Absolutely.
Take a couple of current examples [9/11 and the welfare state] and apply solutions consistent with the teachings of Jesus, and it is clear the United States is not a Christian nation. Study history, and know that America has never been one.
The United States responded to the attacks on 9/11 by invading Afghanistan. Nobody even debated this just response. Three thousand innocent Americans had perished needlessly. Al-Qaida and their Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan were responsible. Americans recognize a right to self-defense. What philosophy guides our thinking? Common Sense? Individuals have a right to their lives. Individuals form governments for the purpose of protecting their rights. Or is it Moses and Yahweh’s Old Testament directive? “An eye for an eye.” Either way, the invasion of Afghanistan was a just response to the attack on our people.
A just response, but not a Christian response.
Jesus, of course, had nothing to say about the rights of individuals, but he did address Yahweh’s Old Testament directive. He overturned it. Jesus taught unconditional love, love your enemies, and turn the other cheek. Jesus did not fight back. He didn’t even defend himself verbally when standing accused before Pontius Pilate. He had no harsh words for the people who beat him and sent him to his death.
The United States never turns the other cheek. We didn’t do it after 9/11, and we didn’t do it sixty-six years ago [when arguably we were an even more homogeneously Christian nation] after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We don’t love our enemies. We melt their streets and disintegrate hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. And we are right to do so when our own existence is threatened.
We are right, but not Christian.
In defense of her socialist “health-care-for-all” economic policies, Hilary Clinton once said that Jesus would have been a liberal. I’m sorry to say, she’s right. Jesus’ philosophy and ethics applied in the realm of economics is socialism. As Christians demand sacrifices in order to achieve moral perfection and go to Heaven, socialists demand sacrifices in order to create their imagined Utopia. Christians say: “Do it for Jesus;” socialists say: “Do it for the good of the state.” In a socialist state the property rights of some individuals are sacrificed for the good of others. Why? Because people need health care.
Does the fact that you need something give you a right to it? Can anyone have a right to something that costs money?
Reason is irrelevant where the altruist heart is in play. Justice is sacrificed to their feelings. Secular altruists actually changed the Constitution [the 16th Amendment—Income taxes] in their efforts to enable government to confiscate and re-distribute private property. For the good of the community all producers are forced to cough up their hard-earned money to feed, clothe, house, and provide health care for the unproductive.
So, why is it always the Christian conservatives who oppose growing the welfare state? The welfare state is consistent with the teachings of Jesus. Why is it always the most outspoken Christian conservative elements in Congress and the Bush Administration who argue for the military response to global threats, gathering tens, hundreds, or even thousands of eyes for an eye? Are they hypocrites, claiming to be Christian while acting wholly un-Christian? Don’t they ever ask themselves…What would Jesus do?
Thank God they don’t!
Bad government is terminal; hypocrisy is easily cured. Our leaders need only to acknowledge that we are not a Christian nation; that we are governed by objective law; that the United States is the best product of a secular movement, The Enlightenment, not biblical mandates; that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individuals, their lives and their liberty, not to protect people from the reality of having to earn a living.
Happy Holiday!
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