What Does It Mean to be an American?

At first glance it may not seem appropriate to offer this subject under a banner that claims Heaven always matters most. However, if you will stick with me, I think I can show how this issue is very important to those who hold Heaven in high regard. Secondly, I will admit that my answer to the title question relies on traditional meaning rather than proposing what it might mean to be American by some novel, progressive definition. Finally, it is the outlandish protest of the far-left fringe against the Donald Trump presidency that motivates me to write. It seems to me that to claim a duly elected President is “Not My President” is to declaim being an American.

Governed by laws

To be an American means to swear allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the oath taken by those applying for citizenship, those in military service, and all elected federal officials. Those of us born here may never have to take the oath literally, but it is an assumption of citizenship that one agrees with the law of the land. To be governed by law means that there is no higher standard of civic behavior than the Constitution. To refuse the rule of law places one in jeopardy of losing the freedoms granted by the law.

Admittedly, there are at least two opposing views of Constitutional interpretation. The traditionalist view, to which I hold, demands that the founding documents of our nation must be read considering what they meant to the original writers. I believe we must ascertain the intentions of those who initiated this experiment in government by law if we wish to maintain their concept of it. The progressive view of Constitutional interpretation, on the contrary, says that each generation must adapt the words of the founders to whatever circumstances are presently at hand. This fluid view eschews the idea of original intent in favor of dynamic reinterpretation. By this means we have invented rights and protections that would have been not only foreign to the founders, but surely abhorrent to them.

By applying the principle of dynamic interpretation, we often arrive at a curious predicament. The “right” of a woman to murder her unborn child ignores the rights of the child. The “right” of a transgendered person to choose which bathroom he/she prefers ignores the right of a woman to privacy in rest room facilities. The “right” to health insurance which included the forced purchase by all citizens tramples the right to hold property secure from government confiscation. Similar conflicts arise with the “rights” to minimum wage, affordable housing, protection from offending speech and many more.

America is a Republic, not democracy

It was part of the genius of the founders of America to institute republican government rather than a true democracy, although many people today mistakenly call our government a democracy. In a democracy, each citizen votes directly for the rules and regulations that govern society. In our form of government, citizens elect representatives who make law on behalf of those who elected them. While citizens are free to elect whomever they choose, those elected must swear to uphold the Constitution, thus avoiding lawlessness at least in principle. However, as I previously mentioned, this process has brought into question whether the Constitution is in fact being upheld or disregarded.

Another ingenious aspect of our republic is that it limits the ability of a majority to trample the rights of a minority. Without going into great detail, let it simply be said that properly addressed, laws written regarding issues that hold majority support will also protect minorities. This is particularly true of religious minorities which I will address below, but it holds true for other minorities as well. A curious turn of events has taken place with the move to abandon the original intent of the framers of the Constitution: some minorities are now exercising a form of tyranny over the majority. (More on this in Stormy Weather.)

Property rights

One of the principal reasons our forefathers broke from British rule was the practice of taxation without representation. The colonists believed they had the right to determine whether they should be taxed for certain commodities and activities. The British king held that he had the right to impose taxes at will. The inalienable rights to life, liberty and property (as John Locke originally wrote) were central to the colonists’ Declaration of Independence. While it is true that the Constitution does give the federal government the right to tax citizens, the expansion of government beyond its original limited form has brought about new “rights” and the need for additional taxes to provide them. In theory, the American system of government gives citizens the means to restrict the reach of government into their pocketbooks.

Education for all

Another feature of a representative government is the absolute necessity of an educated citizenry. To make intelligent choices regarding representation, the voting population must understand the issues they face. The type of education that makes this understanding possible was traditionally called a liberal education, liberal meaning expansive. By this it was intended that students would be educated in a wide range of subjects and viewpoints. Although education was of paramount importance to the founders, it wasn’t until several generations after the founding of America that the institution of government funded “free” public education became the norm.

It is interesting to note that most of the early supporters of free public education were the ancestors of today’s progressives. And today, the teacher’s unions, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, agitate for a continuation of their monopolistic enterprise which is failing miserably in its primary task. Not only do American students test embarrassingly low on basic skills, they are also leaving school bereft of any sense of moral values or civic responsibility. One does not have to be religious to understand that absent a moral foundation, a nation of laws will descend into anarchy. Values clarification and indiscriminate tolerance for all opinions as taught in today’s schools will eventually lead to the deconstruction of everything America once stood for. This is not progress; it is regression. If this situation is allowed to continue, life will become, as noted by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, nasty, brutish and short.

