Published: July 16, 2006 11:30 am      

Forefathers set insightful path through religious thickets

As Christians, we should be proud to live in a country that challenges us to be our best, and to maintain our beliefs in difficult times. I believe Jesus Christ wanted converts, not conscripts. Like it or not, our country was settled by people looking to escape Christianity. The Quakers, the Puritans, the Amish, all Christian groups, came here to escape persecution from other Christian groups.

The Founding Fathers recognized this ability for humans, regardless of religion, to seek personal benefit, to fear change, to persecute diversity, and they looked at the historical record of murder and devastation in the name of our Gods. They decided that for America to truly be a chance for humans to reach their azimuth, to insure true freedom, to enjoy all that “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” could produce for each individual, they must guard against the type of politically supported religious zealots that have destroyed so many cities, murdered so many innocents, forced peaceful religious groups to abandon their homes.

To at least some extent, the separation of church and state in the United States has done just that. It does not allow us to place our religious beliefs where those who do not agree must constantly view them, but it allows us to view them whenever we want. It does not allow our government to support any religion, but it does not allow our government to discourage or detract from any either. It does not allow our government to use public money to fund religious functions or displays, but it gives us a tax deduction for our donations to do so.

These distinctions are key to our way of life and vastly different from any society in existence when our Constitution was written. Our forefathers did not prepare us for everything. They could not foresee many of the problems modernization has brought to us, but we must give them credit for tremendous insight into civilizations and societies.

One of the strongest validations of our system is that our Supreme Court, composed of both men and women, 100 percent Christian, 100 percent (as far as we know) heterosexuals, 100 percent parents and grandparents, and 100 percent Americans, can still look past their personal lives and try to make decisions using guidelines that were not fully understood when they were written over 200 years ago. Whether we agree or disagree, we should understand the value of being able to have our own opinions. We should quit characterizing every opinion that does not agree with ours as being either liberal or conservative, because both of those labels have been so twisted for personal benefit as to mean nothing. And when we feel anger building inside of us because something didn’t go our way, we should look at Rhowanda, Bosnia, Nazi Germany, and thank our own personal God that our system allows us to be angry, makes acting on it a crime, and praying about it and working to improve it perfectly acceptable.