In a Democratic Republic like we have, what are politicians supposed to do?  There are two schools of thought on this.  Some believe that they are elected to do what they think is best.  They believe that we elect statesmen, that are better than us and that have our best interest at heart.

The other side believes that we elect mouthpieces—people that are to go to represent us and our opinions and values.

So which is happening here?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has told her fellow Democrats that they should be willing to risk losing in the Fall so that they could get the Health Care Reforms through the House and Senate and passed into law by President Barack Obama.

She says this because she believes that the people put Democrats in power because of their policies and plans, and that they should act on that regardless of the outcome.

On the face of it, it seems very principled, but…

[T]he last few elections had less to do with Democrats getting elected on their platform than on Republicans losing because they ignored theirs.  What’s more, public opinion has hardly been fickle on the issue of health care.  For the last year public opinion has shown majority opposition for Democrat health care takeover efforts in poll after poll.  And when the stark reality for a significant number of Congresspeople is a choice between supporting this bill and getting re-elected, how can people like Pelosi possibly claim to be doing the people’s work?

After all, you can hardly be advancing the “will of the people” when your agenda gets you cast from office.  [SayAnything: Pelosi To Fellow Democrats: You Should Be Willing to Lose Re-Election For Health Care Bill]

I have to agree.  If you’re going to pass a bill that gets you thrown from office, then you didn’t deserve to be in office in the first place.  In a representative democracy, your job is to represent your people.

Either you didn’t sell you people well enough on your vote, you didn’t justify the principle that was necessary, or you’re simply voting a party line.  You deserve to lose your seat.

And don’t get me started on gerrymandered districts and overrepresentation by people that don’t have a stake in the game.

The old saying goes that the church is only 10 years behind the world morally/culturally.  That was part of last night’s message looking into “respectable sins”—those sins that Christians commit that are ranked as “not bad” because “everyone does them.”

This is a charge that I’ve heard before, and I have to say that I agree with it.  If you look back through the church’s history you’ll find that the church has changed in its behavior and its standards over many years.

Respect

This is one of the things that was mentioned last night that I think hits the nail on the head.  AT one point in time the church was a place that was respected.  The physical building is not the only place where God meets with His people, but it is a place that’s His specifically.  It’s built to worship Him.  It’s a place where His people gather.  Today, it’s just as likely to be a hangout or to be treated as a gym rather than some place that’s set apart for worshipping the King of the Universe.

And that goes for clothing as well.  If you went back far enough you’d see men wearing coats and ties and ladies in dresses.  Today it’s jeans, if you have a laid back enough service.  Go back far enough and you actually see ladies in hats.  Today you’ll see mostly ladies in pants.

But Why?

My hypothesis?  Christians don’t like to be disliked.  They were in the majority in America, and as such they wanted to be liked.  So they tried being inclusive.  They tried getting along.  It hits them hard when they are called oppressive because of their roots and the oppression that they have faced since their founding.

So first it was acquiescing on witnessing—if it’s going to make you feel uncomfortable, it’ll make me uncomfortable, so I just won’t do it.  And they wanted you to feel comfortable coming to their services, so we get inventive lines of thought like:

• Well, God looks on the heart, not on the outside appearance.  We’d rather you come as you are than to make you feel like you should dress up.
• Music?  It’s just a tool.  It’s a-moral so we can put good words to bad music and you can come to hear the beat.
• What?  You don’t like hearing about the things you’re doing wrong to make you better?  You’d rather hear how great a person you are?  We can do that!
• Have more games, field trips, and outings and less lesson and teaching?  Works for me!

We’ve created weak Christians—who have no passion for God but a desire to be entertained, and a group of leaders that wonders where their churches are disappearing to.

We have a shadow of Christianity—the form without the power.  And we wonder why no one wants to join us in our Pursuit of God.  What do we have to offer that they don’t already have or can’t find elsewhere?

There are some interesting quotes floating around the Internet I thought I would share:

A Page From History

Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 to December 19, 1968) was a leading American socialist, pacifist, and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.

The Socialist Party candidate for President of the U.S., Norman Thomas, said this in a 1944 speech: “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of “liberalism,” they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.! ” He went on to say: “I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.”

****

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

~~Margaret Thatcher~~

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who are not.

- Thomas Jefferson

Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can’t give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don’t have to work because the other half’s going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody’s going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

- Adrian Rodgers

During the campaign, one of the resounding issues was that of qualifications.  Sen. McCain was attempting to paint then Sen. Obama as someone that hadn’t lead much of anything, let alone a country.  When he made the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin to be his VP running mate, many then turned the discussion to ask whether she was qualified to run the government should something happen to Sen. McCain.

So, thinking through this, now’s a great opportunity to see, and perhaps settle the question.  If President-Elect Obama can do a decent job as President (especially with all that’s stacked up against him), then I figure that Gov. Palin could be ok, and that perhaps the media has set too high a bar for qualifications for President.

How do I get this?  Because the resume of President-Elect Obama is not what the media demanded of Gov. Palin—he has a skinnier one when it comes to executive leadership than she.

But I also don’t buy into the concept that the President has to be this super intelligent guy who knows everything about everything.  It’s not that I don’t want a smart President, but the man picks a whole group of people under him, and it’s those people’s job to be the ones that know a lot about their field of expertise.

