Christians who expect the government to do their job

Chuck Baldwin writes about Christians who want the government to do the heavy lifting.

The idea that James Madison and the other authors of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights intended to prohibit children from praying in school, or state and local governments from posting the Ten Commandments and from erecting Nativity scenes is the invention of modern-age humanists, whose real goal is to eviscerate America's Christian heritage. Such reasoning is a complete inversion of the real meaning of the First Amendment. All the First Amendment was designed to do was recognize religious liberty, something Americans enjoyed until the infamous Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and '63.

That said, it is equally apparent that many Christians and ministers today have developed the attitude that somehow the federal government is supposed to enforce by law what only the Spirit of God can enforce through grace. Let's be plain: the federal government cannot do the church's job.

I suspect Baldwin is a libertarian by politics, because he states that although the government has the right to regulate pornography, prostitution and drugs, it shouldn't be in the business of legislating morality. I wouldn't go that far, because I see much of that as a mental pollution linked heavily to organized crime. But if he's talking about Christians who support it with crossed fingers hoping no one will find out, he's right. These businesses would probably collapse if all the Christians withdrew both their investments in these businesses and their patronage. Christianity Today a few years ago did a report on the millions of Christians addicted to pornography and gambling. Unbelievers like to think that Christians are smugly pointing fingers, but if they are, it isn't in my church, where in 30+ years I've never heard a sermon on any form of public or private morality.

Baldwin goes on to relate this to the upcoming election. And I do agree with him. You can't wedge a piece of dental floss between the theology of Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee--they are all Baptists and believe that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. I don't doubt their faith for a minute. If I don't meet them in this life, I know I will in the next. How they will translate their personal and political beliefs into policy, however, is very different. Gore and Clinton technically aren't on the ballot, but Clinton's persona, fake and flip-flopping as it may be, is very much a part of the campaign; and Gore's wingnut beliefs are invading every follicle and hair of our lives. Don't let the MSM frighten you about Romney or Huckabee. Look at policy and issues:

Therefore, instead of looking to presidential candidates who will use the federal government to accomplish everything we want done (even the good things we want done), we should support only those candidates who recognize the proper role of the federal government as being limited and narrowly defined (by the Constitution). And then, it behooves us to look to ourselves to be the parents we should be to our own children at home, and to look for pastors and churches that are not trying to be popular, but that are courageous and faithful custodians of the truth.