Two Things You Can Do to Make the World a Better Place Today

Tom Sheppard

10/16/2020

Many people today are very agitated about the state of our nation and the world. Everyone has their own reasons for being distraught. Some are so upset that they are taking to the streets in protests. Others are engaging in violent and riotous behavior, either believing that violence is the only way to effect change, or because they feel others have no right to their own views or property.

For many Americans taking to the streets is either too extreme, ineffective, or dangerous. They feel helpless in the face of these strong storm winds of change. Typically, the silent majority remains silent, speaking only through their votes, rather than carrying placards, or guns, in the streets.  However, times like these seem to require more than just silently casting our votes, because many interpret silence as acceptance.  That implicit acceptance feeds their belief that they are a majority rather than a minority view.

The reality is that the protestors and violent actors represent a small, but very vocal and active minority in this country. The majority of people believe that change can, and should be enacted through non-violent, civil means.

What is Fundamental Change?

While some of those espousing the need for change are calling for "fundamental" changes in this country, the majority of people are understandably reluctant and resistant to fundamental changes in our country. They have good reason for their reticence.

The phrase "fundamental change" literally means changing our foundations.  To be clear, the foundation of our nation is the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional Amendments.  So, anyone calling for fundamental change is calling for the abolition of the US Constitution either in whole or in large part.

The publicly stated premise of the need for this fundamental change is a false charge that the United States is fundamentally flawed and supports racism and other unjustices through the very concepts, ideals, and organization framed in our Constitution.

When you liken the Constitution to the foundation of country you can fully understand what people like CNN correspondent Don Limon means when he talks of "burn[ing] it all down."  If you want to replace the foundation of a building, in most cases, you have to tear down the whole building and start over.  This is exactly what these activists are talking about.  What is more, the new foundation they want to install is Marxism, also known as communism, socialism, statism, fascism, progressivism, liberalism, etc.

Institutional Racism Has Been Removed

I stated above that a key driver of demand for all this change is a false charge of fundamental racism.  This cry of fundamental racism is an extension of a similarly false charge of systemic racism pervading our nation and its institutions.

I say these charges are false based on the mountains of evidence which refute these charges.  Although there is not sufficient space in this short column (or in a whole library) to demonstrate all the evidence refuting these claims I will provide a few counterpoints to support my belief that these are false charges.

The Declaration of Independence which set forth the guiding principles which led to the creation of our Constitution boldly declares that, "all men are created equal" and all have the same rights. Further it states that the source of these rights come to individuals by right of birth, not dispensed or revoked by any government of men.  These declarations exempted no one.  

While it is true that the protection of these rights was imperfectly implemented in the Constitution, those imperfections which supported slavery and the limitation of rights based on race were cured with both the blood shed in the US Civil War and legislation in subsequent years including amendments to the constitution ensuring equal rights for all citizens without regard to gender, race, or religion.  The fact that those imperfections were cured within the current framework demonstrates that the foundation is both strong and worthy of continued support.

Racism Persists

While it is inarguable that racist and sexist behaviors continue to persist in individuals and even in some societies and businesses, the purging of racism and sexism from the halls of federal, state, county, and city governments across the United States of America is clearly demonstrated in both statute and court cases where such anti-social behaviors have been punished with both criminal and civil penalties.  Likewise court cases demonstrate that the weight of law has been consistently been brought to bear to rectify racist and sexist discrimination in both public and private institutions and societies wherever it has been found.

In short, the history of our nation shows over and over again that our system of government is very effective in the ongoing perfection of the defenses of our rights.  

A More Perfect Union

Some seek to discredit the Constitution and our national foundation by pointing out the flaws of the founders.  Noting how some of their behaviors were in greater or lesser degree in conflict with the ideals they embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  The notion here is that their creation could not be less flawed than the founders.

The reality is that the founders were not perfect.  Many of them had aspects of their lives which were not in full harmony with the principles they put forward in the framing of our government.  As noted above, some of their imperfections were passed on through the Constitution.  

While individuals have the option of repenting and changing their behaviors to align their actions more closely with their principles, those attacking the foundation of our nation would have you believe that no such means to remedy defects exists for our government.  However, as I mentioned above, those means not only exist, they have been applied and continue to be applied.  

Because of its amendments, our Constitution today is a more perfect document than it was when it and the The Bill of Rights were ratified back in 1787.  

Our founders declared their intent was to create "a more perfect union."  What the created was not perfect.  It was, however, more perfect than what it replaced.  And since then, it has been perfected further.

