Oh, just go through the 10 commandments and ask which one the left doesn’t violate,
and then ask why a Christian would vote for a party whose platform is the antithesis of Christian belief.
How could a Christian vote for a party that ...
* formally supports abortion upto and including the moment of birth
* supports the destruction of traditional marriage and family
* validates and celebrates sodomy
* supports feeding people who are capable of working but refuse to do so
* persecutes public Christian expression
* vilifies Christians that cannot align to their agenda by reason of conscience
* and, worst of all, boos the mention of God at their national convention.
Can government do the work of God (Charity)?
What I have read and understood from the Bible is that God and Jesus wants us to help each other by using our own time, treasure and talent and to give from our hearts (”Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” - 2 Corinthians 9:7). Nowhere have I found anything along the lines of “Go out and institute huge bureaucracies that will take money from some people at the point of a sword and give that money to other people as a politician sees fit.”
Our Founding Fathers were Christian and very pious men. They founded this country under strong Judeo-Christian tenets and reflected on their religious beliefs on all their decisions. They wrote nothing into the Constitution of any type of government “aid” to help the poor, children or anyone else on purpose. They wanted a very limited government for good reason. Limited government is the best way to ensure that freedom will be preserved. The Scottish philosopher Alexander Tytler, who lived during the time of the American Revolution and writing of the US Constitution, summed these views:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.
From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years.
These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”
There are many interesting questions if citizens rely on government to do “God’s Work.”
If a government takes a portion of a man’s wages and does good with it, has the man also done good? If a government takes away a portion of a woman’s property and does evil with it, has the woman also done evil? When a rich man pays more in taxes than a poor person, is he more Godly? If the government then does evil, is he more to blame? A woman works for the government and uses other people’s tax money and does “God Work” with it, is this government woman now a good/Godly woman? If I legally try to avoid paying taxes, does that not make me an “Ungodly” man?
Today, the US government (federal, state and local) takes nearly 50% of a middle-class person’s paycheck after all taxes are factored in (income taxes, Social Security, sales tax, real estate taxes, gas tax, death taxes, phone taxes, highway tolls, sad etc.). Uncle Sam will spend more money in just this year (2004) than it spent combined between 1787 and 1900 - even after adjusting for inflation. I cringe at those numbers. The Founding Fathers wanted nothing like the tax-consuming monster that we have as a government today. I also think of all the good work that could have be done if people were allowed to keep more of their own money and give it to organizations/people that they believe in their heart are doing God’s work. Maybe it comes down to trust. Will people do the right thing with their own money or must a government take a huge chunk of it to do the “right things?”
Except government rarely does anything right except for those tasks that were explicitly outlined in the Constitution as the Founding Father intended. I could cite many examples (such as where would you rather put $10,000 in retirement money - in Social Security or in your own 401k plan?) but the plight of black America illustrates this failure beyond comparison.
In 1965, the US government was going to wipe out poverty by the “Great Society” programs, in which to date over 3.5 trillion dollars has been spent. These federal programs were designed to “help families and children” or “buy votes” depending on your political viewpoint.
At the beginning of the 1960’s, the black out of wedlock birth rate was 22%. In the late 1975 it reached 49% and shot up to 65% in 1989. In some of the largest urban centers of the nation the rate of illegitimacy among blacks today exceeds 80% and averages 69% nationwide. As late as the 1970’s there was still a social stigma attached to a woman who was pregnant outside marriage. Now, government programs have substituted for the father and for black moral leadership. The black family and culture has collapsed (and white families are not that far behind).
Illegitimacy leads directly to poverty, crime and social problems. Out of wedlock children are four times more likely to be poor. They are much more likely to live in high crime areas with no hope of escape. In turn, they are forced to attend dangerous and poor-performing government schools, which directly leads to another generation of poverty.
Traditional black areas of Harlem, Englewood and West Philadelphia in the 1950s were safe working class neighborhoods (even though “poor” by material measures). Women were unafraid to walk at night and children played unmolested in the streets and parks. Today, these are some of the worst crime plagued areas of our nation. Work that was once dignified is now shunned. Welfare does not require recipients to do anything in exchange for their benefits. Many rules actually discourage work or provide benefits that reduce the incentive to find work.
