Politics and the CHristian life
How does a Christian interface in a world where options to become politically involved exist? I mean some cultures have slaves. If you are a slave the bible tells you how to deal with that situation. It doesn't tell you to kill your master and take over his property or to escape even. I tells you to work to bless him basically and in the process God will deal with him and hopefully bring him to himself through the relationship that the slave MODELS in his daily life! What a powerful chance to witness God's love to someone actually. Being their slave.
But those who are free may find themselves in a place like America where they can be involved in the political process. In fact it's decleared to be a government 'of the people, by the people'. Which kind of implies that the law says we SHOULD be involved! But first let's touch on another popular law to bring up at this point. And that would be the Separation of Church and State!
It just cracks me up to here how many people swallow the out of context version of 'separation of Church and State', something that was incorporated NOT to keep the people who coined it from doing what they were recorded to have done (made decisions based on what they believed God's leading for them was), but rather to keep the state from declaring a formal religious standard for the people!
The Atheists love to misrepresent it because it allows THEM...a clear MINORITY....to TOTALLY TAKE OVER AND RULE! Because hey..if you are a CHristian then you are commanded to PRAY WITHOUT CEASING! So...you can't pray according to them on state time.... so...you can either quit your post as public servant OR you can cease being a Christian. Your choice.
Now any reasonable person sees right through this ploy and they see in context what the founders of this nation intended. And that wasn't it. So what GROUNDS to people have to rearrange their intent in this way? It is an asounding conspiracy of course. Any intelligent person just sees right through it. So we know that there are enough people walking in utter darkness to conspire together to actually pull OFF a mass scale misrepresentation like this. WHAT AN EFFORT this constitutes when you think about it!!
Anyway as Christians we can be in complete peace. We know that those who value this world will always use deceit and the masses will always follow the carrot they present. So a righteous person doesn't have a chance except in rare instances where a mass revival takes place perhaps, to actually get heavily involved and have a real large influence on the direction things are going. We shouldn't be disappointed when the masses choose the one who is going to work to enslave them through subtle deceit. Or perhaps just an idealist who has been surrounded by deceivers who handed him things all his life. Such people have never had to deal with reality and if big money interests are behind such a person, they can even appear to be successful for a time in helping an economy etc. But in the long run of course those who are manipulating through the person (or with the person as the case may be ) will exact their fees.
But a Christian should just speak the truth and not be worried about the direction the masses choose. We should look forward to situations others have faced in the past. The witness of people like Cory Ten-Boom who suffered through Nazi concentration camp life which resulted in many being led to Yeshua, should inspire us to prepare to do likewise. We can't make the world's choices for them. But we can be there to continue to hold out a hand of friendship and to instruct them and share GOd's love with them when he finally humbles some of them so that they will listen.
-Bob
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What are some practical things to realize in the current political environment?
(Here is a clip from a myspace discussion) Eli wrote:
>>>>> So what ideas do the people of America have to move forward and get us past this? What I have been seeing are only the ideas of politicians who represent the people. What are your ideas, I am curious to see if they match the ideas of the politicians because my ideas certainly do not.
-----I note:
Oh the people who care about America in truth want to see:
1) Inefficient stupid regulations MUST GO AWAY! Here’s how to implement this
a) Put automatic retribution laws in place SO THAT if people pursue stupid frivolous law suits the will automatically be penalized for the expense/defamation they caused to the one they sued when the lose. (I believe Belgium for example has those types of laws already. As a result *their* courts aren’t overrun with 1000 idiots trying to sue Michael Jackson for instance, and there is time to give people Justice who deserve it!)
b) This being done, REMOVE stupid regulations that make the workplace horrendously inefficient. Fact is OSHEA or whatever hasn’t lowered the amount of deaths MORE than they’ve lowered THE AMOUNT OF WORK that gets DONE! Most people die because they do stupid things from heights etc. Putting notes that say ’this is not a step’ on ladders is cheap. I’m all for it. WE DO NOT NEED to pay OSHEA people to see to that. It can be a manufacturing requirement. We pay OSHEA to hire people to run around CUTTING CORDS that have TAPE on them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAMN IT! NOBODY has died because of tape on a cord!! LINE the person up who saw TO it that such a thing was regulated and shoot them for being a traitor. Because that’s what they are. That person purely had a motive of making work so inefficient that it would drive people out of business and make us SUBJECT to foreign employment forces who don’t impose such idiotic regulations on their work force!!!!!!!!!!!!!
