People can assemble in good faith and good will ro seek receptivity to spiritual guidamce and to assimilate values in that respect.
Those values, so as not to be trampled, need to find respect and representation in gov. Without faith, family and fidelity, gov soon turns to fascist despotism. To try to wall godliness away from political goodliness is to feast eyes solely on heaven while abandoning whatever we may have been commissioned to do on earth. Jesus taught: "Thy will be done, on earfh as it is in heaven."
Though we all fall short, churches could do much good by inspiring people voluntarily to come together in good faith and good will, to be receptive to "wrestling with God" to assimilate good values that can be preserved in their society and its institutions.
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Look in good faith to the Reconciler. When people gather in good faith and good will for that purpose, they tend to be led to it. A good place to start seeking is the New Testament. For political purposes, I think a good test is this: What kind of cultural system of values and system of laws is needed to establish and sustain a representative republic that will accord decent respect for human freedom and dignity? The answers vary with contexts and are perhaps more qualitative than quantitative. The paths to that system will vary among cultures. They are best found by looking with others to the Reconciler.
In political terms, a few considerations I think appropriate would include:
Don't tax people to let rulers recruit and groom those who seek to undermine families.
Don't let gov force sanctuary to be provided by others, to give sanctuary to people who are trained to murder and undermine your society, where you would not be willing to give sanctuary to any of such people in your own home.
Don't let gov live beyond its means to put unsustainable burdens on your progeny.
Don't raise children to feel entitled to extort money from other people to siphon for their own pleasure that which they should be earning for themselves.
Don't let your church be persuaded to give up its moral message in exchange for tax credits from the prevailing despots.
Don't let gov or church abuse children.
AFFORD people you come in contact with opportunities to show their moral worth and good will.
UNITE with other members of your church to distribute charitable works, and do not conflate gov with charity.
UNITE with other members of your church to campaign against moral abuses by gov.
WWJD: Judge. In your voting and acting, look beyond selfish wannas and narrow contexts. Pull your focus back to include a broader society. Don't rush to "turn the other cheek" to tolerate that which would destroy the kind of society Jesus would seek to build. If you don't have knowledge or facts commensurate with the task called for, first, do no harm. Don't vote while stupid.
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Ministers of all colors need to challenge themselves: Are they part of the solution, or part of the problem? People go to church for fellowship, to seek inspiration, and to get through a rough patch. Churches rely on membership, both for their revenue and for their sense of purposefulness. They prefer to inspire without being divisive.
But politics is inherently divisive, regardless of how morally important it is. A minister's duty is not just to whomever happen to comprise his congregation. His duty extends also to God and to the pursuit of better civilization. That requires willingness to "wrestle with God." That was the point of renaming Jacob. It was only because Jacob struggled with God that he received a new name, Israel. http://www.gotquestions.org/Jacob-wrestling-with-God.html
However, modern Christian churches blanch away from struggle, preferring not to rock the boat. Raise up congregations of happy faces on sticks. Approve, bless, and tolerate everyting, including evil -- excepting only to decline to tolerate that which is intolerant of evil. So, modern churches tolerate the acme of evil -- Islam -- which is the glorification of hate, disfigurement, stoning, burning, eye gouging, beheading, and abject surrender of all reason. Moreover, they tolerate that which is inimical to faith, family, and fidelity. That is, they bless what destroys a representative republic that seeks to avail human freedom and dignity. That is, freedom of their own accord to "come to Jesus."
There is more to seeking moral guidance from God than a simplistic talisman of loving and tolerating everyone. Spirit based empathy is about more than "loving everything." It also encompasses seeking to overcome evil -- not to celebrate and feed it. Empathy ought not be a code word for blessing depravity and sub-humanness to perpetuate depravity and sub-humanness.
