I have found it to be a strange an recurring event in modern America, yet it seems to be a norm in the United States of America. There is this strange attraction by Christians to the neo-Conservative movement that is overtaking the United States. The party that has embraced this significant and downright inane philosophy have been the Republicans. Why have the Christians been attracted to such a worldview?
I would like to further discuss this issue, but only after stating where I fall on the political spectrum. My blog is obviously called "Moderation and Responsibility", so it is apparent that I am a moderate. I guess I should be labeled a little more as an independent than anything for the sheer fact that I am pro-life, against gay marriage (although I think that everyone should have many of the benefits given strictly to married couples, so I am not for depriving gays of their rights necessarily), for RESPONSIBLE gun rights, for socialized medicine, a more balanced tax code with a little more of a flat tax without the loopholes, and a few other things that I am not going to discuss.
I think that corporations and various rich people have infiltrated the GOP and brainwashed many of the people in the church into believing that the less government involvement there is, the better things will be. This is, in of itself, a logical fallacy called generalization. Generalization is the process by which people make statements about specific cases and apply them to all situations. The problem with this in relation to politics is that governmental interference is not such a black and white problem because the purpose of the government is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity". For a group of people who believe that their view is the only one that holds up to the constitution, it would seem in their best interest to know that this quote is from the Preamble to the United States Constitution. If the government is supposed to stay out of everything, then perhaps it might be in the best interest to dissolve the government considering that their job is to be involved in the inner workings of the economy and the population to make sure that no person's rights are trampled.
1. Christians in this country are generally paranoid of having their rights to worship as they please trampled.
I would like to address this point by asking this question: Where in the Bible does Jesus or any of the Apostles say that we will not be persecuted for our faith? To put it as delicately as I possibly can, perhaps it is time that Christians stop trampling the Bible in our quest for our own selfish and greedy desires to make money. Christians have had a a history of being persecuted and ostracized from society, so why are we so worried about having our rights taken away? So what if this world wants to take our rights from us? Is that really enough to stop the Kingdom of God from trampling all over the gates of hell? Am I advocating staying out of politics? Certainly not! I am in full favor of promoting social justice, and I believe that we as Christians should be the ones promoting social justice.
2. Christians do not want to betray their convictions (this is a noble trait).
The GOP is generally pro-life and against gay marriage, so it seems that the Christians in this country have also embraced the ideology of Libertarianism so that they do not go against those two convictions. Loyalty is a noble trait, but blindly following a system that is so obviously opposed to the very foundation of our system of government is doltish to the core. The Christians that I have met in other countries have been, for the most part, in favor of social programs, and have been the ones in their respective countries to support such endeavors before their government officials. It makes me wonder how many more people would be attracted to our churches if it was the Christian that proposed these social programs instead of opposing them?
Are there good reasons for being a libertarian? I do not think there are any good reasons for being a libertarian through and through, but I can see how someone can believe in "states rights". With a country as big and populous as ours, it is hard to have a small group of people controlling the 330 million people that are in this country. In fact, it would be very inefficient for the federal government to have all of the power. The federal government then decided to pass the Affordable Care Act and have the states set up and maintain their various insurance marketplaces, but it seems that only the neo-Conservative states are the ones who left it up to the federal government to distribute health insurance. The only libertarian solution to the healthcare problem is to just let it continue to do what it is doing with the exception of medicaid and medicare being available because $414 Billion per year to make sure that the people who cannot afford to pay for health insurance are kept healthy is not a basic human right or anything (I hope you picked up the sarcasm there).
My point is that we cannot leave these issues alone. We cannot leave the people (Christians and non-Christians) of the United States of America out to dry by continuing to support the policies that helped to lead us to the economic meltdown that occurred from 2007-2008. The lack of government regulations as well as the over-belief in the right to property are what caused the meltdown in the first place. Christians seem to want to run all social programs privately out of their churches instead of proposing it to the government and then helping the government to orchestrate it.
I would like to wrap up this post with an anecdote. I was sitting in Sunday School in a church in 2011, and right before Sunday School started a conversation where a man stated that we needed to "get rid of all of these social programs like social security, medicaid, medicare, and food stamps, and get these people jobs". I responded like so, "Perhaps if Christians like would step up to the plate and help these people find work by giving them or a job or training them for a certain job, or just helping these families in their time of need by just being there, then maybe the government would not have to". The man was silent for the rest of Sunday School and occasionally glared angrily at me to which I just smirked because I knew that I had logically beat him (in hindsight that was a very arrogant thing to do).
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