Judeo-Christian values and liberty

Posted on July 24, 2012. Filed under: Being Christian, following Jesus Christ, Education, Manners and Association, News and Politics, Religion | Tags: Americans, Christians, Creationism, Fear God, Freedom, George Washington, God, Health Care, Human-Rights, Jerry Newcombe, Jesus, Judeo-Christian, judge roy moore, Liberal Christians, Mitt Romney, Moral Values, Morality, Native Americans, Praying, Public Decency, Punishement, Roy Moore, Teaching, Ten Commandments, Tradition, United States, United States Constitution, United States of America, Violence, Weapon, Worshipping |

Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries can’t help but feeling that to some extent, The United States of America is reaping what they’ve been sowing as a society.

In one way he may be right, but in an other he may be totally wrong by pointing his damning finger to for him too liberal Christians.

Everywhere in the capitalist countries we have seen a move of people’s attitude considering belief, worship and their relationship with God. In many, so called civilised places, the citizens said to God, “Get out of the public arena.”  but they also often said: “Get out of my life.”

Lots of people are not interested any more in good customs and traditions about decent morals. Ethics are far away to look for. Nobody looks up any more if some one offends common or public decency. The decorum has just become some scenery of the older generation. The younger ones do think you are not with time if you do not change partners regularly to have some good fun. Love has got a physical meaning instead of a psychological relation.

A Ten Commandments monument which includes the command to “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But some of those who do not mind to watch certain television shows of lesser quality and movies with a lot of, all sorts of, violence, do mind when tradition are disputed. In the States we, for example, notice they do mind that the government would take away the morning tradition of greeting the flag and praying all together.

Jerry Newcombe said: “I’ll never forget what an Alabama black pastor said to me one time when I interviewed him about Judge Roy Moore, the Ten Commandments judge. He said: “All across America people should stand with Judge Moore about the Ten Commandments. Why? Because when they took prayer out of school, you didn’t hear about kids killing each other, about them bringing dope to school, shooting the teachers, you didn’t hear about that. You see what I’m saying? That’s what’s wrong. We need more God-fearing.”

Does he really belief that in those countries where they say no prayers before the classes start, people are shooting at each other like nothing. No they do not in such countries, as in Belgium, because they  do not allow weapons to be carried in those countries, while in the States lots of people do think they can’t defend themselves without something that can kill the other person. Are they not able to find other weapons that can not kill peoples or animals, to defend themselves, if they are not able to do it with words or with body language?
Also lots of Christians do not keep the Sabbath, though they find it important to have it engraved in stone before them so that they should not forget?

Do they forget in those states that Jesus demanded his pupils not to take up any weapon? Jesus Christ, the Messiah, even mended the ear of the person who was going to bring him closer to death.

Newcombe argues that the founders gave the American people a system where voluntary God-fearing was the underpinning of civility in society. “The more internal restraints people have, the less need they have for external restraints. (And the converse is true.) That’s why I can’t understand the ongoing crusade of those who want to remove any vestige of Judeo-Christian in the public arena. All they’re doing is making everything worse for everyone else.”

But they forget that we do not have to throw away certain Judeo-Christian values to be democratic and respective for people of other faiths or non believers. Those who have a believe, Advaïta, Animism, Asatru, Buddhism, Confusianism,  Christianism (inclusive Gnostic),  Haptonom, Hindu, Ikwanism, Jainism, Ikwanism, Kabbalism, Legalism, Manichaeïsm, Mazdaznan, Miticcism, Mithraism, Muslim, Non-thitics, Occultism, Paganism, Pantheism, Platonism, Satanism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Taoism, Theosophism, Universalism, Wicca, just to name the most important wones we encounter in our communities, in a democratic system, should be free to live according to their believes, but should also know they should never impose their believe to others.

Freedom (Photo credit: sacrifice_87)

Freedom means respecting the freedom of the other. When two or more people are together they should know and respect that they could have more than one opinion.

