Tag Archives: Big Government

Polemics

Christians destroy their own religious freedom by supporting single-payer health care

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Muddling Towards Maturity linked to a Chuck Colson column which makes an essential point about how allowing a secular government to control health care is bad for Christians who want to live authentic Christian lives in the public square. Muddling writes, “Chuck Colson tells the story of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college that won’t allow abortion, sterilization, and contraception to be covered by its employees’ health care plan.”

Excerpt:

[The Catholic Church] teaches that abortion, sterilization, and contraception are immoral. So it makes sense that a conservative Catholic college would make sure that its health plan doesn’t cover such practices.

Well, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a different word for Belmont Abbey College: “sexist.”

Using reasoning that could only be concocted by a consummate bureaucrat, the director of the agency’s Charlotte office has said that denying contraception is sexist “because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women.”

The EEOC stepped in because eight college employees complained about the lack of coverage. The EEOC has now ordered the college to find a resolution. Even though North Carolina law protects religious institutions from having to cover contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization, the case could end up in the federal courts.

Colson also talks about how Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close as a result of state control of medical care provision. Catholic organizations do a ton of good in the world, so I find it appalling that so many Catholics voted for Obama. If you marginalize the worldview that produces the good works, you don’t get to keep the good works. The good works were rationally grounded by the good worldview.

This is a MUST-READ for those of you who believe that big government programs, like single-payer health care, are compatible with Christianity. If you want to put the needs of the poor above the gospel, that’s fine. But, in my view, Jesus put the gospel above the needs of the poor.

Have a look:

1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2″But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

6″Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

(Mark 14:1-9, NIV)

And you can see this problem in many other areas as well, such as welfare, hate crime bills and the removal of conscience protections. Few Christians, and certainly not those who support single-payer health care, would even recognize the imposition of the government’s vision of morality and purpose on individuals as fascism. Even homeschooling Christians sometimes support big government secular socialism which can lead to banning homeschooling.

Many Christians voted for the most pro-abortion President ever, and for the most anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-child President ever. I think this is a consequence of the church’s complete unwillingness to connect what goes on in the church with anything objectively real outside the church. We tell people stories that make them feel certain emotions, and they use that emotionalized conception of Christianity to decide who to vote for.

2008 voting broken by religious groups

2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for larger image)

I think what is really happening here is that Christians who prefer single-payer health care on “moral grounds” are either 1) trying to justify stealing money from their neighbors to pay for their own risky, irresponsible decisions, or 2) trying to embrace trendy, popular policies that put them in a favorable light with the secular neighbors. Either way, it’s a loss for God. Doing good is the job of free individuals, not the job of a secular, socialist government.

Podcasts

MUST-LISTEN: William Lane Craig on the religious left’s support for Obamacare

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This is a must-listen!

Listening to Bill apply the Bible to the issues of the day really ROCKS!

The MP3 file is here.

Here is Bill’s web site “Reasonable Faith”. You can send him a donation online!

You have to register to comment, but you should. There are a lot of left-wing “Christians” commenting on there now. None of them can see how letting a massive secular government control the economy would be bad for the public practice of authentic Christianity. Now is your chance to get on there and make them think about the kind of government structure that allows the free exercise of religion.

Commentary

Family Research Council’s Paul Fagan explains why chastity matters

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This article from C-Fam, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, describes an important point made by Family Research Council scholar Patrick Fagan at a recent conference. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Fagan warned that while monogamous culture is fertile and expanding and polyamorous culture is in below replacement fertility, that polyamorous culture is still expanding through their control of three areas of public policy: “education of children, sex education, and adolescent health.” Fagan said that through such control polyamorous culture “snatches children away from their parents and away from monogamous culture in ways analogous to the Ottoman Turks of the 14th century who raided boys from Christian nations to train them as their own elite warriors, the Janissaries.”

Fagan said “this snatching is almost complete when these three program areas result in adolescents accepting and engaging in sexual intercourse” and that “every time the polyamorous programs and media succeed in drawing teenagers into sexual activity they have captured another Janissary.”

Fagan described efforts monogamous culture has used to fight back, especially the rise and success of abstinence education, but also explained the way polyamorous culture rose up and crushed it. He also pointed out that the campaigns against home schooling are an effort by the dominant polyamorous culture to stop parents from protecting their children.

In the end, Fagan called upon “monogamy men” to fight back. He said the only answer is for them to fight for control “over what is his and his family’s just due, what his taxes fund, and what he can use in raising his children, control over the three big programs of childhood education, sex education and adolescent health programs.”

Encouraging teenagers into early sexual behavior is one of the primary ways that the secular-left wrests children away from their parents. One of the major reasons I’ve made it this far with the views I have is because of my commitment to chastity. Chastity rocks, and we need to do a better job of explaining to kids what they lose if they give it up.

Sex outside of marriage breaks the will of young people to aspire to higher ideals and morals. It makes them fear moral demands and moral boundaries, instead of embracing them. I believe that it also affects their relationship with God. Since sex outside of marriage generally results in someone getting hurt, there is a tremendous desire by the sinner to escape the guilt by just deciding that God isn’t real and so there is no such things as moral standards at all. Their sin settles the question of God’s existence quite apart from the arguments and evidence. Later, when they learn about evolution, etc., the decision becomes irreversible.

His point about Christians getting serious about NOT increasing the size of government is also worth noting. I know a few fundamentalist Christians who nevertheless vote for massive government programs like single-payer health care and energy taxes to stop “global warming”. They have no idea what they are really doing when they vote to assign individual and family responsibilities to government.