criminals and other violent people are less worried about the repercussions of their crimes.

If you have a problem with that, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

The federal guidelines for sex education in our public schools normalizes all sexual behavior and encourages your young children to question and explore their sexual behavior and gender at the youngest ages.  Schools and politicians want to facilitate any gender transitioning and will do this without the knowledge and consent of the student’s parents if necessary.

If you have a problem with schools sexualizing your children, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you like the United States being energy independent, and where we don’t have to buy energy from unfriendly or unreliable sources, and heating, electricity, and gas prices being affordable, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you are proud to be an American, if you think the United States is the greatest country in the history of the world, if you believe in the American Dream, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe that society should be color blind, that people should be judged on the quality of their character and not the color of their skin, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe the best qualified people should get the job, you going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in God, the Ten Commandments as our rule of life, if you believe our rights come from God, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in the freedom of speech, where you are able to express your opinions freely, where we can openly talk about touchy subjects, where we can disagree and not be considered hateful, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you believe in the right to be armed, to protect your life, your property, and your freedom, you’re going to have to vote Republican.  

In Illinois, the state is essentially bankrupt.  It is on a trajectory of exponentially increasing debt due to the pension clause in the State Constitution.  This will force every increasing tax burdens to pay for this. 

If you think this problem should be fixed, you’re going to have to vote Republican.

If you live in Illinois, you will be asked to vote on a Constitutional Amendment to support workers’ rights.  What they’re not telling you is that this Amendment was written primarily for government employees more than private ones. 

In Illinois, if you think politicians are enriching themselves and using government workers to solidify their control by enriching them all at taxpayer expense, then you’re going to have to vote Republican.

Years ago, choosing candidates to vote for was often a difficult task.  Politicians have made voting a lot easier today.

 

 

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