Posted on 06/02/2009 3:33:49 AM PDT by John Leland 1789
That's the American Way.
Down with The Man! Power to The People! Socialism Forever!
Then let me be the second. Roaring from the Scriptures indeed. Deut 28 and Ro 1 clearly show us the mind of God in these matters. Obedience, Acknowledgment, and a Thankful heart towards Him is His desire. The rest of our needs, including our economy and defense are in His hands.
Nice job of quoting out of context. Thanks.
Wealth expansion is an American way, and the fruit of correct principle, when “bridled” by higher principles, inward government of truth.
The source of inward government is the Holy Spirit of God through the New Birth (John ch. 3)
Americans in generations past, when not Christian, were guided by direct Christian mores which were in evidence all around them.
When too few people in a society are inwardly governed, and therefore the society is morally “unbridled” then the wealth becomes god number 1, and the intelligence and ability to gain wealth becomes god number 2.
Such is to decide not to know or be thankful to the True and Living God, and degeneration becomes the consequence in that society.
The First Law of Thermodynamics is that energy cannot be created. The Second Law is that heat energy always passes to a colder zone; it dissipates.
Man cannot create his own goodness or righteousness with respect to satisfying the Holiness of God. It must be provided from a source of goodness outside of himself. What goodness he has by the laws of God being written on his heart dissipates; degenerates.
A society loses its goodness when there is none gifted from a source of greater goodness. That source is the God of the Bible.
So a free enterprise society which worships free enterprise for the sake of free enterprise and wealth itself, loses its free enterprise to fascist control of its auto and banking industries.
Free enterprise dissipates, as it is a gift of God, and not from man himself. Once man forgets God, the power of free-enterprise loses its energy to fascist tyrants (the colder regions).
Correctamundo.
Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the more extreme anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia."[5] Colonial charters and laws contained specific proscriptions against Roman Catholics...In 1642, the Colony of Virginia enacted a law prohibiting Catholic settlers. Five years later, a similar law was enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In 1649 the Act of Toleration was passed, where "blasphemy and the calling of opprobrious religious names" became punishable offenses, but it was repealed in 1654 and thus outlawing Catholics once again. Puritans condemned ten Catholics to death and plundered the property of the Jesuits. By 1692, Maryland had become a royal colony, the Church of England was established by law, and Catholics were compelled to pay taxes for its support. They were cut off from all participation in public life and additional laws were introduced that forbid religious services and Catholic schools.
God created us with “free will”. It was God’s willful intention that man be free and responsible for his actions.
Therefore the essential component of an economic system must be freedom. The freedom to create goods and services (wealth) and then distribute it.
Therefore there is nothing wrong with Capitalism, provided the people practicing it are honest - unfortunately, in the past few years, we have seen people at high levels of Capitalism who are not honest. They cheat their employees, their customers, their shareholders and even themselves. There is nothing wrong with profiting from hard work, reasonable risk taking, etc., however, the Ponzi schemes and pure greed we have witnessed have given Capitalism a bad name. I think what we have seen for the most part in the past few years, is not true “Capitalism” as we had known it, but rather speculation and greed.
If CEO’s generate true wealth for the shareholders, and make a lot of money, this is one thing. But for CEO’s to be paid enormous amounts of money to run their companies into the ground and cost the shareholders most of their investment, often while skirting the law, is quite another thing.
There is also the issue of economic justice. To try to cheat the employees at every turn, might make some sort of economic sense, but it is not economic justice.
Capitalism will come back, but I hope it is tempered with honesty and justice.
NB: No one has cheated employees more lately than the federal government and the UAW as both consume control of auto companies and negotiate for auto-worker jobs to be sent to Canada and overseas.
God has given us the moral keys with which to do the right thing but as we become a more godless society we will be seeing more not less honesty and justice for all.
Excellent points.
Thx.
Now as to the system upon which the country was built, I would, to a degree, agree with you that it had its roots in the "reformation." But I think, more directly, that it had its roots in the enlightenment that began in the 18th Century. I think that the legal and political structures that were built were built upon an outgrowth of a Utopian interpretation of Reformation Protestantism. (We have been bestowed graces by God, and now it is up to us to create the eternal city using those graces)(Please recall that I am a Catholic, so the comment should be read in that light)
And I see that what has developed from that time is a natural evolution of this into liberal progressive thought (as epitomized by T. Roosevelt and Wilson) that came into vogue during the last quarter of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century.
You don't have to agree with the above, but it's my opinion: take it or leave it.
The essential hypothesis that you advocate, though, is essentially very, very valid. As we, as a society, abandon God in our business dealings, social constructs, and foreign policy, we are becoming progressively weaker and will eventually fall.
But the course of action you appear to advocate will ultimately fail. Prohibition did not work, not because it made spirits illegal, but rather because it imposed a progressive idea on a populace when the populace's hearts and minds were unwilling to accept it. Sodomites will continue to operate with boldness until the culture is changed to show it as it is: a spiritual oppression that will likely result in the commission of mortal sin (sodomy, adultery, fornication). Pornography will continue to flourish until we, as a people at large, stop indulging. Make it illegal and people will just find a way around it. The tragedy is that with the Internet, they can do so from the privacy of their own computers. Disgusting television programs will go off the air when the majority of the people simply stop watching them and start watching edifying programming.
As St. Paul said, "All things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything.