The world today is so much better than it ever has been before because of the existence and rise of the United States of America.

To this point in my column I have explained why our union does not require fundamental change.  What follows is to help to take action to protect our foundation from those who want to burn down our nation and rip up the US Constitution.

Action #1 - Stop looking to government to solve societal problems.

Those who are seeking to "burn it all down" are rationalizing their efforts on the basis that the government is not adequately addressing societal ills.  This argument rests on a false foundational premise.  It assumes that it is the role of government to cure the ailments of our society.  

The problem with this assumption is that our societal ailments are neither more nor less than manifestations of our own human imperfections and bad actions driven by ungodly defects in human nature.  When I say ungodly, I mean that literally. 

Ungodly defects in human nature are those motives, thoughts, and actions which are in conflict with the best attributes we believe are inherent in deity, e.g., love, charity, kindness, generosity, etc.  Any efforts which profess to be attempting to rid us of these ungodly defects are reflexively wrapped in a mantle of altruism because they appear to be aimed at making us better people and thus making the world a better place.

Government Cannot Change Human Nature

Unfortunately, there is no government or economic architecture which has ever been devised and tested in the history of this world which is capable of transforming human nature into a more godly version of itself.  That is the realm of religion, not government.

The reason governments fail to effect this transformation is because they, necessarily, are only able to control the outward behaviors of people and cannot force thoughts and beliefs to change on demand.  Those which have tried, notably communism is in this camp, have used mass extermination to eradicate those whose manifested thoughts and beliefs, or behaviors, failed to conform.

In contrast with the universal failure of government in this regard, religion has achieved the transformation of man's nature on several individual and at least two documented collective occasions.  However, the ability to sustain a community of such transformed individuals has been, at a minimum limited by individual life spans and sometimes they were exterminated by those with differing beliefs or agendas.  

Successful Individual Transformations Achieved by Religion

According to Buddhism, the Buddha successfully transformed his nature, and then taught others.

According to Islam, Mohammed's nature was changed as he became the prophet, and he then taught others.

Judaism and Christianity teach that Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Peter, Saul/Paul, and John the Revelator all overcame the defects in their human nature to transform into the kind of people we should be.  I omit Jesus of Nazareth from this list because although "he learned wisdom" in this life, his disciples believe he was perfect from birth, rather than achieving some transformation during his mortal life.  It is his nature that Christians seek to emulate.

Successful Collective Transformations Achieved by Religion

According to the Old Testament, not only did Enoch achieve personal transformation to the point where he "walked with God,"  the entire city of Zion, people led by Enoch, achieved that transformation to the point where all of them were "caught up into heaven."

The New Testament records a period where the disciples of Christ, for a time at least, achieved a very happy state where they had all things in common and had no poor among them.

Successful Individual or Collective Transformations Achieved by Socialism

• The Soviet Union - NO 20+ million killed (just by Stalin) trying to make it work.
• Cambodia - NO 2+ million killed trying under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to make it work.
• Cuba - NO with nearly 100,000 dissidents dead, the country still looks like it is living in the early 1950's, at best. 
• Venezuela - NO 7,000+ dead by "security forces" with violent unrest and rampant poverty
• China - NO 45+ millions killed already with tens of thousands more in "re-education" camps right now.

With this sort of proven track record shown in this scorecard you would think that socialism in all its forms would be dead and buried, never to rise again.  However, like some shambling, shuffling, half-decayed horrifying walking-dead zombie in a B-grade film socialism continues to rise up and threaten the lives of us all.

If the zombie of socialism were as blatantly distinct from our current government it would be easy to hunt it down and kill it.  However, at least since FDR's New Deal, socialism has been making massive inroads into the American government.  So many socialist solutions have been implemented to lesser degrees that nearly the whole economy and government has been converted over to socialism piecemeal.  Don't believe me?  Take a good hard look through this lens.

Anytime government is tasked with doing something for people which they should be doing for themselves, that is a form of socialism.

Social Security is Socialism

The Great Depression threw many people into poverty and highlighted the fact that many of the elderly lacked sufficient means to support themselves in their waning years.  In response, Congress passed the Social Security Act and FDR signed it into law on August 14, 1935. The underlying notion of Social Security is that we somehow have a life-long right to economic security and everyone around us is responsible to protect that right.

Economic Security is Not a Right

Take note that economic security was not listed in The Declaration of Independence as one of our inalienable rights, nor did it appear in any form in The Bill of Rights, or any constitutional amendment.  The notion of this "right" is based on the idea that it is the "right" thing for us to care for the less fortunate among us.

