Day: May 11, 2010

Let’s play a game. The game is called “Political Monopoly.”

In this game, your objective is to get as many of the squares on the board under the ownership of your beliefs as possible. The other players will do the same thing, everyone trying to get spaces under their ownership.

In Political Monopoly you pay in votes, not money, and if you add houses, that’s like having more local or state level  institutions under your control, and if you add hotels, that’s like having national institutions under your control.

Here’s the thing, though, every player whose ideas are based on a denial that there is a God or a denial that if there is a God we need to acknowledge God (or God’s truth), can own ANY of the squares on the board and they can buy Hotels, but any players whose ideas are based on a belief in God and acknowledging God isn’t allowed to buy ANY of the squares except for those squares designated as “churches” or “non-profit”, which is only around 25% of all the available squares. Also, the God-honoring players can’t buy hotels.

Now, there are 20 players, this is a BIG board, it’s got 1,200 squares on it, and of these players 2 don’t believe in God, 2 think their belief in God should not affect public policy, 1 isn’t really sure and doesn’t care but just want to make sure their own special interests are taken care of, and 14 absolutely believe in God and that they should acknowledge God, even in Public policy.

If the average square costs 100v (votes) and every players has 1,000v to start with, but 15 of the players cannot buy hotels at all and they can’t buy  75% of the squares, which side is going to win? Will the side with the 15 players who honor God but have all these restrictions win or will the other 5 who don’t honor God but have all these unfair advantages win?

Government is getting into everything in our lives, and it’s controlling more and more of our money. Did you know, for instance, that over 30% of ALL land is controlled by government? That’s a huge impact in your life.

It goes beyond just things people associate with “the government.” More and more, for instance, we see schools, universities, businesses, and every other kind of institution infected with this idea that the only ideas that matter are ideas that don’t involve God in any way. If we don’t believe in God or want to honor God or follow God’s truth, then our ideas are somehow “allowed”, but if do believe in God and want to honor God and follow God’s truth, as we see it, then, according to the godless, our ideas don’t count!

It doesn’t matter what these ideas about giving godlessness an unfair advantage over godliness are called or what the people who push them down our throats claim is their origin, what matters is that we can’t say we have a real democratic society if ideas involving God in any way are excluded from the game of “Political Monopoly.” It’s just not fair, and only a sucker gets into a game like this and goes along with rules like that!

People can argue all day long about such hobgoblins as “theocracy” or “the religious right” or “separation of church and state”, they can even try and use the words of America’s Founders to somehow “prove” that America was never a “Christian Nation”, and they can claim all day long that religion isn’t rational and therefore only non-religion (godlessness) is “rational”, but we don’t have to fall for that and we don’t have to accept that.

If you want godlessness in public life and public policy, than win support for your ideas the old fashioned way; EARN IT by convincing votes that it’s better to have ideas that deny God than those that honor God, but you know, as I know, that when things are fair, when the People are FREE to decide, fair and square, they reject godlessness.

You see, we are free. We might not ACT like we’re free, in fact we often let ourselves get suckered by these endless and tedious debates into following exactly those rules I described. That’s bad that we did this in the past, that we accepted some of these small steps towards letting godlessness be the only idea system allowed in the public square, but that doesn’t mean we have to let the playground bullies continue to bully us. Just because we let a bully push us around for, say, over 100 years, doesn’t mean we can’t say, “you know what, you aren’t going to invalidate me or my beliefs any more, because there’s more of us who don’t want a godless society than people like you who do!”

It’s time to start the process of cleaning up the playground, it’s time to start playing Political Monopoly with the SAME rules for all the players. If your ideas, rooted in ungodliness, can compete where it comes to making public policy, so can my ideas, which are rooted in godliness. You don’t get an unfair advantage, you don’t get to make a doctrine that says “only MY ideas are valid here.”

Where do we start?

Well, the best place to start is with you and me. We can’t just “do something”, we have to BE something, and that, my friends, is FREE PEOPLE.

We are going to be putting out ideas, and sharing them, but right now, what we really need to do is gather, virtually if need be, but locally as soon as possible, and connect with people who simply agree that godliness cannot be bullied out of the best places and the highest seats in our society, that no discrimination against us, our ideas, or our beliefs will be tolerated and that those who choose to agree with the standards that say ONLY ungodliness has a place in public policy and public life will have NO friendship or fellowship with us!

Can you take this pledge, print it, share with your friends, and drop us a line telling us about how things went, so we can send you special updates and ideas?

Print this pledge, get your friends together, explain all this to them (don’t debate, tell them, “I’m not asking for your opinion about whether my ideas matter or whether I should be able to promote them in how I vote, I’m saying, this is my right and I want you to respect it.”

Now, show them the pledge and ask them to sign it (don’t just “forward it in an email), and send us an email at [email protected] about your experience.

“I pledge to stand for godliness in all areas of life, to no longer allow godliness to be excluded unfairly from public policy or public life, and to insist that anyone who wishes to be in friendship or fellowship with me agrees that my beliefs and values, whatever their source, deserve to be treated fairly and cannot be discriminated against, but must be decided on their merit by the other citizens who might vote for or against them. SO HELP ME GOD, because I AM FREEDOMIST!”

If you print this and you find people who say “I don’t agree” then you have to make a choice: you have to take a stand yourself, right then and there, and say “if you can’t honor and respect my rights and my ideas, then I see no reason to do business with you, vote for you, or be your friend.”

(NOTE: you can’t choose your family, obviously, but you can ask them to sign this. You can’t leave your husband or wife if they refuse to sign this, but if they do, you should express how unfair they are being to invalidate YOUR beliefs.)