For heaven's sake, how do you "tolerate" your neighbors of good faith and good will if you sponsor the importation of brutes to go among them to rape, plunder, and kill them? Why should love and toleration go to trained rapists, plunderers, and killers, but not to long standing neighbors? And what of the future -- should it factor into any instant gratification you may seek from being radically "tolerant" in the present? What does your receptivity to God's guidance tell you about the kind of decency and civilization God wishes to lead us towards? Should we be tolerant of that, as opposed to sacrificing it so we can feel good about "tolerating" brutes in the present?
Ministers often make excellent presentations leading up to the question, Does the church believe anything is wrong (or bad or sinful)? Or does it just tolerate and love everything and everyone, and is that even possible? They often get right up to the ring to "wrestle with God," and then they crumple.
They fail to engage the important factors that relate to the contest. Their pat suggestion seems to be, yes, give refuge to the Syrian Musliims. With no concern expressed about the nation. Nor for an alternative that would provide refuge in place.
Same with concerns about gays. Little appreciation that Gays already are free to do most of what they want, and face little public prejudice for doing it. As if social tolerance, to be moral, should somehow require the next step, being political funding and sponsorship.
Jacob wrestled with an angel of God. But most churches nowadays do not wrestle. Nor do they seek or give practical moral guidance. Instead, they tend to claim God loves and tolerates everyone and everything -- as if such a logical contradiction could make any kind of moral sense! They do not help a nation keep its moral balance to preserve itself politically. They make us easy fodder for corrupt vultures, crony plunderers, and mad-dog gangster rapists posing as men of "God" (Allah). And with a well presenting minister, all the sheeple assent.
1 comment:
Rome became a crony fascist empire when it became too big and too centrally consolidated in power to govern as a republic. That's what America is being pushed to -- an empire instead of a republic. Complete with all power being centralized to corrupt DC cronies. Rome could make that work because it had strong fascist hierarchical control. For a long time, a father had power of life and death over his children, even if they were past their 50's. There was no freedom to buck the fascist hierarchy.
If Rome is the exemplar of a fascist empire, America cannot last as a "republic-based empire" that avails the Bill of Rights. The only way America can keep its Bill of Rights is by decentralizing the domestic power that has been siphoned to DC. We have to have Trump, COS, decentralization, elimination of most fed bureaucracies, and, if necessary, nullification and secession.
However, the unholy established alliance of cronies, profs, and brain-twisted "educated" youth takes it as established consensus science that the central gov exists to serve demands made by whatever "communities" organize to make them. IOW, our cultural practice has become to expect all answers to come via agglomerations of central fascist power, with tax redistributions made to organized communities of whiners, who vote for a living, for shills for central cronies.
So now an unthinking majority pretty much takes it for granted that all "progress" requires more centralization of power in DC. This will be an unstoppable road to fascist despotism -- unless a miracle starts to invite us, and we have sense enough to reach for it.
Rome fell as its empire became too big for central control to manage. It was beset on all sides, first by non-Roman Barbarians, then later by Muslim.primitives and Mongols. America has long been protected by oceans and travel time. Now, however, America is being hollowed out and surrounded on all sides by a number of powers and technologies. So our power grid is exposed, our consumer economy is vulnerable to EMP warfare, other technological and nuclear powers are rising, and our own politicians have become so corrupt that they sell us out to Chinese and Russians and Saudis. Our economy is under unimaginable debt. Our currency is about to be replaced by alternative world currencies.
And, not least, many of our leaders have lost faith, except in bs that is crazier than new agey astrology. BS like AGW, carbon credits, NWO, UN, "free trade," and World Treaties superior to Congress. BS that undermines all the assimilative power of faith, family, and fidelity.
If Americans fail to "come to Jesus" and firehose the unholy central agglomeration of DC, we will go the way of Rome. Except our fall will be much faster, more sudden, and more cruel in likely loss of lives. The unable and unwlse Commodus did much to set Rome on a path to weakness and eventual destruction. By comparison, Obama (the anti-American, chooming, lying, gay, commie, fellow traveler with Muslims) will make Commodus look strong and wise.
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