Religious freedom for all

Finally, it is ironic to note that the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution is being undermined by the pull of progressive thinking. A lie often told by the progressive left is that the founders of America were not Christian in any real sense. This cannot be maintained if one reads the founding documents they created, the FederalistPapers in which they explained their motives, and the letters of the men themselves. If, as the left claims, some of them were Deists, this still makes them theists, not atheists or anti-theists as many progressives assert. The Founders wanted to protect freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. (For more on this thought, read What Price Freedom.) Many of the early American settlers came explicitly because of government restrictions of their religious views.

To be an American does not mean to be a Christian, but it certainly means citizens have the right to free exercise of their Christianity under the First Amendment. So do Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and any other religious faction that does not prohibit others from exercising their rights. The progressive left, which for all practical purposes is atheistic, is attempting to de-establish Christianity from the public square. Nothing could be more unconstitutional. In a free republic, all citizens have the right to express their views in the public dialogue and the voting booth. A majority of Christians cannot by voting stamp out all other religious practice, but neither can the atheists stamp out all religion.

This is where Heaven begins to matter to this definition of what it means to be American. If Christians want to maintain some semblance of the rule of Heaven on Earth, we must maintain what I have defined as the traditional American condition. For the time being, Christians represent a majority belief in this country. We have a Constitutional right to express that belief. (For a discussion of how this might work, see A Timely New Book.) If progressives are allowed to redefine what it means to be an American, Christians will lose the right to free expression. While I believe the Bible does describe a time at the end of human history when such a state exists, I do not wish to speed its coming. Although the Holy Spirit is the ultimate force restraining evil in the world, the American system of government as originally conceived has been a tool to the same end. I pray we do not allow the enemy to redefine America so that it no longer cooperates in that work.

Why The Shack is Dangerous

“And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light." (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Google The Shack and you will see what a heresy in the making looks like. Amazon says it is the Pilgrim’s Progress for this generation. Wikipedia calls The Shack a Christian novel. On his own web site, William Paul Young, the author of The Shack, describes himself as a theologian and recommends another book he wrote, Lies We Believe About God, as a more systematic exposition of his theology. There is no question that Young believes The Shack reveals the truth about God. Sadly, Young is telling an old lie: God loves everybody too much to punish them for their sin.

One expects to find God misrepresented in secular writing and in texts from other religions. In Star Wars, George Lucas, for example, presents the Force as having a dark side/light side, Yin/Yang character as in Eastern mysticism. Lucas confuses the omnipresence of the true God with the pantheism of most Eastern religions. He depersonalizes the God of the Bible making Him an impersonal force. The Lucas movies are fun to watch, and one may even come to understand the biblical view of God better by doing a little comparison and contrast study.

But no one thinks Lucas intended to reveal truth about the God of the Bible. This is precisely what Young thinks he is doing in The Shack; he says so on his web site. The very reason the book was supposedly written makes this clear: he wanted to explain God to his child. This is why The Shack qualifies as heresy, while Star Wars is simply secular fiction. There are a few Christians who have attempted to find a picture of God in Star Wars, but you won’t find it in many church libraries. In contrast, Young’s book probably is on the shelf of whatever church Rob Bell has landed at. Its message would go well with the Schulerism at the Crystal Cathedral. It sells the seeker-friendly message that warm, fuzzy theology peddles.

The people who defend Young’s incorrect theology claim he is simply emphasizing one aspect of God’s character. They claim that God does not love us because we follow His rules, nor does He reject us when we don’t. This is partly true, and it is the “partly” that makes it heretical. God does love us in spite of our sin; that part is true. The whole truth is that our relationship with God is not based on what we have done (or not done) but on Whom we have believed. What The Shack fails to say is that we enter a saving relationship with God through the narrow door of the Cross. Absent the Cross, there is no gospel. Absent the biblical Cross, there is no possible relationship with God.

Young’s treatment of the Cross comes from what is known as universalism. This means that everyone was “saved” when Christ paid the price for sin on the cross. The god figure in The Shack says that there is no need to punish people for their sin; sin itself is its own punishment. Again, this is partly true: “the wages of sin is death,” (Romans 3:23) and sometimes the “death” begins to take its toll in life. Where Young’s theology goes wrong is in denying the need for faith and obedience. Sin does not simply make life on earth a little more difficult, it makes life in heaven impossible. And those who do not go the Cross and surrender everything in faith are doomed to an eternity in hell. That is what the Bible teaches.