This is not only a perversion of transforming morally right behavior into a legally defensible right it uses immoral means to support this morality.  In the past, impoverished people, if they were unable to rectify their own situation turned first to family and then to the community through private charities.  

Private Charity Beats Government Programs

Private charities and families rely on morally impelled charity to help the impoverished.  Government uses forced taxation and income redistribution, which are immoral means to try to remedy a moral wrong.

Healthcare is Not a Right

Medicare and Medicaid likewise are state sponsored charity.  Both are aimed at setting right a morally wrong situation where people are unable to afford their health care.  In fact the whole notion currently being promoted around "Medicare for All" is just a logical extension of this usurpation of private charity by the state.  Are you seeing a pattern here?  

Congressman Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist and erstwhile Presidential candidate has proclaimed that from the socialist view private charities should be abolished.  The socialist view is that all "charity" is handled by the state by using tax dollars pulled from the pockets of working people.

When President Johnson declared the "war on poverty" he integrated a whole new raft of government programs to "right" a moral wrong of people living in poverty.  He attacked the problem through taxes and government programs instead of promoting what was already working to reduce the number and percentage of people in poverty - self-reliance, hard work, thrift, and the safety net of the nuclear family.  The results speak for themselves - destruction of the nuclear family among the poor, rising poverty levels, rising crime rates in poor areas, and the list of human misery just keeps mounting with every new wrong that socialists want to make right with the power of government. 

How can you determine if a politician or social movement is promoting good or bad solutions?  

Use the simple question, will the implementation of this result in increased dependence on government or increased emphasis on self-reliance?  

Take note, I ask you to consider not just the hype, but to consider how it will look once it is implemented.  If it is the former, oppose it.  If the latter, support it.  

Here are some practical ways to implement Action #1.

Read and analyze party platforms (national and state) to uncover whether the party philosophy trends toward reliance on government or self-reliance of individuals.  Most parties post their platforms online now so they are relatively easy to find.

Read and analyze proposed and actual legislation and ordinances to uncover whether they tend to increase the intrusion of government into private lives or to protect individual and states’ rights.

Study the effects of existing laws and ordinances to uncover whether they tend to support self-reliance and individual industry or government dependence.  Look at key demographic trends before and after a given piece of legislation was introduced.

For example, if you look at poverty rates in the US, particularly in the Black American community you will see that the rates were falling steadily for many years prior to LBJ's War nn Poverty.  After, the rates leveled out, instead of continuing to decline, and have begun to climb. 

It is telling that a key indicator of poverty is whether or not there are two parents in the home.  Prior to The War on Poverty, the percentage of single mothers in the Black American community was less than 10%, now it is well above 50%.  It seems pretty clear that the economic incentives in this legislation had the effect of encouraging out-of-wedlock marriages and the dissolution of the nuclear family.  

The results have been devastating the the Black American community, locking multiple generations into poverty and enforcing the soft bigotry of low expectations to exacerbate the problem by discouraging academic achievement by children.

Study and analyze both the voting records and pronouncements of candidates and politicians to uncover where their words and deeds align with the protection of individual and states’ rights and encourage self-reliance or government dependency.

Action #2 - Make Your Views Known

Exert your influence to encourage the cause of liberty, self-reliance, charity, and decreased worship of government as the cure for all our ills. Bear in mind, this step is neither passive nor free of costs.  The biggest costs may be the loss of friends and the vitriol of those who disagree with your views.  Whenever you take a stand, there are inevitably those who will oppose you.  These days, that opposition has proven to be particularly nasty and uncivil.

Whether or not others become uncivil is irrelevant. If you want to maintain the moral high ground that comes with supporting our unalienable rights (and their attendant responsibilities) you need to maintain high standards of civility and decorum.  Descending to the level of those who oppose you degrades you and your position, creating a semblance of moral equivalence between the principles you promote and those you oppose.

Use social media appropriately – don’t go negative.

Most of us are far too familiar with how nasty people can be on the internet.  Don't be one of those folks.  When you use social media, keep it positive and uplifting.

Many years ago while I was serving as a missionary, one of my trainers pointed out a very important principle to me.  He taught me that there are two ways to attempt to win people to your view. 

One way is to tear down the view of others while touting the brilliance of your view.  He pointed out that this seldom works because it puts people on the defensive.  They tend to become reactive and are so busy thinking of how to defend or attack that they often quit listening to the positive points you are trying to make.

The alternative is to largely ignore the view of others while simply talking up the good points and benefits of your view.  Many times, this wholly positive approach disarms them a bit and draws them in to look at your view more deeply and begin to ask questions.

