President Obama yesterday put forward his executive orders for curbing gun violence. There were twenty-three of them. I read through all twenty-three carefully. While I’m somewhat relieved that he didn’t go beyond the regular misuse of such executive orders—no sweeping new mandates this time—he nevertheless stepped over the constitutional boundary that separates the executive from the legislative. His orders, while not establishing new laws, which would be unconstitutional in itself, still added new spending in the billions. Unless that money already was authorized by Congress, he unilaterally contributed to the growing debt burden of the country. Historically speaking, I’ve seen this before:

No, Mr. President, you are not the state. You are merely the one charged with the responsibility of carrying out the executive functions of the state in conjunction with a duly elected Congress and an independent judiciary. Neither do you have the authority to change the Constitution; only an amendment can do that. My dread over what he might do in the current situation is based on what he already has done. The HHS mandates via Obamacare have trampled on the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantees. If he’s willing to do that, the Second Amendment guarantees won’t faze him either. A couple of cartoonists have captured that concern pretty well:

Many critics of the president have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of his pronouncements on the gun control issue:

And that comment Joe Biden made about curtailing guns to save even one life sounds a little silly if you carry out the logic to its natural end:

The government cannot protect every person at all times. Life comes with risks. If the government tries to achieve that goal, it will cost more lives in the long run when individuals are not allowed to defend themselves effectively against those who seek to do them harm.

For me, the greatest hypocrisy that came to the forefront yesterday was Obama’s use of children at his public signing of those executive orders. Supposedly, this is all for the sake of saving children. Yet his heart is hardened and his conscience seared when it comes to the most unprotected, innocent children of all:

When Obama changes his position on abortion and begins to protect those who need protection the most, then I’ll begin to have some respect for him.

I’ve been cataloging the biggest failures of the church in our day, beginning with a watered-down salvation message, then on to our lack of renewed minds when it comes to putting the faith into practice, allowing worldly thinking to dominate. There’s one more leg on the three-legged stool of failure—the abandonment of Biblical education.

In early America, most education was centered in the church or home, and the lion’s share of the home-schooled portion of society was Christian also. That began to change in the middle of the nineteenth century when people came up with the idea of placing responsibility for education in the hands of the state. One group that eagerly sought this was the Unitarians; they continued to call themselves Christians, but they denied the deity of Christ, didn’t consider the Bible to be divinely inspired, and explained away Biblical accounts of the supernatural. Unitarians wanted to remove education from the control of the orthodox, put the state in charge, and include only the behavioral aspect of Christianity in the teaching. Moral lessons divorced from their eternal base.

Massachusetts was the first state to move toward a top-down, centralized system. The first secretary of the board of education in that state was a Unitarian named Horace Mann, who endorsed the typical Unitarian vision that the “proper” education would yield good citizens. In fact, Mann was so enamored of this vision that he honestly believed the common school system [as it was called then] was the greatest innovation in the history of the world. He was absolutely rapturous in his prediction that if a common school system could be established it would wipe out 90% of all the crime in society. The irony today is that 90% of crimes now are perpetrated in the government schools.

Another group that wanted to put the government in charge was an incipient socialist/communist movement at that time. Disappointed that their utopian commune fell apart because Americans had an attachment to private property, this group formed a political party—the Workingman’s Party—for the express purpose of establishing government-controlled schools where they hoped they could influence the curriculum to teach communist principles. Whereas Unitarians could take control in Massachusetts at least, this group was less successful and couldn’t achieve its goal.

However, the common school idea eventually spread throughout the nation, state by state, primarily because of a third group that also wanted to create a government-controlled environment conducive to its particular beliefs. That third group was the evangelicals of the era. Dismayed by the perceived threat of Catholic immigration, they wanted to diffuse Protestantism through a system that would be forced on everyone. By taking this route, they violated Biblical principles. They used the government to achieve their purpose rather than voluntary means.

For a while, it seemed to work to their advantage because they were the dominant group in society. Over time, though, as an educational establishment drifted away from Biblical underpinnings, that top-down system was turned against Protestant views. Probably the most influential educator of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century was John Dewey, a signer of the Humanist Manifesto who developed an educational philosophy that dismissed any concept of God and eternal right and wrong. Dewey also helped move education toward experiential learning that downplayed strong academics, and he pushed what we now call socialization as the primary purpose of education. A convinced socialist and atheist, Dewey became the Father of Progressive Education; his disciples filled the education schools throughout the nation.