c) Remove absurd ecological regulations. Yes *some* of them are good. But some of them are totally stupid. For example not letting people use the more efficient inhalers for fear of killing the ozone layer...WITH INHALERS??? GRRRRRRRRRRR. Nobody can be that stupid. Such people who suggest such laws need to be pulled OUT of government responsibilities and sent to science classes where they are taught things about the rate of replenishment in the ozone layer, the VOLUME of the ozone layer and the VOLUME of air potentially affected...BY INHALERS! :-)
d) Remove racial/sexually oriented requirements in all aspects of our culture. In the same way I don’t want to see ’white only’ bathrooms..I also don’t want to see requirements that any particular group be guaranteed employment because of their race/sex. I think we’re over that. Really. No employer should have to hire people that they don’t want to for whatever reason. RESTORE PEOPLE’S ABILITY TO PURSUE THEIR DREAM! If I start a company maybe it’s so that I can hire my friends. What’s wrong with that? If you don’t want to let me hire my friends...forget it. And unfortunately any OTHER country pretty much lets people do this. And that’s why they are trampling on our economy. People hire people they like to work with. If they are BIGOTS...well they won’t get as good of employees and their company will probably fail because someone will COMPETE and hire the BEST employees without regard to race/sex whatever. LET..THE FREE....MARKET...>TEACH PEOPLE THE LESSONS THEY NEED TO LEARN.
e) Get rid of unconstitutional laws. eg. Nobody should be forced to be part of social security for instance. It’s public insurance. People should be allowed to plan their own futures and if they are negligent then I hope they have treated others with kindness who are in that situation with the money they would have been spending on their own futures. Maybe others will see that and help them in their time of need. OR..maybe it will be a Lazarus situation and people will judge them and walk right by. If that’s the kind of country we have...then there is a God who will use people like that to bear witness of the hatred. BUT if the government is taking care of it all...people cease to realize how corrupt they really are. Anyway if people *want* to volunteer into a government program..or a private one...they should be so entitled. But forcing them is a violating of the constitution which grant freedom of religion and forbids taxation without representation. If a person is a Christian Jesus commands them to not save up for tomorrow but to trust him. Not man. Social security means to put your trust in man by the very NAME! So to force people to pay into it when they are devoted to take nothing from it is taxation w/out representation AND forcing them not to avoid the appearance of what is evil to them.
2) Stop social programs progressively *as* we call for community involvement to replace them. Put caring for people back in the hands of people. THAT way if there are scammers *people* can discern that and send the scammers off to learn how to either starve, or work. Sure some evil dynamics will take place and some ’Lazarus’ characters will play out in the matter. However... right now what we have is
A) A public that has lost the ability to have compassion..because they think the government is going to do it for them.... and this impersonal nature to the whole thing is destroying the very fabric of people.
B) A system that is 50 fold inefficient. People having babies just so they can qualify. HEY SISTER. WE WARNED YOU. If you get pregnant without a responsible dad, then we’ll try to help take care of the baby. But you are going to be accountable to people who care that you don’t wind up in another stupid situation and repeat the process. People who need help DO NOT NEED PRIVACY! SCREW PRIVACY! If you need privacy then it’s PROBABLY because you don’t really HAVE a back injury. You are a faker most likely. People who are really in need want friends who are involved in their lives. If you have friends...why are you asking us for help?
etc.
Anyway I could go on and on. But the current *direction* has been to allow government to get into things that it can’t possibly do efficiently. And if we allow corruption to come up in all these areas it will strangle us. We *must* take personal responsibility for things like this.
3) People hit the wall and realize that if they goof around all the time, they aren’t going to have money for anything and they will suffer. Nobody will bail them out. But rather they’ll wind up slaves to countries who look at America as a nation of spoiled people who deserve to be enslaved.
-Bob Weigel