To that end, here are a few rules of the road to remember:

• Make sure your posts and comments encourage support for your views without denigrating others
• Make complimentary comments, likes, follows, and shares of posts which support your views without denigrating others.
• Engage in civil discourse instead of uncivil discourse.

Please note, avoiding denigrating other view points does not mean avoiding disagreeing with them.  I am not calling for the total avoidance of conflict.  Rather, I am calling for the use of constructive conflict instead of destructive conflict.  

Constructive conflict is conflict that doesn't leave people damaged in its wake.

Civil discourse means learning how to disagree without being disagreeable. 

• Use facts as much as possible. Don't blindly repost memes either for or against.  Make the time to do a little research and try to verify facts before sharing them.
• When you move from fact to belief, state it as a belief.  This clarity bolsters your use of facts and deprives opponents of the opportunity to justifiably call you out for substituting beliefs for facts.
• Do not use insults or name-calling (ad hominem attacks).  When you resort to hurling insults at your opponents it is because you have lost your ability to use facts and reason and are resorting wholly to emotion to exert influence.  While emotion has its place, all too often it leads people into indefensible and ill-considered positions.
• Engage with and support political candidates and parties that align with your views.

Consider Running for Public Office

Having run for office I can tell you it is no picnic.  It takes some money, good support, and a lot of hustle.  As nasty as it may sound, running for office is all about marketing, and you are the product.

Perhaps the worst aspect of running for office is the very negative views many people have about politicians.  As soon as you run for office, you are now a politician.  All those unkind things you may have said or heard about lying, dishonest politicians will now be said to you and about you.

Look local first. School Board, City Council, Mayor, County Council, County Clerk, etc.

It sounds trite, but it is true, the higher you go in politics the less you can actually affect.  You can have the most significant impact at the local levels rather than at state and federal levels.

Summary

Two things you can do to make the world a better place today are to stop looking for a governmental solution to societal ills and make your influence felt in a positive way.  These are pretty simple, but not particularly easy steps.  However, you can do them and they will begin to immediately make your tiny corner of the universe a bit better.

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

Lying Liberal Altruists

Image (c) iqoncept and Depositphotos.com

                              This article is an excerpt from Godvernment: Government as God 

Tom Sheppard

9/4/2020

The Lie of Liberal Altruism

In the 25th chapter of Matthew, the Savior speaks of the final judgment.  To those who have done well and to those who have not, He offers the same explanation for the reward they are offered.  He tells them all that, "... inasmuch as ye have done [or not done] it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

He is referring to how they did, or did not, take care of the poor, the sick, the destitute, and the afflicted among them.

Today, much of our political debate and divide appears to be focused on how we, as a society, believe we should go about taking care of the least advantaged among us.

For many years, as I read or heard these words, I believed that Jesus was speaking metaphorically.  I believed He was saying that He was holding us accountable for our treatment of our fellow human beings, and He is certainly saying that.  However, I am now convinced that Jesus was not speaking metaphorically in this matter.  Rather, He was being completely literal.

We learn elsewhere that in His atoning sacrifice, He suffered all the pains of humanity (Doctrine and Covenants 18:11), so that He could learn to succor those in need (Hebrews 2:18).  I suggest that, in a very real way, He has actually shared and felt the very pains of the homeless, the hungry, the naked, those in prison, and those who wash up on the edges of our society like flotsam washing up on a beach, and, that He did not suffer those pains in some abstract way, or as a derivative of what those people suffer—rather, through some incomprehensible mechanism, He is and was able to fully feel the actual pains that each of us has suffered and will suffer.  Having felt those actual pains, He then can understand our situation completely and can comfort us, or forgive us, in exact measure according to our pain and need.

Knowing that He feels the pains of others, when we help those in need, when we relieve the suffering of those in anguish or pain, when we feed the hungry, we directly reduce the amount of suffering and pain that Christ suffers.  Likewise, when we cause others to suffer, we add to the pain that He suffers.  When we fail to act to alleviate the pain and suffering of others, we fail to alleviate His pain and suffering.

I believe that is true.

In light of that belief, some would suppose that I would be driven to embrace the social welfare model of government (aka socialism, communism, progressivism, liberalism, fascism).  In fact, much of the social welfare model of government wraps itself in a mantle of altruism about caring for the less fortunate among us, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Socialists like Bernie Sanders and liberals like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seek to destroy the rich (other than themselves), and even the middle class, and make us all equally poor together.