Slowly at first, but with increasing speed throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, Biblical teaching was either relegated to the periphery or eliminated. Some like to point to the Supreme Court decisions of the 1960s as the start of the decline in public [government] education because prayer and Bible reading were tossed out. Closer to the truth is that those decisions were the culmination of what had been happening for many years. The prayer that was considered unconstitutional wasn’t even specifically Christian. And the fact that it was a government-sponsored prayer allowed the Court to say it was a violation of the First Amendment.

All those various court cases and the controversies they have spawned are the result of turning education over to the government. If we had kept it in the private sphere, there would have been no court decisions and everyone would have been free to teach as they chose.

This system the evangelicals helped to set up continues to educate from 85-90% of all American children. It is now, by and large, antagonistic to Christian beliefs. That’s not universally true, and I appreciate all dedicated Christians who feel called to work in that system as a witness. But it’s getting harder with each passing year to have any freedom to be what God calls us to be in those circumstances. Religious liberty is being squeezed ever more tightly.

Evangelicals, since the 1970s, have started a lot of Christian schools. Many have done a fine job, but others teach little differently than the public schools, adding only chapels and prayer at the beginning of the day. Sometimes they even bow to the state system of accreditation, thereby losing their uniqueness and their distinct Christian calling.

There are many evangelical colleges and universities, but I know far too well from personal experience that a mighty battle wages in each of them for the integrity of the Biblical worldview. Who teaches in these colleges and universities? Professors who had to receive their doctorates from state universities. All too often, they imbibe the worldview of their mentors and pass that on to their students. They may be Christians, but they don’t necessarily teach from Biblical principles. One of the biggest disappointments expressed by students in Christian colleges is that they don’t always feel like they’re getting anything much different from what they would have received in a secular setting.

I don’t want to over-generalize, but I have seen firsthand how difficult it is to keep an evangelical institution from straying from its Biblical roots. History, political science, psychology, and social work programs often are just as liberal and secularized in a Christian college as anywhere else. This liberalization even touches theology departments as Marxist social justice perspectives are incorporated.

Overall, we’re doing a miserable job of communicating Biblical truth in our education. The state schools are almost bereft of it; Christian schools too readily succumb to the desire to be respected by the world, so they discard their strong Biblical message and sell out for the honor of being “recognized” according to the world’s standards.

It’s no accident that homeschooling has made a comeback in our time. Many parents are once again taking control of their children’s education. The threat, though, is that government will not like any deviation from its educational plans. Faithful Christian schools and colleges, and dedicated homeschoolers, may be in for a hard time in the next few years. Obamacare already has laid the groundwork for a frontal attack. Withstanding this attack and others will call for commitment. This will be a test of the genuineness of our Christianity.

Will we pass the test?

Yesterday’s post singled out the most foundational problem in the church today—a weak/falsified salvation message. Today, I turn to the problem of the misapplication of the faith, either by lack of knowledge or the adoption of ideologies that contradict Biblical principles. I want to be clear that many of the people I am referring to today may actually be sincere Christians, but uninformed or led astray by ideas that sound good on the surface but are inconsistent with Biblical truth.

When we become Christians, we begin the process of getting our thoughts straightened out. That process doesn’t occur all at once. A key Scriptural passage with respect to this is found in Romans 12:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

This passage reminds us that we must continually present ourselves for God’s service; it’s not a one-time thing. It then goes on to tell us not to think the way the world does, but to have renewed minds—in other words, we may have to, in certain areas, start again from scratch in our thinking, and make sure it lines up with God’s truth. The word translated “transformed” is the same Greek word used when Jesus is on the Mount of Transfiguration, when the disciples see Him in all His glory for a few moments. That same kind of transformation must take place in our minds, and it’s only by way of this transformation that we’ll have any idea what God’s will may be. If we approach everything from our old way of thinking, we will miss God’s will and adopt practices contrary to what He wants.

Some of the most disturbing examples of this are found in the lives of those who claim the Christian faith yet are barely troubled by the moral trends in our society. For instance, how can a genuine Christian not stand firm against abortion? Yet there are voices in the church world who downplay the significance of this “legal” practice. It’s usually those same voices who see no problem with homosexuality and same-sex marriage. They have been swayed by the world’s logic in these areas; they accept the “discrimination” argument with respect to homosexuality, comparing it to discrimination based on race. They swallow the explanation that some people are just born that way, that God made them to be homosexual, so it cannot be a sin.

By taking these stances, one becomes allied with organizations such as Planned Parenthood, which are militantly anti-Christian. That, by itself, should give pause and lead to some rethinking.

When it comes to abortion, they may say they don’t like it, but that it’s not as important as helping the poor. Their gospel comes dangerously close to a purely social gospel that seeks to take care of material needs while relegating the salvation of the individual to a secondary status. If they have integrated a Marxist worldview into their theology, they see Jesus as more of a liberator in this life than the One who sets us free from our sins.