If you want to know what good Christian fantasy looks like, read C.S. Lewis’ The Narnia Chronicles.Lewis took great pains to write an allegorical fiction that perfectly mirrors the truth presented in the Scripture. There may be others as good as Lewis, but I am not aware of them. It is the duty of a believer to read anything with a discerning mind to see if it aligns with Scripture, the only infallible guide to truth. When something pretends to be about the God of the Bible, but is not true to Scripture, it is heresy. It is dangerous heresy when it gets as widely circulated as The Shack, and doubly dangerous when it is so close to the truth that even sincere Christians can be fooled. But as I said, the enemy of our souls has eons of practice deceiving God’s elect. Don’t be fooled: The Shack is dangerous.

Stormy Weather[by]

In my post, “Lessons From Detroit,” I mentioned an article by JC Weatherby in which he called evangelical Christians the American Taliban. My first thought was to wonder how any intelligent person could make such a ridiculous comparison. Then I tried to imagine how I look to someone with a progressive ideology concerning gay marriage and abortion and such. Maybe I am more like the Taliban than I originally thought. But wait.

Of course the analogy breaks down in matters of true moral equivalency. There are no sword swinging evangelicals lopping off the heads of infidels as far as I know. Nor does the Bible mandate the establishment of civil government to enforce its policies as does the Koran. Despite the cries of misogyny by Weatherby and his ilk, Christians do not participate in honor killings, female genital mutilation, or virtual imprisonment of women in bourkas and houses. The worst Weatherby can offer by way of explanation of his label is that certain Taliban-like Christians have offered to pray for him. Of course, he is also against the Taliban-like practice of denying women’s reproductive rights by protecting the lives of unborn children.

Weatherby is correct to suggest that the Taliban seeks to impose moral principles on its subjects. But a more apt comparison in American society would be our Constitutional government. Contrary to the often spoken, mistaken assertion that you cannot legislate morality, that is precisely what legislation is for. Laws prescribe, proscribe and punish those who violate certain moral standards. Civil society is impossible without rules; governments are instituted to identify and enforce those rules. Weatherby’s real problem is with the rules.

Weatherby makes another false claim in his piece: he says that the efforts of Christians to form a government patterned after their ideals is unconstitutional. He believes the First Amendment establishment clause prohibits those of any religious faith from voting their beliefs at the ballot box. Nothing could be farther from the intent of the founders of our country. True, once elected, no official may enforce his particular religious beliefs outside of due process. However, if a governing body from local school board to US Congress decides through membership consensus that a religious principle that is held by a majority of his constituency is good for the population in general, they may enact it without fear of violating First Amendment rights. That is not establishment of religion; that is representative government.

The Bill of Rights, of which the First Amendment is primary, was intended by the framers of the Constitution to keep a majority from trampling the rights of a minority. They so feared tyranny that they even took steps to thwart the tyranny of a majority over a minority. Hence there could be no majority vote to establish any religion as a national law. This in no way precludes the enactment of moral and civil standards which may be drawn from a religious viewpoint. In fact, the moral basis for government itself is based on rights “endowed by the Creator” on every human being according to our Declaration of Independence. Natural law, which was the underlying principle which informed their world-view, was drawn explicitly from the Judeo-Christian moral tradition. By following that tradition, the founders did not establish religion; they did establish a moral basis for what they considered a civil society.

It is this moral basis established by the founders against which moderns like Weatherby rage. It saddens me to realize that understanding of our form of government is so paltry that large numbers of people toss about phrases like “separation of church and state” with no clear idea what they mean. There was never any intention to separate morals from state. In fact, George Washington stated that without a moral populace, the form of government being created would never work. We are seeing that sad state of affairs today. Having eroded large sections of the moral basis of government, our elected officials no longer share a common understanding of principles that used to make compromise possible. It is now as Weatherby says, us against them.

So a tiny minority of the population now controls the definition of marriage, and a miniscule group of deviants controls who uses what bathroom. Gallup’s most recent polling estimates 3.8% of Americans self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender – 3.8%. Unbelievably, only 0.3% call themselves transgender – three people in a thousand. Yet this tiny minority has mounted a propaganda campaign which has duped over half of the country into redefining marriage. Opening women’s restrooms to men who identify as female has been foisted upon all of us, though it apparently has less support than gay marriage.

