Is it Politics or Is it the Church

John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.... Free government rests upon public and private morality." It is not our government that has failed; it's the church that has failed to be the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13).

Read what Dr. Jedediah Morse said in 1799: "In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom...Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them." He was saying that Christianity, not government, is the driving force behind true freedom.

When World War II brought America back to her knees, a revival broke out that is still referred to as the era of the highest church attendance in recent history. A time of repentance and seeking God brought peace and a period of great prosperity. But sadly, the result was a church that was lulled to sleep. While it was sleeping, a generation of "baby boomers" became obsessed with materialism and freedom from moral constraint.

How did the church react? In a variety of ways, some of which were very good. People began seeking the Lord, and the Lord answered through what is often called "The Jesus People Movement," "The Charismatic Movement," "The Word of Faith Movement," "The Lay Witness Renewal," and others. These revivals were not spearheaded by any individual, yet they had worldwide impact. Truly these were mighty moves of God's Spirit.

Yet, as a whole, the church responded by promoting political involvement as the answer to society's woes. Make no mistake--Christians who live in a country that provides them the freedom to govern through voting or holding political office have a responsibility to participate. However, for many, politics has not been a weapon against the moral decline; it has been the only weapon.

The `70s and `80s saw the largest influx of Christians into the political process in recent history, and it did produce some good results. It influenced who was elected president and helped change the balance of power in Congress and the Supreme Court. Although some good came of it and the potential destruction of our nation was stayed off a little longer, it hasn't turned the tide. There are still millions of innocent children killed every year. Immorality continues to advance nearly unchecked. And some of our so-called "conservative" Supreme Court appointees defied logic by turning the government loose in ways that would have caused our Founding Fathers to mount a revolution.

Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States (1923-1929), declared, "The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them [the foundations of society] if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country" (brackets mine).

Our society isn't sick because of the government; it's sick because the church has not made faith in the teaching of the Bible "practically universal in our country." Once we cease to win the hearts of man, it is inevitable that ungodly people will make their way into leadership and take the country with them.

If we change people's hearts with the Gospel, the people will change the government with their votes. Government merely reflects what people believe in their hearts; it does nothing to form those beliefs. William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, wrote in the late 1600s, "Government seems to me to be a part of religion itself.... Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad."

It's good to pursue legal action and political means to right wrongs. But the power of the Gospel has more power to change the hearts of man than all the military might and legislative bodies of any government. Billy Graham understood that when he was asked to run for president in the 1950s. He responded by saying he would not lower himself to that position. He was not attempting to diminish the office of the president; he was elevating the office of a minister of the Gospel.

Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress in 1783 and later congressman from New Jersey who served as president of the American Bible Society, said "the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."

There is a civil war going on in America today, but it is not political. Sure, the courtrooms and congressional halls are the battlegrounds, but the war itself is between light and dark--the truth of the Gospel and the lies of the devil. It's between the people of God and the children of the devil.

In this war, the Enemy tries to hide his true objectives behind the mask of individual rights and personal liberties. But make no mistake: The real goal is the elimination of God and His influence from society so people can indulge in their carnal lifestyles without conviction or guilt.

The way to win this war and save the political character of this nation is to change the moral character of its people with the Gospel. Our Founding Fathers understood that. Dr. Benjamin Rush said in 1786, "Nothing can be politically right that is morally wrong."

The church needs to refocus its energies back to the Great Commission that our Lord Jesus Christ gave us: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matt. 28:19-20).

Sports and Congress Hall of Shame

At our attention in recent days has been the story of a great pitcher Roger Clemens. Clemens was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that he lied about his use of performance-enhancing drugs when he testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February 2008.

We are also reminded of many others in baseball and other sports who have enhanced their bodies to greater feats by cheating, or should we say enhancing, sports. The mind set is that it is okay to cheat, to take the shortcut to a better life. The Mitchell report named over one hundred players in baseball for ties with performance-enhancing drugs. This report signifies the growing demand that it is proper to cheat your way through life and get paid top dollar for doing so.

But there is a bigger picture to be looking at here. Experience tells us that these ways are learned, and usually it is learned by rolling down hill, or from the top down. Which bring us to our Government or to Congress specifically and it’s Congressional authority.

Each member of Congress was voted in by a majority of the people. Each one ran on a platform promising the American public to reciprocate the vote given to them for the promises their platform was built on. How many of them perjured themselves to their constituents? How many of them said they would promise to do something while in office, and have they worked toward or completed that expectation. If any Congressman has not, maybe the federal grand jury in Washington should indict Congress for perjury to the American people.

Congress has used (sort of) performance-enhancing drugs. These drugs come in the form of selfishness, power, and greed. For if Congress does not follow through with the platform they were elected with, and then they are using that same power that was given them for other means and purposes. It is a misuse of the authority and performance. Have heard the many excuses of why Congress cannot complete the course of action that they were voted in for, but we get a different performance once they are voted into office. Congress enhances their performance to suit themselves and not their constituents.

Most of us forget that we are not a democracy, we are a republic. We vote people into office to run our government. Can we do a better job of voting and giving responsibility and power to others, yes? Maybe we need to put in safeguards to assure the American voters that the ones we vote in do the job they were voted in for.