I despise their cries to destroy the wealthy in order to help the poor, and there is no hypocrisy in my feelings.  You cannot lift anyone up by tearing someone else down.

When Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and their ilk talk about helping the poor and relieving suffering, they are not talking about digging deep into their own pockets and giving until it hurts themselves in order to help others.  They are content to keep their own wealth, gained by feeding at the trough of the taxpayers.  They will keep their wealth, and instead they will dig deep into the pockets of others and force them to give until it hurts.

Their hypocrisy in their failure to live the very principles they are espousing is as clear and horrendous as that of any Christian preacher who rails from the pulpit against the evils of the flesh, and then is caught in adultery and debauchery.  Their altruistic battle cries of "soak the rich" mask the brutal reality of their policies, which actually soak everyone who is above the poverty line in order to make us all poor together and ensure that the only path to wealth and comfort is through service to the state.

We need to re-enshrine the notion of individual action and individual accountability in our nation, especially when it comes to the issues of caring for the poor and disadvantaged.  A thrust toward individual accountability is in direct opposition to the socialist thrust of collective accountability.

Each individual should take personal action to help those who are less advantaged than they.  Each person should do according to their ability and means.  This does not mean that we cannot band together into charitable organizations to magnify our efforts, but we should not ever rely upon the power of taxation, which is nothing less than forcible redistribution of wealth, in order to take care of those who are disadvantaged.

I make a notable exception in this for military veterans.  Military veterans are the only organization which has earned the right to partake of a portion of the public treasury to support them in their times of trouble.  Because they have literally offered their lives in the service of our country, they are actually entitled to support through taxation.

Food for thought!

See Tom's political views on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TomSheppardPoliticalViews/ 
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard 

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

Your comments are welcome. Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as GodClick on the image below to buy your copy today

Godvernment is available in both paperback and ebook format through Amazon.

A Crisis of Faith

Image (C) Depositphotos.com                      

                               This article is an excerpt from Godvernment: Government as God 

Tom Sheppard

9/4/2020

Many people have lost faith in God and religion.  In the past, many people looked to God, religion, and faith for the solutions to both personal and societal maladies. 

For instance, the answer to eliminating poverty was both through private charitable efforts and an explicit acknowledgement that “the poor are with you always.”

In the United States, that approach was working very well, with the numbers and percentage of the populace living in poverty dropping year after year, right up until the government declared war on poverty, and then the numbers began to steadily climb.

The answer to eliminate war and promote global peace seemed to be to convert everyone else to believe in the same god.

Unfortunately, with the rise of ISIS, we can see that even believing in the same god, and further, accepting one person as a messenger of god, does not eliminate war.  Just last week, ISIS claimed credit for bombing a market in Baghdad, where the objective was to kill and intimidate into submission Muslims who are unwilling to submit to ISIS and their specific view of how the worship of Allah and the teachings of his prophet Mohammed should be implemented.

The Age of Reason likewise attracted people away from putting their faith in a supernatural being (God), and instead encouraged them to put their faith in the collective potential of humankind with its ability to reason, to innovate, to discover, and to build.

In spite of what some may say, this is not the first time in history where humankind has made a concerted effort to remove God from His throne and place humanity there in His stead.

The Tower of Babel is a Lesson in the Folly of Collectivism

You may read it as history, as doctrine, or simply as a cautionary tale, but the story of the Tower of Babel is about this very situation.

According to The Holy Bible, up to this point in history, all human beings spoke the same language, and, most were settled fairly closely together.  They were all under the leadership of one king.

The people looked back at the stories of the destruction of humanity in the Flood of Noah, and they decided that they didn’t like the idea of God being able to wipe them out, so, they came up with a plan to make them independent of God and impervious to His wrath or commandments.

They didn’t like His threat of destruction, and they didn’t agree with how He said that they should be living their lives.

Step 1 of their plan was to make it so that God couldn’t possibly destroy them.  To do that, they set about building a tower that was so big and strong that everyone could live in it and it could withstand any flood or other natural disaster.

Step 2 of their plan was to remove God from His position of authority and put someone in His place that was more to their liking.  So they would build the tower tall enough to reach into the heavens where God dwells and send in the army to depose Him.

All of the people understood the objective and the plan.  There was no miscommunication because they all spoke the same language.  They all played their parts because they were all subject to the same government, which had the power to enforce cooperation from anyone who didn’t want to contribute their ‘fair share” of their time and property to this important, world-saving objective.