A State wanting Freedom, should take care that such freedom can be guaranteed to everybody living in that community. Therefore they should look to the common values and should take care nobody in that society can get hurt, physically or psychologically. They should also take care that no professional organisations could make use of certain systems to enrich themselves on others. (Think of private insurance companies who could misuse their power, by setting somebody out of the policy-protection when he has become too ill or too old.)

For that reason it is also better custody is taken by the government to provide a safety net or at least some security, so that those who are less fortunate in life can be helped. That is a matter or loving your neighbour: willing to provide also for him or her when he is in trouble.

George Washington may have highlighted the source of morality: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” This is one very important element in the choices we want to make: Morality. But that has nothing to do with carrying weapons or having to impose those who believe something different to act and do the same worship. Worshipping belongs in your own environment. In your own house you can pray, in a public place you can pray, in a special provided building, like a church or temple you may pray, but nobody should force any body to pray with him. Prayingshould be free to all. And everybody should be free to pray thea way they want to do it. If they prefer doing this kneeling, so let them do it; if they prefer it standing up arms wide open, let them do it; if they prefer to dance and sing, let them do it, but before all let them never disturb or offend others with it.

The controversial Ten Commandments display at the Texas State Capitol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In case a government would like to have prayers said in school, before class starts, which prayers and which songs are they going to enforce on all those present (atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslim and others)? Best is that State and religion are totally split. Religion is something persona and can and may not imposed on somebody else without his free will.

Imagine for example that Mitt Romney wins the election and agrees that the flag shall be greeted before the classes start, and that everybody joins in with singing and praying, after having listened to a reading out of the Book of Mormon. Because as president elected by the people they have chosen to follow his wisdom. And the Christian brothers of Romney who would be very pleased to see polygamy at last allowed by legislation, would demand him to get the Mormon prayers said before every action taken in public.

Are the Americans going to stay to ignore the religions of the native Americans, or are they going to introduce their religion as the frame to follow in the National educational system?
Many Native Americans would agree that the American people have gone far away from their gods and therefore have become so bad. Because in their religion there is the focus around nature, and around having unity in the family.  Today there is not much unity to find in the many divorced families everywhere in the capitalist countries. They did not focus on ‘having’ and owning’ but knew that they were blessed by being able to be a part of this universe. They know that they are tenants of this system, while many Christians forgot that as a leaseholder of this world they should have respect for everything and for everything in the Creation of God.

Peyote’s illegal status in the United States prevents many non-Indians from participating in peyote ceremonies and becoming members of specific tribal religions.

The landscape, animals, plants, and other environmental elements play a major role in the religion of Native Americans. Many of the legends passed down were an attempt to explain events that occurred in nature. are the modern Americans wiling to accept Native American religion in their midst? Is Romney to include a number of practices, ceremonies, and traditions in the schools and in public ceremonies?

Are the voters for having the Catholic or other Christian symbols prepared to allow the symbols of the original American population? Are the modern Americans willing to accept that as Christian celebration are kept also native ceremonies can be brought publicly in honour of a number of events? The practice of taking certain hallucinogens was commonly used to gain greater insight or communicate with the gods, so would it be reasonable than to legalise such drugs? Are is one community saying to an other one that they may not come in communication with their god? Ceremonies may include feasts, music, dances, and other performances. All believers should do that in theri own environment but leaving it open to others to join in or to be a guest.

But the same as the original American population, the native Indians cannot demand of the others to join their festivities and worshipping, the others have even lesser right to demand such a thing in a land that they conquered and took away from those natives. Also they may not demand it from others whose ancestors just fled those  chains of different sorts of religions and political systems.

The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is a United States Federal Law and a joint resolution of Congress that provides protection for tribal culture and traditional religious rights such as access to sacred sites, freedom to worship through traditional ceremony, and use and possession of sacred objects for American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians. It was passed on August 11, 1978.

