I think that it is important that we have a true perspective on who God is and how He actually operates. So, was Jesus happy and did He ever laugh? Of course, but what might be the most prevalent characteristics we should focus on in terms of who God and Jesus are?
You have probably seen one of the happy Jesus pictures. Consider the following occurrences in the Bible (these searches were all done with the NIV version):
Lord and anger – appears together 131 times.
Lord and laugh(s) – only 3 times Lord and joy – only once. Jesus and joy – only 2 times: Jesus and happy or Lord and happy – does not exist. Jesus and smile(s) or Lord and smile(s) – does not exist.
I have recently run across some information that puts together how to understand some of the thinking of our founding fathers that they probably took for granted, but that we have lost contact with. These vital principles are key to understanding the whole idea of America and without them being recovered in our nation, will lead to utter disaster, and we are on the brink.
When Benjamin Franklin stepped out on the street from the Constitutional Convention, a lady asked him, what kind of government we were to have, and he answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.” I will try to explain his comment and some of the thinking behind one of the most spectacular human events in the history of mankind.
Never before in all of history had there been a nation run by the concept of Self-Government. The immigrants had left places of tyranny and so to guard against the over-reach of government they formed the Articles of Confederation which proved to be so weak in authority that it amounted to little more than ‘Pay your taxes if you feel like it’. It didn’t work out well. The Convention was supposed to fix that.
They realized that to have freedom there was a delicate balance between government and personal rights. As an example if you wanted law and order in your “community” you could authorize a sheriff with some power to arrest people and put them in jail. But if you gave him too much power he could gather a bunch of goons and take over the town. It would be the same with a state or national government and that was a VERY HOT DEBATE in the Convention.
Self-government was an idea that had never been tried and the men in the Convention were making history. Our founding fathers, for the most part, were all men who believed in virtue. Not all were orthodox Christians but all were men who agreed that for self-government and the idea of freedom and liberty to have any chance it had to be built on faith and virtue. Many of them, like George Washington, were quoted as saying that our government was only suited for a religious and moral people. Our country was built foundationally upon religion and morality. Without that WE WILL CRUMBLE.
After all, the idea of Self-Government is built upon the idea of Self-control. Self-control which produces virtue and morality comes from a worldview. And the worldview that they had witnessed was that where Christianity was practiced, crime was low. This is what we have forgotten and MUST be regained if we are to sustain as a nation. Follow the line of thinking: 1 Self-government, freedom, and liberty must be accompanied by 2 morality and virtue and that requires a basis of 3 faith. But a proper true faith requires freedom. True faith can’t be a forced national religion or it won’t be a true, self-practiced, believing, self-controlling, faith. Freedom of religion is so fundamental that it was primary in the Amendments. When you take away a person’s freedom of religion you destroy virtue and without virtue a nation will not stand. American idealism is not built on our people, because American people came from other places. What makes America special is we are the one nation built upon an idea, the idea of freedom in self-government, which by necessity includes morality and religion.
It is in this idea that we can take pride, not because we are arrogantly better than other people, but this principle of freedom, symbolized by our Statue of Liberty and our Pledge of Allegiance, which states “liberty and justice for ALL” reaches to the ends of the earth.
These principles that formed our nation’s beginnings has caused our nation to have been the most charitable and giving nation in all history, even to the extent that American blood has been spilt the world over to help others gain and keep the principle of liberty alive.
Today however, we are in grave danger of freedom disappearing from not just America but the whole planet, as the idea of religion, morality, and patriotism is being rapidly removed and even mocked and abused from every aspect of our culture. Unless these concepts are recovered through proper education of principles of truth and freedom our freedoms will be lost.
My, off the cuff, thoughts on political correctnessPolitical correctness, which is now the “required” standard, is pretty much about making everyone feel comfortable and unoffended. We don’t want anyone to feel bad about anything.
This falls into the liberal agenda of saying that everything’s okay; you’re okay, I’m okay. The fact is, you’re not OK and I’m not okay and we’re all going to hell without Jesus.
It’s not loving to not tell people the truth, that without Christ you are going to hell, but that is an inconvenient and uncomfortable truth. In First Corinthians 6 it’s pointed out that anyone who does wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God. It gives a list of 10 different beliefs and lifestyles that are not acceptable. Two of those 10 are directly related to the LGBT lifestyle. But all of us would be included in at least one item on the list of unaccepatbles, somewhere at some point. Christ did not come to this earth to make everyone feel good, he came to tell the truth, which was not accepted by many.
He claimed a very offensive truth, that He is the only way. Political correctness is more concerned about not offending that it is about sharing the truth.
Instead of using “Our citizenship is in heaven” as an excuse to not be involved, it should be the contrary because our main concern is no longer the rules of this world.
Something feels very wrong about all this political correctness stuff. We seem to be more concerned about getting along than we are about sharing truth. Yes, we need to get along but not to the exclusion of truth. Can we really get along that well until truth is central?
Jesus as well as Paul, Peter and the rest, shared the truth all the time. Our relationships are going to be very shallow if we side step the truth to stay comfortable and appear nice.
My friends thoughts on political correctnessMy verses are The Great Commission where it says “…teach them EVERYTHING I commanded.” That is a lot more than the simple gospel or a happy talk verse or two. And the main passage was the whole of chapter 1 of Isa. I’ll paraphrase:My people are dumber than a jackass. Read it! That is exactly what it says.They are rebellious and EVIL. Why? Because they don’t bring JUSTICE to the land. The whole chapter is civil government language of courts, lawyers, laws, rulers, cities, countries, foreigners, pleading cases of widows, orphans, bribes. This is not synagogue or church language it is the institution of civil government that God ordained for us to take care of.They don’t connect the judgements God is bringing upon them to their lack of Justice in the land.Because of this God rejects their worship practice and refuses to HEAR THEIR PRAYERS.In the end he says he will BURN THEM UP.
That is what I think of ignorant Christians who forget we have a God who actually expects us to not just love but to execute judgement with the sword HE gave us…Civil Government. I have DEEP passion against people who constantly cherry pick a couple of verses and make false doctrine from a verse or two.
Read Psalms 109 and 69. David prays to God to burn people in Hell and even have no pity on the sinners kids. What do these sweet talkers have to say about Biblical prayers of that nature?
Yes I am for love, grace, mercy, and all that, but that is only one side of the Christian coin. If a coin has heads (or even love) on both sides of the coin it is a counterfeit.
Everywhere Peter, Paul, and Jesus went there was civil uprising because they challenged the status quo of government. Why were they all executed by civil government anyway?