What happened next was totally unexpected by them.  God, instead of raising flood waters or sending down fire from Heaven to destroy this tower, this centerpiece of the war against God, just caused a subtle change to come upon them so that all of a sudden, where before there had only been one language, there was now a multitude of languages.  Where before there had been clarity of word, and hence purpose, now there was only the unintelligible babbling of thousands of confused individuals.

People, quite naturally and necessarily, gravitated toward those whose language they could understand.  In very short order, the massive, concerted undertaking was utterly abandoned, as groups of people fled away from other groups whose intentions could no longer be understood through a simple conversation.

Human nature—always suspicious and fearful of those who are different—asserted itself, and the effort to first defy and then overthrow the powers of Heaven was forgotten and abandoned.

The abandoned tower was subsequently destroyed, without the death of thousands, by a combination of earthquake and tornado (whirlwind).

Today, we have many people who ardently disbelieve in God and embrace human ingenuity and human resources as the only reliable source for solving the ills of our day.  To end war, they seek to implement a unified world government.  The foundation stones of this are seen in Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations and its current incarnation, the United Nations.

For these people, God is the cause of war—not a solution.  They seek to first make all religions morally equivalent and then prove them morally inferior to humanism, thus eliminating the divisive issue of the nature of God, humanity’s relationship to God, and which god is real.

The Humanist Recipe for Eliminating Religious Conflict

1.       Make people believe all religions are morally equivalent.

2.       Make people believe religion is morally inferior to humanism.

3.       Make people believe that humanity can, and must, save itself from its own worst nature.

Image (c) Depositphotos.com

Religion Causes War

While it is inarguable that many wars and atrocities have been committed in the name of various religions, these horrors were not perpetrated by God.  Rather, religious wars are typically the result of secular leaders using religion and religious conflict as a means to elevate their own power by uniting their constituents behind into one body, dedicated to protecting home, family, and freedom from the moral and physical predations of this identifiable, external threat in the form of a group that believes in a different god.

Hitler used the Jews to this end.  He leveraged anti-Semitism and elevated it from individual prejudice into a national threat.  After whipping up a significant number of people into fear and loathing of the Jews, he used the fists and clubs of his own adherents, posing as representatives of the majority of people, to assault the Jews and to rob them of property and life.

Having managed to stir up a significant number of Germans to support his view of Jews as a threat, and having cowed the majority of his people into silence on the topic, he used this kernel of unity to set up a variety of laws and policies which aligned the remaining Christian religious organizations as subordinate to the state and supportive of the worship of Hitler and Nazism as the cure for the ills and injustices that beset the German people.

Hitler’s socialist success, compared to the relative failure of Stalin’s international communism, was due in large part to his appeal to nationalistic pride while setting up an enemy that was in their very midst and was easily identified.

Marxism and international communism seek to pit the “us” of the common worker against the “them” of the rich.  Unfortunately, the definition of “rich” is a totally relative measure.  Add to this the fact that capitalism opens a path where common workers can transform into the rich.

In contrast, national socialism, and Hitler in particular, targeted a “them” who were easily identifiable.  The Jews set themselves apart from the world by their unique religious practices and dress.  They can be seen and attacked without the confusing standard of rich or poor.

Increasingly, Christians are being set out as a people apart due to their practices and dress.  This dramatic separation of Christians from humanists will accelerate and will soon be sufficiently distinctive that Christians will be able to be targeted for persecution without the confusing standard of rich or poor.

When government is set up as God—the supreme source of good in our lives—the worship of any other deity becomes heresy and treason, a crime against the people, and a crime against humanity.  As we know, treason and crimes against humanity are the most serious violations of the social compact.  As such, they justify the confiscation of all material goods, incarceration, and even death at the hands of the people.

Image (c) Depositphotos.com

Mobocracy and Lawlessness are Justified

In this kind of world, mob violence, when directed against “them,” will be considered a justified community service.  Those whom the mob fails to root out and lynch, government agents will arrest, try, and hang.  Some, along the way, will be tortured and killed by government agents.  This lawless behavior will be not only tolerated, but encouraged because the end—purging humanity of its “evil” elements—justifies any measures, because the stated end objective is the salvation of humanity and our transformation into better creatures.

Ultimately, Hitler led the German people willingly into the horrors of World War II.  Germany went down the road to war in a religious crusade to establish the Aryan race in its “rightful” place at the head of the human family so that the Aryans could lead humanity forward into purity and nobility.

The infamous “Final Solution”[i] was justifiable to the Nazi leadership because it would eliminate a source of racial impurity and degeneration.  It would remove what they believed was an obstacle inhibiting the creation of a race of supermen and superwomen—Aryans—who would be the culmination of millennia of human progress.

