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My mother-in-law sent out a religious/political mass mailing, said "Do you agree?" and had pictures of the Bible and and Moses as lawgiver on various public buildings alongside pictures of the Declaration of Independence and Thomas Jefferson.
I notice, in all of those images, you left out one, one so important that all members of the military and all government officials -- even the President himself -- swear an oath to uphold and defend:
(Image of Constitution)
The Declaration of Independence made us a country, the Constitution has kept us a country. And you may believe in the Bible -- as do I -- but when you tie Christianity to the government, you are creating an environment that discourages other from their religion.
You don't think so? Ask a Muslim kid, or a Buddhist kid, or a Jewish kid, what it makes them feel like when prayers to Jesus Christ are said at their graduation ceremonies, as has happened in Indian River School District, in Delaware. In this same school district, students who attended Bible study class were allowed to go to the head of the lunch line, and kids in one school in the district were given Bibles, and time off from class to pick them up. When two Jewish families filed suit, one filed under a pseudonym, one did not. The family that did not was subject to so much harassment -- including a former school board member who suggested that the family might "disappear" like Madelyn Murray O'Hair -- the famous atheist, who disappeared in 1995, and who murdered corpse was found six years later -- they were forced to move. Real Christian behavior, there.
Which is the point of all this. Christ did not walk the earth seeking power. He called us to be servants. The least shall be first in the kingdom of heaven, He said. We are called to make disciples through the Great Commission in Mark by preaching the Gospel and by living our lives according to Christ, but not by coercing or bludgeoning people to accept Christianity. That was tried several hundred years ago: it was called the Inquisition, and we all know how well that turned out.
So you may choose to obsess over whether there is a picture of Moses as lawgiver on the courthouse, or whether "One Nation Under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance (it wasn't there when it was written and adopted by Congress -- it was added *later* during the Communist paranoia of the fifties). I'll worry about whether the poor are being fed, and whether people are dying needlessly in Iraq, and how to make the world a better place to be for all people, regardless of what they believe. Because that's what God calls me to do.
As the bumper sticker a friend of mine has on her car says: God Bless the Whole World -- NO EXCEPTIONS.
I notice, in all of those images, you left out one, one so important that all members of the military and all government officials -- even the President himself -- swear an oath to uphold and defend:
(Image of Constitution)
The Declaration of Independence made us a country, the Constitution has kept us a country. And you may believe in the Bible -- as do I -- but when you tie Christianity to the government, you are creating an environment that discourages other from their religion.
You don't think so? Ask a Muslim kid, or a Buddhist kid, or a Jewish kid, what it makes them feel like when prayers to Jesus Christ are said at their graduation ceremonies, as has happened in Indian River School District, in Delaware. In this same school district, students who attended Bible study class were allowed to go to the head of the lunch line, and kids in one school in the district were given Bibles, and time off from class to pick them up. When two Jewish families filed suit, one filed under a pseudonym, one did not. The family that did not was subject to so much harassment -- including a former school board member who suggested that the family might "disappear" like Madelyn Murray O'Hair -- the famous atheist, who disappeared in 1995, and who murdered corpse was found six years later -- they were forced to move. Real Christian behavior, there.
Which is the point of all this. Christ did not walk the earth seeking power. He called us to be servants. The least shall be first in the kingdom of heaven, He said. We are called to make disciples through the Great Commission in Mark by preaching the Gospel and by living our lives according to Christ, but not by coercing or bludgeoning people to accept Christianity. That was tried several hundred years ago: it was called the Inquisition, and we all know how well that turned out.
So you may choose to obsess over whether there is a picture of Moses as lawgiver on the courthouse, or whether "One Nation Under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance (it wasn't there when it was written and adopted by Congress -- it was added *later* during the Communist paranoia of the fifties). I'll worry about whether the poor are being fed, and whether people are dying needlessly in Iraq, and how to make the world a better place to be for all people, regardless of what they believe. Because that's what God calls me to do.
As the bumper sticker a friend of mine has on her car says: God Bless the Whole World -- NO EXCEPTIONS.
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Very well said.