Posted on 03/28/2014 4:47:39 PM PDT by Kaslin
Is God a Democrat? A Republican? Was Jesus a conservative, liberal, socialist, or libertarian? Those are jarring questions. Yet, because faith informs one’s values and values inform one’s political leanings, it is understandable why religion and politics often intersect and overlap. And because there are myriad different concepts of Deity (hence, the thousands of sects plus varying degrees of nonbelief in the world) and many divergent political beliefs (so that even within each Christian denomination there are adherents spread across the political spectrum) the inevitable result is friction, contention, and disagreement.
Can we agree on this at least? Let’s agree that those who worship the Creator and accept the Savior should let His redeeming grace lift us higher instead of trying to squeeze him into limited and limiting human beliefs. Neither God nor Jesus can be reduced to any human philosophy, political or otherwise. Politics is human; God is divine. The human is the realm of mortal, material, flawed, and imperfect beings where many wills collide, compete, and clash; the divine is the realm of the immortal, spiritual, perfect Holy One where there is but one will. For those who find this phraseology problematical, I apologize; it’s often difficult to express spiritual concepts with mere human language, and even with the clearest communication there are often different slants on these transcendent concepts. Let’s just say that none of us should be overly confident that we have the infinite God and His Son figured out, when even Jesus’ own disciples, who abode with him for three years, repeatedly didn’t “get it.”
Christians have many different opinions about what constitutes good government. Jesus said that his “kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). That marvelous statement still leaves an important question unanswered: As long as we live in this world, what kind of civil government is right for humankind? The Bible does not contain an explicit blueprint for government. It does, however, provide abundant guidance and clear precepts for moral conduct in our thoughts and deeds that should influence our politics. Liberty, justice, charity, right, and wrong are dominant themes throughout the Bible. The political challenge is to get them in the right balance. In I Samuel, chapter 8, it is plain that the highest form of government would be for the people to follow God’s laws, and that any human king (and by extension, human government in general) will be prone to abusing the people under its authority.
Just how much power a human government should have has been a perennially vexing problem ever since. Founding Father James Madison famously wrote in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Alas, of course, men are not angels, so how much external government do they need? Robert Charles Winthrop, erstwhile Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1847-1849), stated, “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either via power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.”
Personally, I prefer the Bible to the bayonet. Consequently, I think that America’s Founding Fathers—despite their differing understandings of the Christian religion—came pretty close to solving the problem of government correctly. In the Declaration of Independence they affirmed that government’s raison d’être and sole legitimate function is to preserve, protect, and uphold man’s God-given unalienable rights. The key principle in governmental administration was to be negative law—that is, the government should enforce the essential laws outlined in the Mosaic Decalogue—and not the “positive law” of ordering what good things citizens must do. The great moral philosopher Adam Smith explained this fundamental and practical difference between law and gospel in his classic work, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”
Many American Christians have a different opinion about the proper role of government today. Some desire to expand the scope of government as strongly as I favor shrinking it to the size our founders envisioned. And I must concede the possibility that we living in America today don’t deserve the limited government that our founders established. Perhaps Joseph de Maistre was at least partly right when he wrote, “Every country has the government it deserves.” John Adams believed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” It may be that the American people have moved away from moral self-government to a degree that renders our original constitutional order impracticable today.
Christians hold many opinions about the proper role of government today. Perhaps the only point we can agree upon universally is that the only perfect government is found in the kingdom of heaven.
My understanding of that is; Jesus' ear is just next to the speakers of government and if I was in government, I'd be very careful what I say and because the scriptures are a discerner of the thoughts ... Jesus' input is absolute.
Now, with free will, we can choose to refuse and ignore ...
Someone ping me when they name their daughter Jezabel
Great response!
Well, when Jesus sets up his government in Israel and rules over the nations of the world, the nations we see today - that government will be quite different from the USA and the Constitution. The Constitution will be “history” at that time. There won’t be any differing and opposing political parties. There will only be the rule of a monarch. It will be the Messiah of Israel’s one-world government.
People will live, work and have families, and there will be no armies and no wars. It will quite different than now.
I will probably get flamed for this, but here goes...
These articles are generally ok by their nature. And they get people thinking. But they many times leave out some core components.
We have the following governments:
city
county
state
federal
UN
Each of the governments listed above takes on different responsibilities and authorities.
As most know, the federal government originally was intended as limited form with only authority derived from that which is written into the constitation and amendments. This was a contract between the states. And that “[T]the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
So when a question such as is posed in this article, “what constitutes good government,” and an implied question such as what happens when the government is no longer good, the answer needs to be explored in the context of “which government?”
If a once good government violates its contract and usurps its authority, then what would be valid Christian responses? This is one of the types of questions that needs to be explored.
This article is talking about the fed government and wants to discuss whether an expanded or limited government is better. If this article was talking about the UN or the state, then our discussion would be different.
My preference is the extremely limited fed government - always; I want say that up front. But, if the fed government were to expand, then it needs to it legally according to the contract. The contract, Constitution, says that if the responsibility (and also authority) should expand, then the contract needs to be amended.
No amendment, no expansion.
If there is expansion and no amendment, then it becomes tyranny, a violation of the contract. I believe this needs to part of this discussion.
What is the Christian response when one party violates the contract?
Flame away..
They "got it" in full measure after the crucifiction & ressurection.
city
county
state
federal
UN
We need conservative representatives at each level of government, not liberals, and not libertarians.
There is huge overlap, for instance gay marriage or abortion in city and county government, and union negotiations, accommodations or whatever, and of course at the state level, and of course at the federal level, for instance abortion in federal and military hospitals, gay marriage in the military and federal employment and in immigration.
Of course we need conservatives choosing who we send to the UN, and with what positions, as well.
Christians need to have a conservative party platform, conservative politics, conservative candidates and to vote conservative, not libertarian or liberal.
This is just begging for a comparison between “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “From each according to his ability to each according to his need”. If Jesus wasn’t a liberal in his day, I don’t know what the word means, rotflmao!
Most of the first 13 states had a religious test in order to be a representative. Most had an oath that required the representative to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the OT and NT to be divinely inspired by God.
What in the world does that have to do with post 7?
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