Image (c) Alessio Moiola and Depositphotos.com

Collectivism is the Cure to Poverty

Just as worshippers of government mistakenly believe that collectivism removes the causes of war by removing God, they believe that the answer to large-scale human suffering, such as poverty, is to use the power of compulsion and bring to bear the resources of the whole of humanity to redistribute the wealth of individuals from rich to poor and thus eliminate poverty at a stroke.

This forcible redistribution of wealth is known variously as communism, socialism, progressivism, liberalism and fascism.  It is appropriate to lump all of these political movements under the umbrella of collectivism. 

Collectivism is an appropriate label, because all of these movements seek to abolish all personal property and collect all the resources of humanity into the hands of government for management and administration by government officials.  This administration is avowedly done for the greater good of humanity.  The reality is that a government elite live in luxury while the rest of the world lives in grinding poverty.

The missionaries of Godvernment prefer to ignore the actual effects of this scheme wherever it has been actually put into practice, in places such as the now-defunct USSR and the nations of the Warsaw Pact, as well as more current examples of  The People’s Republic of China, Cambodia, Cuba, or Venezuela.

Capitalists are Criminals

In contrast with utopian qualities of society that these missionaries (such as Senator Bernie Sanders)  preach will result from the implementation of this forcible redistribution of wealth, we see widespread poverty and deprivation, a world of scarcity for most and abundance for a very, very few.  The only avenue to lift yourself or your family from the poverty that the masses are locked into is by climbing the ranks of the governmental ladder to enjoy greater abundance as a reward for the “greater service” you are rendering your fellow citizens in your governmental role.

Well, government service isn’t quite the only avenue to abundance.  The other avenue is to become a black-market capitalist.  Because any kind of capitalism is viewed as selfish, it is categorized as criminal activity, so a life of crime or government servitude are the two choices for anyone not content to live off what the government decides is adequate for you and your family.  If you want abundance in your life in a collectivist world, you either become a criminal or a zealot.

Image (c) Depositphotos.com

Godvernment Creates Divine Humans

What these missionaries of forcible wealth redistribution are hoping to achieve is to reshape humankind into the kind of creature that we ought to be, instead of what we are.

CS Lewis, in his book, The Abolition of Man, referred to this effort to engineer a better man as an attempt to use the resources of humankind to create a superman, or a god. 

And this is the ultimate collision point between God and government.  These social engineers and God both have the goal of reshaping humankind into the kind of creatures we ought to be instead of what we are.

You might think that having a common goal would allow the social engineers and the followers of God to unite and find a common cause.  Unfortunately, the reality is just the opposite.

The social engineers are wise enough to know that alone, and in isolation, they have no hope at all of effecting the changes needed in society to establish an environment that is conducive to shape individuals into better creatures, so they seek to marshal the resources of all of humanity to this end.  To do that, they understand the need eliminate all factions which divide humanity.  They seek to return the world to the same state and mindset as the builders of the Tower of Babel.

One of the single most divisive elements within human society is religion. 

Religion Reveals the Meaning of Life

When you consider that religions are built around the central premise of helping people to understand the meaning of life, inasmuch as those answers diverge, or the ways to achieve the highest in us diverges, the potential for energetic disagreement is inherent.

If you reject the very notion of the existence of a being that is far more intelligent and powerful than humans, or you acknowledge the possibility, but believe this deity is uninterested in our fates, it becomes a logical next step that humanity must rely on its own devices to survive and become better.

Rejecting the existence of help from God, the earnest seeker after a meaningful life, desiring the greater good of all humanity logically concludes that any notion that points the hope of people for betterment away from human institutions is a dangerous, perhaps even fatal, distraction.  In this mindset, it stands to reason that religion and the worship of any and all deities must be eliminated or made irrelevant.

This is, in fact, the conclusion of those who are actively seeking to drive religion from the public square.

Unity is Essential

God, on the other hand, has no compelling need to take these rationalist-social engineers off the board to achieve His ends.  While it is true that they are a fly in the ointment, He knows that one of the fundamental factors in the transformation of any human being from what they are into what they should be is the element of actual choice.

In this, the rationalist, human-intellect-worshipping social engineers actually play a part in His plan.  They provide a clear choice for individuals.

Each individual can choose to worship at the altar of human intellect, which dictates that to change the inner person, you must first change the circumstances (hence the social engineering), or we can choose to worship at the altar of God, who tells us that regardless of our circumstances, we must make morally correct choices.