Why should the Ten Commandments or the Mozaic Law be displayed in a public place, or why can it not be displayed? Everybody living in a free community should have respect for other believers, history and tradition, and for the majority in the community. In case a community wants to set up a monument or a stone resembling the Ten Commandments, this should be possible. Having them place in a house of justice this could be a way to remind people of certain values to which many people would like to hold on. There should be no ‘No’ against letting others know values behind which one can find themselves. But by placing certain symbols in public places one should also accept symbols of other beliefs to be placed on those premisses as well.  How much do the Americans accept the symbols, actions, monuments of the Native Americans? In the first place should they not have first priority to bring on their totems, symbols, way of worship, in public? They were the inhabitants of the land which was conquered by the white Europeans. Would it be right that those white Europeans keep imposing their tradition on this native folk? Is that the idea of liberty where they want to stand for: “You may be free, but this means that you only do and say and think as we do say and command you to think”?

All the people in the United States should remember why they forefathers left the Old Country. They should be glad their ancestors dared to take such a dangerous trip, and be proud for what they could establish. But they should never forget the dream so many of those ex-Europeans had to go to a place where they could be free, meaning not bounded.

Today it looks like you have many Americans who are afraid and are against new laws which would bring more equality and more recognition of other cultures and attitudes. Today so many fight against those people who want to continue in the line of their ancestors their dreams to bring more freedom for Everybody, and not just for a few rich or lucky people.

In America’s early years, a “future state of rewards and punishment” was an important concept, but nothing says this has to be thrown away. What we have noticed the last few years is that it was the plebs wanting to do whatever it wanted to do, and the rich trying to make more money no matter what the consequences where for others. The loss of values, moral, ethics and respect for the environment (human, animal and plant), that has caused the humans to be derailed.

Common Decency (Photo credit: Burns!)

Though we as believers, may never think that others do not have values or ethics, we may not think we are superior to them. In all sorts of folks there where some rules which made living together possible. All cultures have certain values. But what we can notice is that by the Christian population a lot got far away from the teacher, they are supposed to follow, his teachings. Instead of looking in their own bosom they want to put the problem by the other ones.

Instead of striving division among themselves they should have concentrated more on getting the flock to keep to the Ten Commandments of God. Instead of blaming others we should all acknowledge blame.

It is high time to search one’s own heart and to get a clean conscience.

Making a free country implies that there is the will to open everything up for others and to give them freedom to believe their own things, but whit the promise that the other person also allows the other the same freedom.

That freedom does not mean everybody can just do as he likes, because they there would be an infringement on the other. It also does not have to mean that everything has to go unpunished. Punishment and discipline are necessary to lead everything in good order.

Those who call themselves Christian should know that we are blessed to have the Holy Scriptures to give us guidance and to teach us how to go through this life and how to win the race. We should make more use of those Scriptures to teach our own flock and those people around us.

“But you, stay in what you have learned and trusted, having known from whom you have learned, and that from a babe you have known the Set-apart Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for deliverance through belief in Messiah יהושע{Jeshua}. All Scripture is breathed by Elohim and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for setting straight, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of Elohim might be fitted, equipped for every good work. ” (2 Timothy 3:14-17 The Scriptures 1998+)
“The proverbs of Shelomoh son of Dawidsovereign of Yisra’For knowing wisdom and discipline, For understanding the words of understanding, For receiving the discipline of wisdom, Righteousness, right-ruling, and straightness; For giving insight to the simple, Knowledge and discretion to the young. The wise one hears and increases learning, And the understanding one gets wise counsel, For understanding a proverb and a figure, The words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of יהוה {Jehovah}is the beginning of knowledge {1}; Fools despise wisdom and discipline. {Footnote: 1See 9:10, Ps. 111:10}. ” (Proverbs 1:1-7 The Scriptures 1998+)

Those who know wisdom and instruction should take care that from the beginning, when the children are small, they shall get used to discipline and learn to have respect for everything around them. This has  to happen at home in the first place. And it is because so many children did not learn such things any more that when they became adult they were not keeping to those values any more. The education system wanting to have enough pupils and by that enough money to stay in existence offered certain values and ways of discipline to keep their students. Often under pressure of parents discipline was loosened and teachers were not allow to punish any more. To say now that it are the liberal Christians who are at fault is not justified. The parents and that generation who prefered to have it easy are at fault. Life is just not easy. We do have toe learn by falling and getting up.

