I'm Thankful to Be an American

Those of you who know me well are probably thinking that these words may seem odd coming from me. It's not that I dislike being an American (though I would have preferred to have been born with a rich Scottish accent), it's just that I've understood my being an American as just another part of God's providential plan and care of my life. I had no choice concerning who my parents would be or where I would be born, it just happened this way providentially. On an earlier post this morning I wrote about health care and was trying to get at the point that the Bible should not be the source of determining which political polity and philosophy I support (by the way I fully understand the controversy in this statement and perhaps will address it at a later date). In posting that blog I picked up D. G. Hart's A Secular Faith which I read at the beginning of the summer. Thumbing through it again I realized just how thankful I am to be in a country like the United States. I often get upset with the religious right trying to take back America for Christ and the other attempts to get back to the "Christian nation" of our forefathers. Hart's book helped me to realize what it actually means to be free. This past year Cassie and I have joined a Presbyterian church and have embraced the traditional doctrines of confessional Reformed theology. It was a matter of adhering to our changing consciences and there was never any threat during this time of the state interfering with our decision. We didn't have to sneak around to underground churches risking our lives, nor were we ever forced to register with the state as we came to embrace paedobaptism, with the risk of persecution (I can handle a couple of rowdy Baptists). We were only accountable to each other, taking for granted that all over the world those who come to Christ must risk their livelihood in making the same decisions that we made. Another quote from Hart's book would help to make clear what I'm trying to say:

"The United States affords Christians remarkable freedom to worship according to the demands of their religion and the dictates of their conscience, a freedom unparalleled in the records of human history. To conceive of those instances where Christians do not
receive public affirmation or state sanction for their convictions or practices as treatment
bordering on tyranny is to trivialize the many instances throughout church history of
persecution" (71).

All the bickering about the 10 Commandments in court houses, prayer in school, and holiday "crèches" only serve to trivialize what is intrinsically a divisive faith. May Christians in this country realize the blessings that we actually do have. The blessings that really count. I have no desire to impose my beliefs on others by making their children pray in Jesus' name or however else I can force Jesus onto them. I do have a desire and a need to hear the Word preached and my faith nourished by receiving the Lord's Supper every Lord's Day, as well as proclaim and share the Gospel with my neighbor without fear of state-sponsored persecution. I am grateful for the freedom I have in this country. Perhaps my teenage rebellion is finally wearing off.

Christians and Healthcare

One of the more disturbing blog posts I’ve read lately would have to be J. P. Moreland’s Star Parker and Michael Moore on Jesus’ View of Healthcare. Growing up in southern California my first theological heroes were the philosophy professors at Talbot and their intellectual rigor in defending and expounding the faith. I remember reading Moreland’s Love Your God with All Your Mind and how it changed my life. It was during my undergraduate days that I became a predestinarian and began switching my theological (and apologetical) alliance, becoming more of a Van Tilian. My official disenchantment with Moreland was when he spoke at a theological lectureship at Moody and his lecture was titled “Why I am Not a Calvinist.” After filling up 45 minutes with recycled arguments as to how Calvinists worship a mean, cold, and vindictive God with plenty of fallacious appeals to emotion my appreciation of Moreland’s theological and biblical contributions diminished. Then came out this post - “ A careful study of Jesus and New Testament teaching proves beyond reasonable doubt that he took the state to be the guardian of negative rights, not the provider of positive ones.” What? What study of Jesus and the New Testament teaching have you been doing Dr. Moreland? Such an utter disregard for Two Kingdoms and the intent of the Gospels makes his case exegetically vacuous and theologically untenable. From my reading of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, the Lord’s defense of political policies appear to be kept to a minimum. Perhaps Jesus is Dr. Moreland’s most esteemed political philosopher…he is not mine. If he were mine, I would be significantly reducing the importance and matchless significance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With Darryl Hart I confess “…the basic teachings of Christianity are virtually useless for resolving America’s political disputes, thus significantly reducing, if not eliminating, the dilemma of how to relate Christianity and American politics” (A Secular Faith, 11). I do strongly believe in universal healthcare because in a free liberal society where we are all trying to uphold the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness healthcare seems to be a pretty essential ingredient. My belief in universal healthcare stems from my belief that the government’s primary responsibility is for the protection and betterment of the commonweal and only secondarily for the private individual. If you are rich I believe the government’s job is to take a good chunk of your money and tax it. This belief is not necessarily deduced from my reading of Scripture because I strongly do not believe the Bible ever speaks to how one should vote in a democratic republic. I believe in a consistent ethic of life, which for the most part evangelicals have completely disregarded. If a young teenage mother goes through with her pregnancy and delivers her child, a large constituency of evangelicals return the favor by promoting a culture of plutocracy and denial of basic human rights such as medical attention. I am not a naïve and liberal maniac. I certainly am not holding out for some utopian socialist ideal where we can all live in peace and harmony and work five hour shifts and hold hands as we usher in the millennium. What I am promoting is a decent humane healthcare system for arguably the richest nation in the world. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so. Just ask Canada, France, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Germany, The UK, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, just to name a few. At the end of the day I don’t really care that Michel Moore thinks Jesus would support universal healthcare and neither should anyone else. He is a publicity whore who will say anything to make headlines including apparently using the name of Jesus to sell his product. What is truly beyond a reasonable doubt is that Jesus would support the universal propagation of his Gospel. This can happen in a free republic like the United States or in communist China.