As it happens, the number of gays in this country is approximately the same as the number of radical Muslims. With so many people having a complete misunderstanding of what the First Amendment really protects with regard to religion, it is now conceivable that Sharia law will be accepted as an alternative life-style in America. In Dearborn and Hamtramck, Michigan, it is already de facto done. I doubt even JC Weatherby would be in favor of that. If he thinks the evangelicals as “American Taliban” are bad, wait until he sees the real Taliban taking over his neighborhood.

One uncomfortable principle that makes a civil society possible is the concept that the good of the many outweighs the good of a few. I say it is uncomfortable because minorities represented by people like JC Weatherby might be restricted in who they can marry or which restroom they may use. Government is instituted among men to maintain order. The order is derived from a set of moral principles. Everyone will not agree about every detail of the moral code, but a majority can usually be found. If Weatherby represents a majority of voters in this country, we will be voting to abandon the moral principles on which America was founded. That may make him more comfortable, but it scares me to death.

Lessons From Detroit

God has done it again. He has brought seemingly unrelated things to my awareness and given me an epiphany of sorts. I will explain. 1: Because I am a car nut (have been since age 8), and I call Michigan home, I picked up a book called Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff. 2: Although I am a political junky, a couple days ago I reached overload with the umpteen-hundredth Facebook post about the anti-Trump fanaticism that borders on psycho-anarchistic. 3: Today I tripped over another Facebook link to an article that calls evangelical Christians “the American Taliban.” I followed the link to the article by JC Weatherby, read it, and my heart sank.

Here’s my message (up front instead of hidden in the last graph): Church, we are failing! If the election results of last November accurately describe the philosophical make-up of America, roughly fifty percent of our neighbors don’t have a clue who we are. I realize that some sincere Christians did vote for Hillary (See my thoughts on that here). But in large part, the people who voted against what we voted for don’t know what we stand for. And for a certainty, JC Weatherby and the rest of the fanatical haters don’t get us.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Jesus promised that those who hated Him would end up hating us too. (John 15:18-21) The thing that kills me is how self-righteously people like Weatherby condemn us without really knowing us. Weatherby claims to know us because he grew up in Christian circles in Atlanta. But like so many angry gay men, what he hates is a caricature of the true Body of Christ. I know, as Jesus promised, we will be rejected; I just wish we were being rejected more intelligent reasons.

Then there’s the radical left crazies who are protesting Trump (Not My President) who don’t have any reason to protest him yet. All of the interviews I have seen of Trump protesters reveal that they have no concrete evidence that President Trump has done or even proposed policies that would harm them. The left-leaning media painted such a biased picture of Trump that the radical left just assumed that his administration would initiate hell-on-earth. So far, not so much. Certainly the lefties (including Christian lefties) will dislike Trump’s conservatism, but that divide has always been tolerated. It was the Democrats who told us in 2008 that elections have consequences.

So how does LeDuff’s Detroit fit into this? The autopsy LeDuff presents is of a city that died because of corruption. No surprise when you think of corruption in the biological sense: Detroit decayed from the inside out. My “epiphany” was that Detroit was a model for everything the progressive left champions. The city abandoned the principles our country was founded on: integrity, morality, frugality, family. In their place they promoted sex, drugs and rock and roll… and profit for the Big Three auto companies. Detroit is not alone; big cities across America are becoming unsafe, unsound and virtually uninhabitable as a direct result of the kind of policies the Trump-haters love.

You don’t have to believe Genesis to realize that the family is the core structure of any society or that moral integrity makes civil society possible. Nor is it xenophobic, homophobic or misogynistic to say that so-called liberal social policies have weakened the family and morality in general. Indiscriminate welfare distributions discourage a healthy work ethic and encourage the multiplication of children born out of wedlock. Any type of sexual behavior which deviates from the time-tested restraints of monogamous man/wife relationships ultimately breaks down the family. Devaluing life by condoning murder for convenience wrecks not only the family, but society itself. These last three statements are sociological observations, not biblical pronouncements. Of course, we know the Bible will prove time and again to contain sage advice on sociological matters. Little wonder since it was written by the Architect of human society.

When I said earlier that the Church is failing, I meant that we have failed to present God as a loving Father who wishes to order society in the best interests of its members. Instead unbelievers see God as a mean tyrant who wants to take away all their fun. And Weatherby can think evangelical Christians are the American Taliban. It will be the subject of another post to discuss how mistaken the Taliban analogy is, but its invention shows the anarchists for who they are. It was the fool who said in his heart, “There is no God.” The haters on the left are not just rejecting the evangelical message (as they perceive it); they are rejecting rules and order. God help us if they get what they want. Detroit will then be, as LeDuff hints, the harbinger of what’s to come for all America.