I do have a question for Christian Freepers, though. How do you handle oaths such as the Pledge of Allegiance? It's my understanding that oaths to anyone other than God are wrong. Maybe I am wrong on that and need a Bible lesson (please do quote scripture).
You won’t find a similar “it’s up to you” option when it comes to the myths of man-made global warming or homosexuality as “normal”.
I’d be thrilled if I could get the students to be respectfully silent during the pledge if they are not going to participate.
This will be good news to the neo-Confederates.
We ARE "one nation" except for the forces and threats within our borders and outside who seek to divide this nation. And we WERE founded on the principle of religious liberty. Our rights "come from God" (or in the absence of God, at least no Man) and not government.
Many of the world's one billion bragadocious muslims had no choice in that decision of faith. And those who do later decide to change may face death and persecution in their homelands for that decision.
If you have a faith that there IS NO GOD (the God of secular humanism, the no god God) and push this as an ideology (antithesism is on the upswing in the MSM), it has gone from personal believe to advocacy of the faith of atheism.
Atheism is on equal, NOT ABOVE the other religions of the world in the eyes of our system. Freedom of Religion is NOT Freedom FROM Religion. That would make Atheism "the one true faith" of the State. And some adherents to Atheism are quite insulting to the faiths of those who follow other religions. They do not exhibit "tolerance".
I’ll give it a shot and probably get skewered later. Oh well, here goes.
The Pledge, in my mind, is not an oath. We aren’t swearing. It is the outward demonstration of my loyalty to my nation, as represented by the Stars and Stripes. It even goes beyond that for me, to a point of pledging my allegiance to the idea of what America is supposed to be (the Framers’ ideal).
Bibically, speaking, we are told in Isaiah that “the government shall be upon His shoulder” in the prophecies of Jesus. In the NT, Jesus Himself states that we should “render unto Caesar those things which are Caesar’s, and render unto God, those things that are God’s.”
In the first instance, we are to understand that God sets up governments for His own reasons and we should show respect to those governments until they act in a way contrary to His Word. This is why we demonstrate our loyalty with the Pledge.
Secondly, we live here, we benefit from our citizenship, we have more opportunity than most of the world. Isn’t saying the Pledge simply “rendering unto Caesar”? We benefit; ergo, we show our loyalty.
Finally, I would submit that as long as we state, “one nation, under God”, we are showing the proper respect for God. It’s when we fail to do that and put our citizenship or our nation ahead of our Christianity that we get into trouble.
Just my two cents.