November 17, 2011
My Father’s House
Unlike our votes being cast in secret, when you sign a recall petition
it becomes public record. One signer, a local pastor, was questioned by a
fellow believer as to why he would sign the petition without first seeing if
the charges and accusations behind the recall were true. Fair question since
both the pastor and the elected were believers and men of faith. He responded, “They brought the petition to Sunday morning
worship and were so passionate, I decided to sign it.” Jesus cleared the
temple courts with a whip when He found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves
and others sitting at tables exchanging money. I can’t help but wonder if they
also used the temple courts to sign political petitions. “… Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a
market!” (John 2:16b NIV)
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----If you really think about it, there is no secular. The idea that one thing happens in a world that does not involve God and another happens within the church which alone involves God is ridiculous. “The LORD has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” (Prov 16:4) From the very foundation of the earth and heavens through His stretching them out with His hand to His folding them up and setting them aside like an old garment, His purpose is served in them. If they began by His purpose and will end by His purpose, then as the Proverb states, everything between the two also serves His purpose. If one thing escapes His purpose, then He is not all powerful, and He has been beaten by that one thing, be it even one sole quantum leap of a single electron just once in all time. He is all powerful. Even His enemies serve His purpose.
-----Politics are critically important to a free people. Why would we want to banish them from the place where the world’s wisest minds meet? After all, we are the ones supposedly trained in love and respect and honor for all men. We are the ones who are supposedly free of partisanship and favoritism, who love our enemies and friends alike. Are not we the ones who understand the limit of human wisdom and recognize humility as being our bond at that limit to the beginning of God’s providence? Are we not the ones who ask God to step in and involve Himself with the matters of our well being once we have done what we can? Why would we want to banish our political processes to the other places where imaginations contorted by inflamed desires create Alice’s Wonderland of absurdity? Why have we listened to voices which have convinced us that church is no longer the place for the political processes of a free and wise people?
-----Maybe the question should be, “Who convinced us to close our church doors to politics?” It wasn’t always this way in America. If preachers had not taken to the streets with political messages we would not have a Declaration of Independence or a Constitution of the United States. Who kicked the church out? Our country was founded by liberals. American Classical Liberalism (ACL), it was called. It was liberalism because it rejected political philosophies of previous kingdoms for a new idea of the people’s government. But at the same time our liberalism was fashioning a land of freedom, European Liberalism (EL) was also rebelling against kings for a new idea of the people’s government. That is why America and Europe both entered the politics of liberalism as the Eighteenth Century closed.
(continued...)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
(...continued)
-----But a government by the people is as far as the similarity extends. ACL recognized the necessity of a man to govern his own affairs while depending upon the state for only protection against crime and national enemies. It understood men to be highly corruptible by greed for power and wealth because of the depraved state of human nature. Therefore each man needed the freedom to worship his God for the maintenance of the mutuality of his character while taking care of himself individually for the maintenance of his survival skills. We call this freedom, and used to call it laissez-faire (why PC favors "freedom" to "laissez-faire" is an enlightening discussion of its own.)
-----The EL, however, believes reason will soon perfect men, and it is perfecting some sooner than others. It is then important for the less perfected ones to surrender their individuality to the more perfected ones who will then direct their decisions and efforts towards the good of all. That way utopia will progress in man's affairs by the supreme State. This is collectivism, also known as statism. The individual’s life is determined and controlled by the state, his decisions in general are mapped for him, his sustenance measured to him, and his work demanded of him. He no longer looks to his own mind for the solution of his problems; he no longer learns how to take care of himself. Worse yet, when he is at the end of his rope, his political system demands his call for assistance be upon the state which scoffs at his god, if it even allows him to have one.
-----Laissez-faire believes all men have a right to their own persuasion and the running of their own lives, a right to be left alone. Therefore, laissez-faire believes statism can co-exist as neighbors with laissez-faire as long as statism does not encroach upon it. It becomes a place where Christ can freely meet His Called. However, statism believes it has a mandate to create utopia for mankind since there is no god to do that for us. That utopia can not be created unless the entire world involves itself in statism, for how could anyone possibly live better than he can when surrendered to the wisdom of the wisest few? Then statism engages itself in a worldwide spreading called Progressivism. It is man’s progression towards utopia.
-----America was too hard for Progressivism to crack in the early Twentieth Century. That is when they learned the first crack must be the breaking of America’s relationship with the church. It was the beginning of the “separation of church and state” lie. The crack has opened to a chasm. We now teeter on the edge of statist despair, and politics have been nearly banished from church.
-----In this land once fashioned by classic American liberals, where now the principles of Progressivism have become mostly the messages of our public information highway (schools, libraries, entertainment, news outlets, science research centers, courtrooms, congressional halls, etc.) we are to cut the final thread of attachment between the individual’s political decision and his worship of the living God with whom all things have to do? I have many favorite sayings. One of them is that absolutely everything, bar none, will glorify God. It is just that many things will glorify Him through obedience, and the rest will glorify Him like the Broncos glorified the Cowboys, Giants, Redskins, and Forty-Niners in those Superbowls. Which way do we want our politics to glorify Him?
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