And we will begin the conversion of Muslims, the majority of whom honestly are seeking after God, when we, as a people, show them goodness (that is presupposed on our culture turning the corner and becoming authentically good) and showing them, through our lives, the grace of Jesus Christ. When that happens, no amount of religious repression, either from the Muslim country or from our own, will be able to stop it.
I have no illusions about us, with our own power, being able to turn the corner and change the culture. We won't. But if we become personally humble to God and allow Him to work within us, then He can do great things through our weakness. Unfortunately, I see far too few Christians willing to truly humble themselves before God, pull the plank from their eye, and prayerfully wait on God.
Just something to consider. FWIW. YMMV.
Thanks, Mark. Your reply is very well taken.
“Utopian” would have been to those “Reformation Protestants” what we term in exchatology as Postmillennialism — meaning (they held) that Revival (”Great Awakening,” Edwards, Whitefield, et al) would continue to spread until virtually the whole world is under its influence, and then Christ would return to take the Throne. I suppose that is could be termed “utopia” in the Christian sense.
I don’t know about the enlightenment thing. Obviously some of our founders were influenced by it, as was Locke. You know, so many have written that Washington was a Deist. But for years we have used a book with our children that contains prayers of George Washington from cover to cover. It is called The Prayers of George Washington, and it is a facsimile of his own handwriting. He prayed, and he often penned down his prayers. They are, every one, in the Name of Jesus Christ, acknowledging the work of the Cross, and the efficacy of the Blood of Christ.
Further Washington prayed for and thanked God for His daily interventions and help for himself, his generals, and the nation. Now that is just not the doctrine of a Deist. Washington appealed to his chaplain, John Gano, a Baptist, for immersion Baptism, and it was administered. A record of it is kept in a church in Connecticut, and a man sometime later did a portait depicting the baptism, which hangs in the John Gano Memorial Library in Liberty, Missouri.
I think you understood my point better than most. I received some scathing replies accusing me of not believing in Free Enterprise, and so forth. One implied I believe in socialism. In fact I do believe in Free Enterprise, and believe the Scriptures support it.
I have not read T. Roosevelt as much as I should have, but I, too, have thought he was more of a Progressive.
I was not really advocating legislated prohibition, or such advocation was not really on my mind when I wrote — I was just mentioning that it was supported by W.J. Bryan, as it was by the well known Christian city-wide evangelists (the early Billy Grahams, I guess one could say) of that era (1880s to WWII).
Bryan travelled ahead of the Billy Sunday evangelistic campaigns and held preparatory meetings with church and business leaders. He was a Presbyterian Sunday School teacher; his classes in Florida later on often had 5,000(!) in attendance. That was not the church service, but just a Sunday School class. Of course, that is easy to explain due to his general fame, having run thrice for the presidency.
I will confess, though, that had I lived in that era, and held the general convictions I hold today, I would have been in every temperance rally I could have gotten to. You can pick on me for that statement — I will take it in all grace.
Well, your respectful reply is very much appreciated by me. You make it hard to pick a fight, you know. Ha!
By the way, the government taking money by force from those who work hard and giving it to those who won't work is a direct violation of scripture.
So say you
It appears that God is judging the nation on the basis of three issues — abortion, homosexual marriage and dividing the land of Israel.
The rest of it isn’t going to matter too much, because after the judgment on these, there’s not going to be too much left to salvage...
“Capitalism (e.g. honest hard work and fair dealing with others while making money) seems to be supported in the scriptures. However, God’s word also shows that a nation running after sin will not be protected by Him. Israel is the perfect example of that.
By the way, the government taking money by force from those who work hard and giving it to those who won’t work is a direct violation of scripture.”
In the Puritan colonies, ALL others were persecuted, Catholics, Baptists, Quakers, Independents . . . They were all taxed to support the Congregational Standing Order churches. Congregationalism became the State Church. All had to support the Congregationalist clergy. Baptists, Quakers, and Independents, too, were forbidden to assemble for worship, forbidden to build their own houses of worship .... were jailed, tortured, fined, expelled from the territories.
We are aligned on many issues, but must be honest that we are not on others.
As a young man, one of the things that gradually started to surprise me is that many of my Reformed friends seemed to think that the USA was a land uniquely loved by God.
Maybe it is the background of where the Saxons that made up the LCMS came from, but that always sounded off to me. The guiding ideology behind the founding fathers was not Christianity, but the enlightenment. While there were some great ideas, there were many bad ones.
And you are right, you can't change the people without changing the culture. Look at the Civil War. It ended “slavery” but a black share cropper in the late 1800’s wouldn't have known that. It took a change in the culture.
“We are aligned on many issues, but must be honest that we are not on others.”
Which really WAS my point you see. Conservatism does not mean either Christian, moral or ethical. My post was listed in the “Religion” forum, not in a “Republican Party” forum, and I was talking about the God of the Bible. Bible-believing Christians, as I believe you would emphasize, see all politics and “conservatism” itself from a Biblicist Christian world view, not from Ayn Rand’s world view.
I will repeat that many of the founders, and drafters of the Constitution, believed that they were writing a Constitution suited to a “Religious” people — in their context, that was the Christian Faith. Those believed that a non-Christian populace would not be able to maintain Constitutional precepts for very long.
Beyond the theocratic nation of OT Israel I do not think there is any Biblical support for God taking on a nationalistic approach to humanity since He established the Church of the Body of Christ.
Even then there is no promise of personal protection...unless you want the same protection that Peter, Paul, and others had.
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