Because not all parents can provide enough possibilities the State (government) has to take care that everybody shall be able to receive proper education. And that education should be free of any bias, giving the proper values to give the opportunity for everybody to be respected in the whole community. Either the State could choose to provide moral or educational courses as an option or people should take care of that extra education themselves, as in previous days in the Sunday school. In how many Christian countries are there still Sunday schools, and people going to it regularly?

“The heart is crooked{1} above all, and desperately sick – who shall know it? {Footnote: 1See 7:24, 16:12, 18:12, 23:17}. ” (Jeremiah 17:9 The Scriptures 1998+)

The community should take care that nobody can be deceived and has the opportunity to know wisdom and instruction, to discern the words of understanding, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness and justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion, that the wise man may hear, and increase in learning, and that the man of understanding may attain to sound counsels, to understand a proverb, and a figure, the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

The fear of God of many should have them taking on the right attitude, so that they can become an example to follow. In such an instance no atheist or different believer would mind following that right attitude. Though we must always remember that whatever is done, the foolish always shall despise wisdom and instruction.

Putting up no boarders, or reasons why not to attend a school; like being Catholic, Protestant or of an other denomination, the government should provide schools with the rightly trained teachers, who keep to the values and moral of the majority, but allowing also further private schools which can or should be able to provide education in the way they self prefer. So in case they want to learn creationism, it can be presented in a private school as long they learn also biology and history. But to ask to have such a teaching for everybody can not be demanded. What can be proposed is that it also becomes a subject which can be chosen to follow. By letting to choose subject everybody can stay free either to follow such a course or to ignore it. For praying in such or such way, also can be done in the appropriate class, be it a conservative or liberal Jewish teaching or a classic or more progressive Christian teaching, or even an Islam class.

The world has to recognise it has a multicultural population and that there is a globalisation which we have to follow. We all have to grow to one united people.

It is very strange that when Osama bin Laden was finally killed in May 2011, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released that 61 percent of the public thought he went to Hell, as a place of torture for ever, that so many Americans do live a live which gives the impression it does not matter what they do. They even are not afraid of the impression of them, what they would leave behind. But it is know and not after life they have to prove themselves. It is also know, in this live that they and we should take care to be ready to be able to enter the Kingdom of God.  When we die it is to late to do anything about it. Then we missed all chances. Now is the moment to run the race laid in front of us.

On the 9° Av (27th of July) the Summer Olympic Games may start, but on that remembrance day we should see Babylon in front of us.

While the world is preferring bread and games, we should offer them better ways, by allowing good education, care for the psychological as well as the physical health. This shall only be possible in case enough people are willing to contribute financially to make such things possible. Not willing to contribute to a National Health System and to a Public School System, can be more a selfish thing than an excuse that it would not be catholic or protestant enough.  We should show ‘Babylon’ the way of love and sincere interest.

The Christian value of taking care of the needy should be the free way not only for the good Samaritan but also for the enemy to get to know the real brotherly love as, long before us, Jesus has given his brotherly love to many, believers but also to non-believers and sinners.

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Please do read:

1. A dark night indeed
   Another senseless act of random violence in America has made the headlines. This time there was a random shooting in a movie theatre, during the opening night of The Dark Knight Rises. This was the midnight showing in Aurora, Colorado, just outside of Denver.
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   I can’t help but feel that to some extent, we’re reaping what we’ve been sowing as a society.
2. Newcombe: CO Shooting a Result of the Fact that Americans Don’t Fear God or Hell
3. AFA News Director Says Liberal Churches, Media Share Responsibility for Colorado Shooting
   Jackson maintained that unlike in the communities of forty years ago, liberals in the media and churches, along with movies and the internet, have “have come together to give us these kinds of incidents.”
4. The Spirit of God imparts love,inspires hope, and gives liberty
5. The Spirit of God brings love, hope and freedom
6. No time for immorality
7. Native Americans
8. Indian Symbols
9. Native American Religion
10. Native Americans Chart
11. 

