God And Country

The whole God and government debate has me so tired. If I hear one more self-righteous liberal pontificating on how God must not be mentioned in a public building or within earshot of anyone outside of a church, I am going to hunt them down and force their eyes to remain open while they stare at photographs of Tammy Faye Baker and listen to old Jimmy Swaggart sermons. Maybe then they would be able to tell the difference between the concept of God and religion.

For the viruntly anti-Christian, God is a completely Christian entity used to justify the holocaust, world hunger, and war.

For the Christian, God is a perfect parent. He allows us to make our mistakes, but insists that we take the conseqences (forgive the simplicity).

For the government, God is something completely different. The philisophical see God as the Creator, or rather the Creator as God. This is not God in the religious sense, but in the metaphorical. God represents the idea that a man's life is not accountable to a government or a king, but to a higher power and a higher power only. This is a fundamental part of our country's political philiosophy. That is why there is no king and the government is elected by the people. Basically, the people rule the government, not the other way around. You can be an atheist and still benefit from this. The fact that the Judeo/Christian God is what manifests itself doesn't change the nature of what God means to us politically.

Let's make an example of the former USSR for a moment, which is ultimately the reason why we have "In God We Trust" on our money and "under God" in the pledge. One of the first things the government did was to outlaw religion. Christians and non-Christians alike are constantly mistaking why that was done. "Religion is the opiate of the masses" says Mr. Marx. Most folks take this to mean blind obedience to God, accepting all human conditions as His will. I don't think this was the case. I think this was an excuse to take God out of the picture so a human system could be set up in His place, i.e The Party. This idea, however, ALWAYS fails to take into account the fact that people would rather their lives be accountable to a God than a system of government.

The purpose of putting "In God We Trust" on our money was not to establish the Christian God as America's offical mascot, but to reiterate our belief that no man or man-made institution should have power over the individual.

Before I start sounding like an Anarchist's Cookbook, I mean that man is not accountable to man, I only mean that in the context of his every day life - work habits, recreational habits, etc. This doesn't mean that an individual is not accountable to society when a crime is committed. Criminal law in this context can be debated another day, and don't even get me started on tax laws. Frankly, the point of this whole discussion is to point out how the seperation of Church and State at this stage of our history is a red herring, directing attention away from the real argument of the political implications of a God.