So, the missionaries for collectivism have a compelling need to shift the faith of human beings from faith in God to faith in humankind.  With God in the picture, the path to change humanity cannot be compelled because the conscience of the God worshipper may rebel against the acts which the humanity worshipper deems necessary for his end goal.

The interesting parallel here is that God has said, “if ye are not one, ye are not mine.”  Likewise, the humanity worshippers are saying, “if you are not one with me, then ye are not mine.”  If they need to somehow get rid of you or silence your dissent so that they can move forward with the appearance of unity, then so be it.

Outward Behavior Flows From Inward Conviction

Here again, the difference in the focus between these government worshippers and God worshippers is startling.  The government worshippers are focused on at least having everyone appear to be unified, regardless of how the citizens of this world order actually feel.  For them, the focus is wholly on the “acceptable” outward conduct.  They believe that if they can change or control the outward behavior, they can change or control the inner thinking.

The world believes that if you change a man’s circumstances, you will change the heart of man.  To this end, they seek to forcibly move wealth from those who have to those who have not.  They hope, in vain, that if they give enough material wealth to the predators among us, that those predators will beat their swords into plowshares and become good citizens, ceasing their life of crime and predation.  They believe that assuaging an actual scarcity will alleviate the imagined scarcity, envy, covetousness, and anger that rules the hearts and minds of “bad” people and convert them into “good” people.

“No change of circumstance can repair a defect of character.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In contrast with this focus on changing outward circumstances, Christianity teaches that if you change a man’s heart, his inner circumstances, he will change his outward behavior.

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” 

(Proverbs 23:7).  

God knows that the outward behavior flows from the inward conviction.

Godvernmentalists are not ignorant of the reality that winning the heart and mind creates the best sort of convert.  It creates a convert whose actions will never consciously deviate from the party agenda.  They would love to apply mind control to get people to accept their agenda in both their thoughts and their deeds. 

Toward the end of winning hearts and minds, collectivists have worked long and hard to twist the content of our public educational system to support their views of capitalists as selfish, greedy gluttons and God worshippers as ignorant, backward, unenlightened barbarians. 

They started this educational indoctrination in our colleges and universities back in the 1960s.  The campus protests back then were assiduously fomented by a variety of collectivist agents.  The college students of that day are now sitting in our government with their hands on the levers of power.

Hillary and Bill Clinton were totally caught up in the collectivist agitations during their college days.  They bought into the collectivist agenda, but they are not alone, and the collectivists are not confined to any one political party.  Although the Democratic Party is more wholly and overtly won over to the collectivist cause, a significant segment of the Republican Party elite is supportive of the collectivist agenda and approaches.

Those starry-eyed college students, seduced by the promises of equality and brotherhood in the collectivist song book, eventually got their college degrees and moved on to become politicians and professionals of all sorts.  Many moved into education and journalism, seeing that the hope of changing the world is most easily achieved by bending the minds of the rising generations to fit the collectivist mold.

They have almost wholly taken over the mainstream media, the film industry, and our public education system.  They have become the movers and shakers in their spheres, and they consistently exert their influence to convert others to their worship of humankind and faith in the created instead of in the creator. 

This successful proselytizing of the mainstream media—both news and entertainment—accounts for why the media and Hollywood have been perceived as waging war on God and Christians, because Christianity has traditionally been the majority religion of U.S. citizens.

Conclusions

       What does all this mean to someone who believes in God?

In this collision space between God and government, it is easy to demonize those who are seeking to banish God from the public square.  The demonization is usually driven by a failure to understand the motives behind those who are pushing out God. 

Not only is demonization of collectivists an un-Christian act, it is also the easy way out.  Demonization does not require any understanding.  But failure to understand the motivations of collectivists means misjudging where these folks will actually draw the line in their efforts to banish God.  Driving the worship of God from the public square is a milestone in their efforts, but it is nowhere near the end-game.

The end-game of those who are trying to banish God from the public square is to make the worship of God extinct.  They cannot accept less, because anything less means that humankind is not united in its efforts to transform ourselves into the creatures we should be.

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[i] The origin of the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people, remains uncertain.  What is clear is that the genocide of the Jews was the culmination of a decade of Nazi policy, under the rule of Adolf Hitler.  The "Final Solution" was implemented in stages.  After the Nazi party’s rise to power, state-enforced racism resulted in anti-Jewish legislation, boycotts, "Aryanization," and finally the "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom, all of which aimed to remove the Jews from German society.  After the beginning of World War II, anti-Jewish policy evolved into a comprehensive plan to concentrate and eventually annihilate European Jewry.  https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007704

Food for thought!

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Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

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