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Also of interest:

1. Liberal and evangelical Christians
2. Childish or reasonable ways
3. Mormons, just an other faith
4. The Race for Life
5. Alternative four letter words
6. Vile language and behaviour plus little secrets
7. The Y generation in conflict with itself

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  Terry Kemple, a candidate for the countywide seat on the Hillsborough County School Board, said he plans to fight back against an invisible foe who has set up a bogus website maligning him.
• It’s out with the old as Christian values fall away (smh.com.au)
  Given the Judeo-Christian origins of our long-held tradition of caring for the frail, census data indicating the demise of Christianity and the ageing of Australia’s population could herald a perfect social storm.The 2011 census makes clear that Christian affiliation is diminishing, falling 7 per cent over the past decade to 61 per cent. The slack has been picked up by the ”nones”, those claiming ”no religion”, with almost 5 million of us, or 22.3 per cent, turning our backs on God (or, at least, on God’s registered brands). That’s up 7 per cent since 2001.
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  Of course, most of us love our grandmas. We don’t need religion to tell us to look after them. But as more Australians move into high-care facilities and dementia units, sometimes at a great distance from family, society will need a solid intellectual ground for increasing contributions to those who can no longer give back.Ancient Greece and Rome, the cultures against which Christianity first competed, had little by way of philosophical reasoning that could guarantee the inherent worth of those lacking rational capacity or social utility. So infanticide was common and social welfare for the aged and dying was virtually non-existent.Christianity changed this. It inherited from the Jews a theology of human dignity and a program of social welfare, and added the thought that Christ had died for the world, even for the lowly and neglected. Compassion was due to all, especially to the overlooked. And so was born the tradition of ”charity”.
• Humans And Other Animals (morningstaronline.co.uk)
  Although few people today would be happy reducing animals to the level of unthinking, unfeeling objects in the manner of Descartes, it’s true that most of us still assume that the dividing line between humans and all other animals is one of kind rather than degree.Yet recent studies have tended to argue that other species have developed notions of personhood, display astonishing levels of consciousness, often live in societies and employ culture, language, tools and symbolism in everyday interactions to a far, far greater extent than previously thought possible.
• ‘Ten Commandments’ Judge Roy Moore: Secularism leads to Sharia law(rawstory.com)

  In an interview with conservative talk show host Steve Deace last week, Roy Moore opined that “a government that is denying God” was also allowing Sharia law to take hold.