The black abortion rate today is nearly 40%. Pregnancies among black women are twice as likely to end in abortion as pregnancies among white and Hispanic women.
The “Great Society” programs all had good intentions. Unfortunately, their real world results are that they have replaced the traditional/Christian models of family/work with that of what a government bureaucrat thinks it should be.
I could make an excellent argument that if the US government had hired former grand wizards of the KKK to run the “Great Society” programs, and if they had worked every day from 1965 to today without rest, they could have hardly have done better in destroying black America than the “Works of God” that the government has done or is trying to do.
I have visited many countries in which the government “guarantees” that everyone has a job, a place to live, education, health care and cradle to grave “government help” for all children and families. It all sounds great except that the people in these countries are/were miserable. They wanted to escape but were forced by their governments, at the end of a gun, to stay. The “worker’s paradises” of socialist and communist counties are chilling reminders of letting governments do “God’s Work.”
The Bible clearly states that we are to help those in need. The question is “Who should help those in need?” I firmly believe that scripture and the historical evidence strongly support that individuals, private organizations and churches should be the ones doing the heavy lifting. Government help should be the last resort. “Charity,” enforced by the government, is not charity, it is extortion. “Charity,” delivered by the government, is not charity, it is a bribe which corrupts both the giver and the receiver.
Given the two choices, Republican or Democrat, how could a Christian choose anything but Republican?
I read some of the responses to the responses. One moronodon actually equated MSLSD with Fox News.
Unbelievable.
Mike Rowe might be one of our greatest national treasures.
Like some years ago when Teddy Kennedy authored some bill to increase food stamp allotments or some other giveaway to welfare leeches. The Republicans in congress agreed to pass the bill if the Dems would cut the amount of the increase by a few billion.
Kennedy naturally responded with outrage that Republicans were trying to "cut" the money that was going to be wasted when in fact the Pubbies were actually agreeing to an increase...just not as much as Teddy the Toad wanted. That's the way liberals "think."
Is the text of Rowe’s response somewhere else? The Blaze website is defective.
Simple:
We Christians vote for the party that didn't Boo God three times.
We will vote for those who are less likely to push Communism on us and our children.
We will vote for those who tell the truth instead of making up AGW lies about how global warming is “science” despite the facts.
We will vote for the party that doesn't kill babies in the tradition of the pagans that sacrificed to molech.
The state is a God ordained institution and occupies an important place in God's order of things, along with other God ordained intuitions such as family, marriage, the home,the church,education,and work. Christianity believes in the wickedness of fallen man (Jeremiah 17:9)and his moral responsibility; therefore it believes that government is a necessary institution-even to the imposition of the death penalty (Genesis 9:6;Romans 13:1-4).
However,because government is composed of fallen man, it needs to have limited obligations, not totalitarian powers. God established government with limited powers to do only certain things in society. The Bible calls for limited government, falling somewhere between no government (anarchy) and total government (totalitarianism). The state has its role (Mark 12:17, but God has appointed roles for the family and the church. All powerful states are not "God's perfect will and states that forget God are "turned into hell" (Psalm 9;17).
LOL
Pretty funny...
3. Reconsider your commitment to caps and exclamation points. These are excellent choices when warning people about a fire, a volcanic eruption, an ebola outbreak, or a looming tsunami. But I’m afraid their use (here) implies a level of urgency that may exist only in your mind.
4. Consider limiting each blurb to a single entry. When you post the identical screed four times in a row, it looks very much like a broken record sounds. This will lead people to conclude that you’re either a) inept at posting, or b) deliberately obnoxious. Neither conclusion is likely to lead to a sale. Remember, most people see posts like yours as small piles of vomit that they can quickly step around. But when the same vomitus post appears multiple times, you force my friends here to slosh through a virtual lake of spew.
Cruz / Rowe 2016
Now, y’all know you’re probably hurting the feelings of the Third Partyers on FB. The Republican Party isn’t perfect—a lot of it is downright angrifying. But it’s the only electable alternative to the Progressive-Liberals in The Donkey Party.
I see that Mike gave the guy several good reason why one shouldn’t insult his audience, but I don’t see anything where he answered the guy’s question.