THE NANNY STATE:

America's slavery, the Church's opportunity

 The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus, 1883

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

~ Statue of Liberty Poem

 

"What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ."

~The Holy Spirit through St. Paul

The Nanny State is at it again!  This time it's LSU which used a picture of a well known group of LSU fans called "The Painted Posse".   The group paint their faces and bare trunks for LSU games.
 

"In reproducing the photo for a campuswide email, LSU made the decision to airbrush out the crosses on the students' chests. See, The Painted Posse is a group of Christian-centered Tiger fans, and, well, someone somewhere inside LSU decided not to mix football and religion. (Which is a bit surprising, considering that in the SEC, football IS religion.)"  (LINK)

You may not be able to see it, but on their left shoulders the guys have crosses painted there

Someone at LSU airbrushed the crosses out of the photo before using in an LSU email.

"The school, in a statement, indicated that it was not trying to censor any views, but rather to avoid the appearance of endorsing one. "We don't want to imply we are making any religious or political statements, so we air-brushed it out," the school said in a statement to Fox News. "Only one of the students, who didn't appreciate it, actually contacted us about it. So next time, we'll just choose a different photo."

Bad LSU censors!!  Someone call the Supreme Court!  Someone call Glenn Beck!  Someone call Jerry Falwell!   Oh, wait, Jerry Falwell is dead...er...em...okay, some one call Pat Robertson.  Robertson is only dead from the neck up.   Wow what will we do when Glenn Beck and the conservatives on the Supreme Court are dead??  YIKES!!   Oh I know there will always be some one who will step up to take their places.   There will always be someone who will take up the never ending culture war...  There is simply too much at stake here to stand idly by doing nothing.   So! "Once more unto the breach, dear friends!  ONCE MORE;" 
 

"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

~ C.S. Lewis

I've always liked that quote.  But what Lewis says here is a double edged sword.  Is it right to force a non-Christian nation to accept the constraints of Christianity?  Frankly, the argument Christians have every right to impose, what they view as righteous laws, on others has largely been based on the claim the founding fathers meant to found a Christian nation.   Since the founders meant to create a nation built on the bedrock of Judeo-Christian beliefs it's not merely a strongly heartfelt position held, but an inalienable right.  "...Christians have the right to rule their own country," as Jerry Falwell put it.  The first major problem with this belief is Christ is a king, and he has a kingdom he tells us plainly is not of this world.   Of course the argument then shifts from one of the intent of creating a Christian nation to now speaking of a nation founded upon Christian principles.   A Christian nation and a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles are vastly different things.   The Christian nation is a kingdom ruled by Christ Jesus, and it is not of this world.  A nation following certain principles doesn't require Christ at all.  In fact a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles doesn't follow a Christ centered model.  The model for a nation built upon  Judeo-Christian principles follows more a Moses centered model of ruling.  A nation is given a set of standards which are codified into legal responsibilities for the nation's citizens.   The law of Moses, if broken, carried the most dire of punishments, death and/or being cut off from among the people; what we'd call today 'excommunication'.   Forcing compliance works with the Moses model, but it doesn't work with the Jesus model.   Jesus makes it clear that the keeping of laws is no way to become a citizen in his kingdom.

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.  Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 

"The who sins is a slave..."  The religious leaders listening to Jesus teach this wouldn't have problem with what Jesus is teaching.  After all Jesus is teaching what they themselves believe.   At that time one of the most common form of slavery was basically indentured service.  A person who could not support himself could find someone who would care for his needs, train him in a useful trade.   The slave would then work off the debt owed to his master, and upon completion of the service would be freed from slavery.  This kind of slavery was the Roman world's version of welfare.  We all know, none of us is perfect, even the religious leaders knew they weren't perfect, but they thought their efforts to keep the Mosaic laws and their continuous reaching for perfection in practice kept them in good stead with God.   Jesus turns the tables on them when he goes onto say, "...Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever."  OUCH!  Jesus tells them, you don't get it.  "Your relationship to Abraham doesn't make you a son in God's house.  Even if an indentured slave could pay the full monetary worth of his slavery, or even a 100x his indebtedness, he would not be a member of the family.  Adoption is the only way for a slave to become a part of the family he served as slave.   It doesn't matter how hard the religious leaders worked to pay off their debts to God, they would always have the status of "not a member of the family."   Paying one's sin debt to God by keeping laws changes nothing for the slave to sin.  The only thing which changes the slave is adoption into the family.

 

No matter the intent of the religious leaders of his day, they could do nothing about their status as slaves.  All members of Christ's kingdom are adopted sons/daughters from among a world enslaved to sin.  Christianity isn't a national treasure, Christianity is the adoption by God in his family.  God achieves this adoption by paying off the slaves debt by enslaving his only Son to a Roman cross and finally to the grave.   God then offers adoption, through his resurrected Son, into his eternal family.   Christianity isn't something any human founder or citizen of any nation in the world, can bestow.  Christianity is God's alone to bestow. 

  

In this election season, when we pick our leaders, vote your conscience, but do not say, in any part of your being, "I am doing this because this is a Christian nation, and we need to take it back for Christ."   If Christ wanted this nation he'd have already taken it. 

"Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me."

So what's a Christian to do about this "Nanny State"?   There are so many burdens upon the state, and the children it cares for, like slavery to sin, so extend a little grace.  Stop tying up heavy loads which you drop on men's shoulders, you know religious rules and laws against, say gay marriage, though you will not lift a finger to help them find freedom in Christ.  Keeping laws against gay marriage or even abortion won't change the status of slaves.  Remember you are not of this world, just as Christ is not of this world.  Remember that you are adopted Children of the living God, and the freedom of Christ can't be taken away, even by the most powerful "Nanny State" on the earth.  Seek first to serve God's kingdom and purposes, and then he can show you how best to engage a world enslaved to sin, and the body politic (also enslaved to sin, by the way).

Good, but not God's statute of liberty

God's statute of liberty: Perfect!