  The Republican candidate explained that he had no regrets after the Alabama Court of the Judiciary was forced to strip him of the chief justice title in 2003 because he rejected a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state courthouse.
• Roy Moore on his Ten Commandments monument (reassuringquotes.wordpress.com)
  Naturally the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center – also called the SPLC – which also eventually brought suit against me were happy to play on such confusion. They claimed that I had “sneaked in the monument in the middle of the night”.
• Don’t blame Darwin for theater shootings (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
  “I doubt that religion had anything to do with these murders, but religion is so quick to point the finger at science and evolution when they happen,” Coyne wrote on his “Why Evolution Is True” blog. “So much for Rick Warren, the man Barack Obama chose to give the invocation at his inauguration in 2009.”
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  On the flip side, some atheists suggested that Christianity was to blame, capitalizing on reports that Holmes came from a Presbyterian family. On the “Debunking Christianity” blog, Cathy Cooper argues that Christian belief encourages the idea that all people are sinful, but that all believers are saved by faith alone. “Christianity provides believers with a basis for the belief that they are absolved from taking responsibility for their own bad behavior,” she writes.
• Egypt ex-MP guilty of indecency (bbc.co.uk)
  A radical Islamist politician in Egypt has been convicted in absentia of violating public decency after police found him fondling a woman in a car.
  Ali Wanis was sentenced to a year in prison for the incident and six months for abusing the policemen. The woman involved got a six month jail term.
• Don’t blame the shootings on Darwin (or on God’s wrath) (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
  “When students are taught they are no different from animals, they act like it,” Rick Warren, the mega-church pastor and inspirational author, observed in a Twitter update just hours after the shootings.
• Publicly Indecent Women (gloriabrame.typepad.com)
  women busted for flouting public decency laws, and firmly establishing the fine American tradition of women standing up for sexual freedoms by taking off their clothes.
• Wendy Kaminer – The Health Care Ruling Trivializes Civil Liberties (prn.fm)
  This is how you exaggerate the “tyranny” of petty bans and an ACA penalty projected to affect one or two percent of the population, while you trivialize civil liberty and distract us from the growth of a potentially totalitarian national security state. This is how you generate hatred of big government and direct it at opposition to social welfare programs, environmental regulations, or oversight of financial markets, while you generate support for (or indifference to) domestic surveillance, the targeting of Muslim Americans, militarized police departments, the criminalization of political dissent, drone warfare, and the failure to close Guantanamo.
• Barack Obama, Authoritarian Conservative (robertlindsay.wordpress.com)
  Socialists or those on the economic left are to the left of the center line. Capitalists and those on the economic right on to the right of the center line. Authoritarians are above the horizontal line in the middle. More civil libertarian types are below the center line in the middle.
• “The Fear Of God Is Not In This Place” (chuckbaldwinlive.com)
  What in the world has happened to America? How has it come to this? The America that we currently see is unrecognizable from the America many of us grew up in. The America that many oppressed people risked their lives to escape to now more resembles the oppressed nations that those people fled. (I’ve had scores of immigrants tell me that personally.) And make no mistake about it, the problem is much deeper than the shallow partisan mantra, “It’s the Democrats’ (or Republicans’) fault.” The root cause of America’s woes is much deeper than that. For decades, we’ve been trading Democrats for Republicans, Republicans for Democrats, liberals for conservatives, and conservatives for liberals, and nothing has changed–except the problems keep getting worse!
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  The natural fear of God is a predicate for a person’s respect for their mother and father. (Leviticus 19:3) The fear of God is a predicate for a person’s respect for others, especially those who are disadvantaged. (Leviticus 19:14) This passage specifically notes the deaf and the blind.
  +
  how can politicians in Washington, D.C., possess the fear of God when they routinely lie, steal, violate their oaths to the Constitution, and wreak havoc upon the liberties and freedoms of the American people? How can the banksters at the Federal Reserve possess the fear of God when they deliberately rape the US economy and purposefully manipulate the markets so as to destroy the financial well being of tens of millions of families? How can federal government officials at the highest levels possess the fear of God when they engage in international drug running and murder?
• Takedown: Divided We Stand (persephonemagazine.com)
  
• No Future in France: Dire Times for French Jews
  A philosopher (holding a prestigious French agrégation degree in philosophy), a graduate of the French Rabbinical School in Paris, and a former student at some of the most orthodox yeshivoth (Talmudic academies) in Jerusalem, Bernheim was until recently very eager to reconcile traditional Judaism with Europe’s “open society.” He has just devoted a book to France as a nation and how Jews can contribute to France’s public debates (N’oublions Pas De Penser La France), and in 2008, the year he was elected chief rabbi, he coauthored a book on Judeo-Christian dialogue (Le Rabbin et le Cardinal) with Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.Despite all that, Bernheim suddenly warned Jewish leaders a few weeks ago about a growing “rejection” of Jews and Judaism in France, something he linked to the global passing of “Judeo-Christian values” in French society as a whole.

‘Ten Commandments’ Judge Roy Moore: Secularism leads to Sharia law (via Raw Story )

The man who is likely to be Alabama’s next chief justice is warning that secular government will lead to Islamic law in the United States. In an interview with conservative talk show host Steve Deace last week, Roy Moore opined that “a government that is denying God” was also allowing Sharia…

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