So, I would put forth that the choices of the men and women that a President chooses to surround himself with, the President’s organization abilities and decision making abilities that really  matter, rather than some test about the intelligence quotient of the man.

There’s no way I can follow the election, grade everyone’s papers, and keep the house clean.

Between now and the election, I will settle for keeping everyone fed, clothed, cleaned, and loved.  We all have our regular house chores, but any major cleaning projects will just have to wait.  If you visit me, my windows will be dirty.  Deal with it.  I have! 

We are LIVING history, right now.  I don’t want my children to miss an awareness of it.  Sure, I shelter them from the revolting Sarah Palin t-shirts and I pre-view all youtube videos; but I let them in on all that they can handle.

We talk about political process and personalities, voting blocs and polls.  We discuss issues of race in America, and whether a woman should be president.

We watch the debates together.  We pray for the election before dinner.  They wish I would buy yard-signs, but I’m too cheap and tell them they need to make their own.

When President Bush speaks and the nation collectively trembles with financial fears, I grab their hands and we pray.  Even though our leaders have made mistakes, they still govern our land.  We don’t pray for blessing; rather, we pray for wisdom, for heart-searing conviction, for mercy, for souls to return to the Lord no matter the cost.  We pray that hard times may strengthen our nation’s foundation; we remember that all we have comes from His hand.

This election, like all of the elections we have the privilege to partake in, is a spiritual issue.  It is a thermometer of our moral temperature.  Are we hot or cold?  Are we lukewarm?  Our vote will tell the tale, and I want my children to understand the full responsibility of being a Christian who lives in a representative republic.  My husband and I won’t neglect to teach them the spiritual implications behind our vote, to pray with them as we watch history speed along, to defend and protect life from the very beginning.  They need to be ready when it is their turn.

A national election only comes along every four years.  I can teach my children to clean the house any time.

Holly writes at her blog, Seeking Faithfulness.

Unlike any election season that I can remember, this one has been filled with discussion about the place of religion in politics and how they line up. There are many reasons that this topic is being brought up:

• A candidate who used to be a pastor.
• The “values voters” that seemed to play a big part in the last Presidential election.
• Liberals inability to understand people of faith.

It’s the last one that seems to be permeating the discussion, as of late.

This is the one area that liberals feel that they can have open season in the derision game– the one intolerance in what they claim is tolerance:

At a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party, few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama’s race or Hillary Clinton’s sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee’s religious faith.

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.

But there is hope, Mr. Kristof, author of this article states. It turns out that some evangelicals aren’t as illiberal as they were lead to believe. He goes on to list that evangelicals are actually making an impact in poverty and disease around the world. On that, liberals can agree with evangelicals– maybe even support them.

And this, is valid criticism. I’ve been in and seen too many churches that were too involved with ministering to the flock to reach out to the poor and needy of their area. I have been a part of congregations that fail to understand the power of the Gospel applied to those that need hope. Indeed, Christ ministered mostly to the poor and sick– and they followed Him.

The problem, Mr. Kristof, is that liberals believe in using the power of the government to accomplish their good deeds whereas the church believes that it’s their mission of love from God using free gifts. No one is forcing me to donate to Mr. Warren’s church, causing me to fly to Africa, or coming into my wallet to fund a mission to some poor people elsewhere.

Yes, there’s a big difference between reaching out a hand for Christ and taking money away from people to send it to your pet project. Hence the problem that liberals have with Faith Based programs to help people combat drugs, alcohol and poverty. We can’t possibly help people get physically provided for as well as spiritually– but I digress.

You see, liberals hold contempt for all things conservative or that have to deal with faith. And they prove this by consistently failing to understand America’s founding principles.

Take this article by Ira Chernus– it clearly misunderstands what this country is all about. Take for instance, this paragraph:

For starters, it’s a direct threat to democracy. The essence of our system is that we, the people, get to choose our values. We don’t discover them inscribed in the cosmos. So everything must be open to question, to debate, and therefore to change. In a democracy, there should be no fixed truth except that everyone has the right to offer a new view — and to change his or her mind. It’s a process whose outcome should never be predictable, a process without end. A claim to absolute truth — any absolute truth — stops that process.

First, we do not live in a democracy, but a republic. Why the distinction? Because the Founders knew that democracy breeds anarchy, and they disagreed with the central point of this paragraph– that there is no absolute truth.

Look at the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. [emphasis mine]

To the point, the first quote says that the founders believed that they were under the laws of nature and nature’s God. These laws were not up to debate– they were absolute.

Then there’s the second paragraph. Here is what they believed was absolute truth as stated by the founders themselves. What are the absolute truths?

• All men were created equal
• That their Creator had given them the right to life
• That their Creator had given them the right to liberty
• That their Creator had given them the right to the pursuit of Happiness.

There is absolute truth. Now, her whole statement contradicts itself– that there is no absolute truth except that there is one– that everyone has a voice. That’s not American. In fact, it is entirely American to understand that the founders of this country believed that its very existence derived from God.

Why is this important? Because religion will always be a part of politics in America because it’s part of America’s identity. Those that seek to remake America in another image will be the ones complaining that it should be out of the realm of discussion– but it is very much who we are.