The Fourth of July: Independence Day! Really?
A nursery school teacher took the opportunity to tell her class about the 4th of July and patriotism. “We live in a great country,” she told her students. “One thing we should all be happy about is that, in this country, we are all free!” One little boy walked up to her and stood with his hands on his hips, looking a little “steamed.” He said, “I’m not free, I’m four!”
I wish the next “4th” story was that much fun but it’s not. I would hope that it would be a celebration of two hundred plus years of a growing free patriotic America, but it isn’t.
When I was a kid, there was a story about the frog that sat in a pan of water and even though the heat was turned up on the pot, because it was a gradual increase, the frog was “cooked” sitting right there in that pot because he never jumped out of the pan. That silly frog just sat there while the water began to boil because he had been desensitized by the gradual increase in the water temperature. These past few days I’ve gotten uncomfortable with “heat” of some of the issues we seem to be facing with more frequency and have noticed how “hot” the surroundings are getting in this country.
The most recent couple of Supreme Court rulings have “turned up the heat.” First, the Court ruled that private companies could seize private property without the owners’ consent, overruling private ownership. The only qualifier is that the seizer be for the “public good.” In a 5-4 decision, conservative Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and the moderate Justice O’Conner dissented. O’Conner wrote of the ruling, “nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with at factory.” With this ruling, your property could be seized for private development if it is thought that the public would benefit by the increased taxation of the new developer! The ruling has the effect that the United States government has no interest in protecting property rights of its citizens! That’s kind of “spooky” to me. (By the way, historically, property rights being given Divine attention, having been dealt with in two [stealing and coveting] of the 10 Commandments. The books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy all make clear the idea of property ownership.) As it stands now, we in effect rent our property from the “state” in the form of property tax (if you don’t believe that the real owners of our property is the government try not paying those taxes! Property taxes essentially make the owner a tenant since he has to keep paying for the privilege of living on his own property). The United States Government, the protector of our “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” has become partner with the “revenue generator” to qualify who is entitled to own property. Daniel Webster stated, “No other rights are safe where property is not safe.” You can lose your house if you don’t pay the “fee” and you can be moved off your acre if they decide Wal-Mart would make the government more money in taxes!
Is it getting away from us? Recently in Philadelphia, a memorial was erected at the corner where the first annual demonstration of homosexuals took place. That public memorial is celebrated while at the same time you cannot display the 10 Commandments in courthouses or school halls because it would be “offensive” to someone to do so. If you’re offended by the Philadelphia Celebration of homosexuality, your “being offended” doesn’t matter. It’s “offensive” to have “under God” in our Pledge. It’s insulting and becoming more rare to identify God in any public format. Same-sex marriage is someone’s right to expression? Protected speech includes pornography and profanity, but you better not say the Name of God in a public place or you might be arrested.
More and more churches are being targeted for what they say in their sermons, all under that banner of stopping “hate speech.” The suggestion from some is for Christians to get out of the political environment. Actually, they would have you “get out of the way” to continue their agenda! Get out of the way so that the un-believers can continue the transition to a completely secular society and do that without your objection! We live in an environment where if Christians object to anything it’s considered to be “intolerant.” However, “intolerance” and intimidation seems become the appropriate and acceptable response to be use against Believers. At the first suggestion of Christian morality and ethic the name-calling begins from the secular groups. Do we live in a time where “evil is said to be good, and good is said to be evil?”
The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution were called the Bill of Rights, the first of which is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That “first amendment right” has been the “holy cry” of the secular to defend the “separation of Church and State.” The truth is, that statement was put into the Constitution’s Bill of Rights in order to preserve and protect religious expression. Just as with property rights, the United States intends to have “no interest in protecting” religious rights either. What do we lose next in that name of the “public good.”
This country was established as a republican form of government meaning power is held in its citizens by way of votes! Today dozens of states have passed Marriage Protection Amendments, most by margins of 60 to 75% and yet one Federal judge in Nebraska has the power to effectively over-rule all those voters’ decision. Is that the judiciary as thought of by the founding fathers?
Many times, I’m troubled by the “shouting” heard from both sides of these issues. Sometimes I’m embarrassed by the way “our side” expresses itself. It takes such a physical and mental toll on us to constantly be challenging, or constantly be challenged, but that’s “the time” we live in. I think that before Christ comes again, we’ll observe the same total rejection at this coming as we observed in His first. And then the end shall come. There’s a spirit of anti-Christ in the earth. It’s unruly, it’s boastful, and it tolerates no one. It blends and metamorphoses itself into the fabric of our everyday life so that “we can’t quite get our hands on the thing.” But, if you look carefully, you can see it each day in the effort to secularize this country.
Voluntarily separating ourselves from God has predictable results. It seems that the attempt to separate our selves from God is and has been a preoccupation of mankind from the beginning. I don’t think that “God is getting us” for that rejection of His Love. I don’t believe He is causing hardships for us. I believe that if we are “fool enough” to reject His love and His life source we get the terrible results of that “disconnect.” The Creation is set up so that when we diminish Him, we diminish us! It’s Natural Law that does it. Pull a plant out of the soil and it will stress and die. The soil (Source of Life) doesn’t have to do a thing; just the separation from Life destroys the plant. That’s the natural result of our rebellion. God stands ready to receive us and willing to accept us, but our “anti-Christ” desire to be “lord of the ring” creates a “gulf” between His provision and protection and our life experience. This push by the secular away from God makes all of us in this country vulnerable to the calamity of the world around us.
I’m more aware of the necessity of “keeping on, keeping on” and taking a position on many of these social issues. It’s not going away, it’s not getting easier. And anyway, we have children and grandchildren to think about here! What of the next generation’s freedoms? Should we give up and go quietly? Should say it’s too hard, too much, too late? I don’t think so. Christian philosopher and author, G. K. Chesterton once said, “Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes God.” Well, I don’t want that god for my God. And I can find no hint in Scripture that we’re to “grow weary of doing good,” no inference that we should not say and do the Gospel thing until the end. We need to be thoughtful in how we object to these things. We need to discern how to express ourselves in the “market place of ideas.” But, the Creator of Life has given us the gift of being free, and we must object to “the separation” and not fade into an expressionless future. WBVN is both an advocate for the Gospel of Peace between God and man and also a “mouth-piece” of information for the Christian community. Thank you for helping do both those things over FM 104.5.