We learn from our leaders, top down. If we are wondering why sports in recent years are cheating their way through life, maybe it is because sports has seen our leaders for decades doing the same. If things are to change it takes all of us to change, but it starts from the top down. Everything else will roll downhill from there.

Only Some People are Created Equal

“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.”

If your not born in this country and you also presently live in Arizona the above statement from the Declaration of Independence is not true. Xenophobia, the 14th Amendment, being Mexican, being whatever is different from you means that all men are not created equal? Our Government is now backtracking and say that we are not sure what the drafters of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence had in mind. I guess we all have been out to lunch the past two hundred and thirty four years.

The problem with men learning from history is that they have not learned from history and that is why history repeats itself. All the historical facts, writings, musings do not mean a thing about how this country was founded. From the mind set in Congress this is apparently so. Our country ideals are based on jurisprudence, so lets just change the rule of law to suit whatever whim and fancy that comes our way. Let’s see, the Declaration of Independence also says

“ Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. “

Light and transient causes, may we all stop and ponder this. Maybe a visit to Ellis Island will awaken our senses from where we come from. My great grandparents were immigrants, glad that they did not cross over from Mexico to Arizona. My parents who were born here were not shipped back to Ireland and the history that we have all come from this ideal is where we have not learned from that historical fact.

When the people have spoken and it is declined by one judge that sure is a problem for jurisprudence. In Lincoln’s Gettysburg address where he ends by saying “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Apparently our government does not want to honor freedom for all, especially in our own country, and dishonor all who died for those freedoms in the past. Only some are created equal is the rally cry in our economic downturn, it is only a light and transient time. We will throw our history and equality aside for a temporary fix that will disfigure us in the years ahead. Let us learn from history.

When Greatness Slips Away

By BOB HERBERT
New York Times
Op-Ed Columnist
Published: June 21, 2010

We’ve blown so many enormous opportunities over the past several years. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, when most of the world had lined up in support of the United States, President George W. Bush had the chance to lead a vast cooperative, international effort to combat terrorism and lay the groundwork for a more peaceful, more secure world.

He blew it with the invasion of Iraq.

In the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we had not just the chance but an obligation to call on our best talent to creatively rebuild the historic city of New Orleans. That could have kick-started a major renovation of the nation’s infrastructure and served as the incubator for a new and desperately needed urban policy. Despite President Bush’s vow of “bold action” during a carefully staged, nationally televised appearance in the French Quarter, we did nothing of the kind.

The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for. (One thinks of Franklin Roosevelt raging against the “economic royalists” and asserting that “we need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.”)

But there has been no radical change, only caution and timidity and more of the same. The royalists remain triumphant and working people are absorbing blow after devastating blow. More than 1.2 million of the long-term jobless are due to lose their unemployment benefits this month.

The oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, as horrible as it has been, was yet another opportunity. In his address to the nation from the Oval Office last week, President Obama could have laid out a dramatic new energy policy for the U.S., calling on every American to do his or her part to help us escape the insidious, nonstop destruction that is the result of our obsessive reliance on fossil fuels.

He chose not to.

As a nation, we are becoming more and more accustomed to a sense of helplessness. We no longer rise to the great challenges before us. It’s not just that we can’t plug the oil leak, which is the perfect metaphor for what we’ve become. We can’t seem to do much of anything.

The city of Detroit is using federal money to destroy thousands upon thousands of empty homes, giving in to a sense of desperation that says there is no way to rebuild the city so let’s do the opposite: let’s destroy even more of it. Lots more of it.

There are plans aplenty for demolishing large parts of what’s left of Detroit, which in its heyday was the symbol of an America that was still a powerfully constructive force, a place that could produce things and improve the lives of its people and inspire the rest of the world.

Referring to an aspect of one of the plans, The Times’s Susan Saulny wrote in an article in Monday’s paper: “An urban homestead — one of the more popular parts of the plan — would be tantamount to country living in the city, the plan says, with homeowners enjoying an agricultural environment and lower taxes in exchange for disconnecting from some city services like water.”

The June 28 cover story of Time magazine is headlined, “The Broken States of America.” As I’ve mentioned here several times, the states are facing a catastrophic fiscal situation that is short-circuiting essential services, pushing even more people out of work, and undermining the feeble national economic recovery.

As Time reported: “Schools, health services, libraries — and the salaries that go with them — are all on the chopping block as states and cities face their worst cash squeeze since the Great Depression.”

We are submitting to this debacle with the same pathetic lack of creativity and helpless mind-set that now seems to be the default position of Americans in the 21st century. We have become a nation that is good at destroying things — with wars overseas and mind-bogglingly self-destructive policies here at home — but that has lost sight of how to build and maintain a flourishing society. We’re dismantling our public school system and, incredibly, attacking our spectacularly successful system of higher education, which is the finest in the world.

How is it possible that we would let this happen?

We’ve got all kinds of sorry explanations for why we can’t do any of the things we need to do. The Democrats can’t get 60 votes in the Senate. Our budget deficits are too high. Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck might object.

Meanwhile, the greatness of the United States, which so many have taken for granted for so long, is steadily slipping away.

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