Separation of Church and State

Our country has narrowly avoided a tragedy: the default of the US on a number of its payments. Had we defaulted, we would have had to instantly cut our spending from around $325 billion a month to $200 billion a month. Say goodbye to retirement benefits for many government employees, a number of current employees, some entitlement programs, DOD spending, and many other projects and operations we run. Because the interest would still have to be paid (roughly $36 billion a month), this means our actual expenses would have gone from $289 billion down to $164 billion. This is essentially what the Tea Party wanted to do with the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, reducing spending to never exceed income. It sounds good in theory, but slashing that high a percentage of programs all at once leads to:
- Far worse unemployment, since the US gov't is responsible, either directly or indirectly through contractors, for so many employees.
- More people dependent on churches and other charities than ever before, taxing their resources.
- Probably an initial surge in stock prices, but that would affect mostly those who are rich enough to not need the money.
- This surge would be followed by collapse as the unemployment and GDP figures come out.
- Many people losing their homes.
- Many not being able to afford health care.
- This list goes on and on and on. These effects would eventually level out, but it would take the better part of a decade for stability to return and even then, it would not be the same as it is now.

The Democrats' response was to raise the debt ceiling by almost $3 trillion, cut only $900 billion in spending (enough for about 7 months), and agree to talk about cutting up to a total of $3 trillion off spending in the next decade, though these changes would not have to be ratified. At best, that's only 20% of our overages over the next decade and that's IF things don't get worse and all these changes are enacted.

Imagine a man going to the hospital with a gash in his neck. It's bleeding quickly, so they rush him to surgery prep and the two surgeons on call debate about what to do to stop the bleeding. One says, "I think we oughtta put a tourniquet around his neck." The other says, "Let's put a band-aid on and hope for the best." And then they argued about this until the very last second before the patient died and then performed a lazy surgery that just slowed the bleeding enough that they could keep the patient alive with blood transfusions.

We have elections coming up next year. Many Senators and Representatives will be kicked out, Obama may or may not be re-elected, and it seems that many of the Republican candidates are viewed as nutjobs that not even Republicans really like. Palin seems like a backwaters rube with no foreign experience, Romney has flipped back and forth on major issues, Bachmann (though I haven't followed her enough to know her actual stances) seems to be regarded as a little off her rocker, and Rick Perry has the, "Oh, Lord, not another Texan!" zeitgeist hanging over him courtesy of Bush.

I go on CNN for most of my news and, as I'm sure you're aware, it's a very liberal-leaning site. Most of the people who post on articles there are also liberals and one of the things they bring up most often about the Republicans (to bash them or make fun of them) is that they're Christian. Christianity is now looked at as a bad thing by a large number, and perhaps a majority, of people in this country, particularly when you try to bring your beliefs with you into public office. "Oh, you can't do that! Separation of church and state!"

The thing is that everyone brings their beliefs into office with them. A person can't do anything against their beliefs. And that is the point of this post (I know, I took my sweet time getting here, didn't I?)

You may be thinking: well, of course they can. Look at all these pastors caught cheating on their wives. Look at all the politicians standing for one thing during their campaigns and then changing their minds when it comes time to vote. Even I've made a mistake or two along the way.

Yes, that's all true. The point, though, is that nothing mentioned is really against the person's beliefs, or at least not their primary beliefs. Let's take lying for example. You may say it's wrong to lie and believe that, yet lie when it gets you out of trouble. Let's take it a step further and say that you lie to keep someone else out of trouble. You do this because you believe that person should stay out of trouble more than you believe lying is bad. Your primary belief takes over your lesser ones. With the pastors, their belief that they have a right to be happy or enjoy another woman outweighs their belief that God wants what is best for them and that this is not it.

Using this, we can define religion as our core beliefs. I'd encourage you to take some time to define yours. Be very careful when you do this. Your head will almost certainly tell you something different than your heart, but your head is not where religion comes from. The reason I give this warning is that those reading this (assuming most are Christians) will probably jump up to say the Christian mantra about Jesus dying for them, being resurrected, etc. I don't mean to disparage that, but if that were your true core belief, the one thing you held true, you'd never sin, and yet you do. So there's some core belief above that one, somewhere, or at the very least, competing neck-and-neck with it.

For me, at my core, I believe I deserve to be loved, accepted, and forgiven. It tears me apart that everyone else can find dates so easily (or at least has people who want to date them), is somebody's best or 2nd-best friend, is generally liked by the groups they're a part of, and is genuinely forgiven for most of what they do wrong. It makes me feel like less of a person that I have/am none of these. (I don't say this in an effort to get anyone to pity me; I'm using this just as an example.) As an offshoot of this, combined with the fear I will never be as human as other people, I believe I deserve to find happiness in what small ways I can. Some of these are "lesser" sins, some are not sinful at all, but all further cement me in my beliefs because they are all I really know of happiness.

I stepped down from the leadership team of my young adults group. I needed to get my mind and, more importantly, my heart right. It's hard when I don't even know what that looks like.

It was a position where I had not separated church and state, but I had the wrong church. What is your church? What is your state? How well do the two really align? Just some food for thought.