Editorial-Freedom News-Bill Collier

Godlessness Versus Freedom
Western Civilization’s Demise Is NOT the “end of Christian civilization”

Historians who write about this age will no doubt see in it the typical sociological symptoms of a civilization that is experiencing creative and moral collapse. The patterns of route and rally, rise and decline, which are as typical of human civilizations as the birth and death cycles of biology, are expected, normal, and inevitable.

The pattern is simple: the latter days of an old civilization are marked by a blurring of the lines of virtue, an increase in godlessness, and an increase in materialistic aims and pursuits constrained only by the raw limits of wealth and power. That’s the bad news. The GOOD news is that along with this decline and fall there comes, AT THE SAME TIME, a new birth: this is the coming of a new spiritual-cultural reality that is as firmly rooted in the principles of freedom as the dying civilization’s culture is rooted in godlessness.

The ebbs and flows that may at times make one think the forces of godlessness are getting the upper hand are only alarming to those who are not properly schooled in the processes of death and rebirth which are at work when an old civilization is losing its creative and moral life-force and a new civilization is beginning in a precious few hearts, seemingly on the fringes or in the underground of what to all unlearned eyes seems to be a still thriving socio-political reality.

For those who remain firmly entrenched in the old civilization by remaining compliant with its norms and expectations while being dependent on its institutions, the future will go from bleak to dark and the only fruits they can expect are the fruits of sin, dipped in misery, and covered in sorrow. Godlessness, which promises “freedom” from the very NOTION of deity, and certainly “freedom” from the moral code associated with religious faith or anything sacred, destroys the walls of protection which prevent society from becoming a social Darwinian nightmare of “survival of the fittest”. It is not possible to have religious freedom, the freedom to find God and follow God according to the dictates of enlightened conscience, when the institutions, especially the state, are governed by the ideas and ideals of godlessness.

Certain idea systems, doctrines, are capable of co-existence, as for instance different types of religious belief or cultural differences, but certain other doctrines are simply not compatible, among which doctrines are the doctrines of freedom OF religion and the doctrine of freedom FROM religion.

Freedom OF religion is a positive freedom: it says we are free to pursue, express, and live our religious beliefs in EVERY area of life, even by using our rights of self-government (our CIVIC rights of self-determination) to advocate for policies and rules or laws that RESPECT and uphold our values, our virtues, and our way of life. Freedom FROM religion is no freedom at all: it is simply state mandated godlessness which denies the freedom of self-government by denying the very RIGHTS of citizens to seek to shape public policies according to their values and virtues.

On the one hand, freedom of religion upholds human dignity, acknowledging that we are ALL Created Equal, endowed by God with equality of rights, and upholding the virtues that show how humankind ALONE are made in the image of God, male and female, bound in the sacred union of one man, one woman, in blessed matrimony, to pass on to the next generations the spiritual DNA of freedom to know God and serve God by the dictates of enlightened conscience.

On the other hand, godlessness denies human dignity, reducing humankind to the status of mere animals, whose life is no more precious than that of a beast in the field, who have no more “rights” than they can seize by power or receive by the largesse of the state, and who have no greater purpose but to serve their own desires or some nebulous potential or the “good of the whole” (or of “the planet”) according to a cold “rationalism” that replaces marriage with the union of citizen and state and virtue with obedience to the dictates of “experts” who “know better.”

Godlessness is not going to be won over with rational argument or persuasive speech, one either embraces godlessness or one embraces freedom, one either believes that there is a God and that He Created us ALL equal and with dignity that comes from being ALONE in His image or one does not.

If the doctrine of freedom is true, that we are all Created Equal and that we are endowed by our Creator with certain Rights BECAUSE we are ALONE Created in His image, then it is reasonable that this truth should be promoted and upheld and respected by private persons and by public policy itself, because if God judges individuals, He will certainly judge nations and states! It is not reasonable to say on one hand that you believe there is a God who Created us and then say that you are for creating public policy, especially in the area of educating our children, that must not ever acknowledge or promote that truth! If you deny that society, even in its public policy, can and should promote something as true that all or most all of its citizens hold to be true in the first place than, in reality, you do not truly believe in that which you SAY you believe!

This is, however, the classic symptom of a latter-day civilization- the will to stand for a belief system, or really ANYTHING at all, beyond just immediate needs we feel right now, collapses and with it the will to live and then the whole civilization. When a civilization collapses this does not mean everything stops, it means that the fundamental beliefs and assumptions of that civilization collapse and are replaced by a culture whose boundaries are only limited by wealth and power, making those who have wealth and power “free” to do as they please to WHOM they please while making those who lack wealth and power pawns and tools of their “betters.”

Western Civilization once held to a strong Christian, or as some say, “Judeo-Christian” worldview but while the nation-states or peoples once associated with that Civilization have the appearance of being alive, in reality, Western Civilization has already passed away: the “shell” that remains is all form and no substance, all lip service and no conviction! The present talk of a “post-Christian era”, which even some ill-informed “Christians” talk about in a “matter of fact” manner, comes out of a basic mistaken assumption that Christian civilization will not continue and manifest itself in NEW venues with NEW Peoples and Nations, like it once did when Western Civilization triumphed over Roman Civilization (at least in the West).

Freedom, like life, is rugged and persistent: if you THINK freedom is going away simply because Western Civilization has ceased to function as a more or less “Christian” civilization, then you do not understand Freedom! When godlessness runs rampant on the carcass of a dead civilization, Freedom takes root on fresh soil with NEW people, people who are WITHIN and outside of the old, dead civilization.

Godlessness has LOST every single battle it has ever waged against freedom, and that will NEVER change!