In his book Why Government Can’t Save You John MacArthur lists four concerns about Christians overemphasizing political activism. These are well worth considering as we get closer to the election this November.
First, by looking to human means to reform society and establish Christian values we’ve denigrated God’s sovereignty over human history and events.
Second, seeking to bring biblical values to our culture by changing it through fleshly means is a selfish pursuit. The truth is, God never intended for us to be at ease with our culture.
Third, by trying to establish Christian values through earthly methods, we risk creating a false sense of morality. Forcing people to adopt our biblical standards of morality only brings superficial change and hides the real issue—sin and their need for rebirth in Jesus Christ.
Finally, by making activism our priority, we fashion a reputation as rabble-rousing malcontents and foster hostility toward unbelievers that alienates us from them, and them from us…It’s simply wrong to blame our country’s moral disintegration on political parties, liberal conspiracies, or biased media. They have never been the root of the problem. They are the mission field, not the enemy.
With the rest of the country experiencing the hottest summer in recent memory, we’re once again face to face with the question of global warming. Time magazine recently ran a piece titled, “Hot Enough for You?” in which Dominique Browning made the case that the heat wave we’re experiencing right now is the direct result of global warming. Browning writes, “What kind of record smashing will it take for people to understand that we have entered a period of accelerated global warming and must demand action?”
I have no idea whether the earth is getting warmer or not, after all I’ve only been here for 33 years. However, a little perspective may be in order when it comes to the conversation about global warming. After all it was only two years ago that Washington was experiencing one of its coldest winters in recent memory with record-setting snow fall. World magazine reminded me that at that time Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told NPR ‘It is important that people recognize that weather is not the same thing as climate.’” That sounds like great advice to me!
There are few theologians that I respect more than Wayne Grudem, which is why I really appreciate what he has to say in this video about Christians and politics. It’s well worth the watch.
If you’ve heard of President Obama’s promise to cut 100 Million dollars out of the Federal Budget, you might want to take a look at this video for a littler perspective.
Matt Perman from Wha’ts Best Next recently wrote an outstanding article on why spending alone does not stimulate the economy. Here’s an excerpt.
…it is pretty easy to see the fallacy in the idea that consumer spending stimulates the economy. Here’s a short example to show why.
Let’s say that the “economy” of my family is in bad shape. Do my wife and I conclude that it’s “time to go spend more money” so that we can get things back on track? Clearly not. That would be a devastating course of action. Instead, we would embark on two strategies: (1) save more and (2) earn more money (= produce more goods and services of value).
The same holds true when we think of the economy as a whole. Nothing changes simply by increasing the number of people in the predicament.
To illustrate this, let’s say that there were 300 people in my family and we were running out of food. Would that change anything about the need for our fundamental strategy of saving more and producing more? No. We’d have more people to produce things, which would be a benefit, but nobody would say “hey, we’re short on food, so let’s start eating more!”
Does anything change if we extend this out to 3,000 people? Or 300,000? Or 300,000,000? Not at all. The reason is that there is still a finite amount of resources. We cannot invent economic goods out of thin air.
I’m not saying that there is no role for spending in the economy. I’m saying that saving and earning must come first. You cannot spend unless you have something to spend.
This is a shocking video from Glenn Beck (3 minutes 53 seconds) giving a visual representation of how much money the government is printing. I don’t know a whole lot about economics, but I do know that when governments just start printing money, inflation will happen.
I was just thining this exact same thing the other day but Rush Limbaugh said it far better than I can.
Government meddling harmed a lot of businesses. Now that same government prints money for a bailout, so taxpayers think they own the businesses and can veto purchases like corporate jets. Washington shouldn’t tell businesses how to run and neither should you. But when a company or a person accepts money, there are always strings attached.
This bailout money is not your taxes. Washington is printing the money for it — and when you do that, at some point inflation has to rear its ugly head. Nobody is talking about that, but when inflation hits, it’s going to be the greatest tax that you pay. It’s a law of economics.
I’m getting ready for a pretty major sermon in February on abortion, so I’ve been looking around the web a lot for resources. Collin turned me on to this one today and I think that it is well worth the 3 minutes it takes to watch it. It’s John Piper speaking directly to Barack Obama in the form of a sermon.
First, by looking to human means to reform society and establish Christian values we’ve denigrated God’s sovereignty over human history and events.