What I’ve discovered about those who hold to these views is their total lack of understanding of the Biblical principles of governance in civil society. They don’t grasp the importance of the rule of law, which puts everyone on the same plane before the law and guarantees the protection of God-given rights. To them, following documents such as the Constitution seems outmoded; guided more by their emotions than Biblical thinking, they just want the government to do whatever they deem necessary to take care of needs.

They also have little comprehension of the Biblical principles that undergird economics. Moved by emotion once again, they believe the government should just spend lavishly to meet every need and take whatever it needs from its citizens to accomplish the task. I’m not sure the national debt even enters their minds.

To top it off, they are unaware of the utter futility of all this government spending. Trillions upon trillions of dollars have never extinguished poverty; in fact, the only thing this spending orgy will ever achieve is the extension of poverty to millions more. Study after study has shown, over and over, that dependence on government largesse only worsens our problems, creating a culture of dependency and destroying initiative.

The Christian Left, as it is called in the media, is, in the name of Christ, transforming genuine Christianity into a statist ideal that ultimately undermines the very faith they say they believe. Government replaces God and becomes a new idol, to the extent that many of them are not even bothered by the trampling of religious liberty currently underway through Obamacare.

I began this post by asserting that many of the people I’m talking about are sincere Christians who are merely uninformed or misled. However, there is a segment that either have abandoned, or are on the verge of abandoning, the faith altogether. I’m glad God is the final judge of their salvation. Yet I, and all Christians, do have a responsibility to examine the fruit of the lives of those who claim they are Christians; we can make tentative judgments. That is what I have done today.

What do I hope to gain by sharing my concerns? First, I want to embolden those who are undergoing the renewal of the mind. Don’t shrink back. Stand for the truth as God opens it to you. Second, I hope to awaken some who currently consider themselves part of the so-called Christian Left. Please rethink your views. You are leading others into serious error. Don’t be molded by the world’s standards and the guidance it offers. It is deception. And please heed Jesus’ warning:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.

In all my writing about politics and government, my greatest concern is the encroachments on religious liberty. I’ve often highlighted attacks, both direct and indirect, on the role of religious belief in our nation. The nation, by the way, is not synonymous with the government; the former is the whole people, the latter simply the representative of the voters that is supposed to carry out policies for the good of the whole. We have been too eager to elevate the government to the highest place of allegiance. When we do so, we dethrone God.

I’m indebted today to Matthew Franck, director of the Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute, an independent research center housed at Princeton University. In an article published by Hillsdale College, Franck summarizes so well the series of recent attacks on the significance of religious faith.

He begins with the universities:

At the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, the student chapter of the Christian Legal Society was denied any status on the campus because it would not abandon its requirement that members commit themselves to traditional Christian norms regarding sexual morality. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling in 2010, held that the student group’s rights were not violated by a “take all comers” policy. Following this lead, Vanderbilt University has rewritten its student organizations policy and effectively chased every traditionally Christian group off campus, denying them regular access to campus facilities.

In effect, the Supreme Court has said that a Christian organization cannot be limited in membership to those who are Christians. In this instance, the absurd has become the norm.

State and local governments have also taken steps to deny deeply held religious beliefs. In Washington and Illinois, attempts have been made to force pharmacists to dispense “morning after” pills, which cause abortions, even when doing so is a violation of their consciences. In New York City, if you are a church, don’t bother trying to use a public school building for a church function. Churches are banned from using them. A Christian wedding photographer in New Mexico “was fined for violation of a state ‘human rights act’ because she refused to take the business of a same-sex couple who claimed to want her services at the civil union ceremony.” In other states, Catholic charities have been excluded from taking part in adoption or foster care services because they won’t put children with same-sex couples.

One of the more publicized instances of overruling Christian morality occurred in 2010 when Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court of San Francisco [naturally] gave his controversial ruling on Proposition 8, a referendum approved by the California electorate to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Walker, who is also an outspoken homosexual, ruled that proposition to be unconstitutional. Franck explains,

He held that the affinity between traditional religion and the moral case against same-sex marriage was reason enough to strike down the popular referendum, and went so far as to say that religious doctrines holding homosexual acts to be sinful are in themselves a form of “harm to gays and lesbians.” In this he followed the lead of the Iowa Supreme Court, which held in 2009 that the state’s law restricting marriage to a man and a woman was an expression of a religious viewpoint, and for that reason unconstitutional.

Then of course there are this year’s HHS mandates for carrying out Obamacare that force religious schools, universities, hospitals, and charitable institutions to violate their consciences with regard to contraception and abortifacients.

What we are witnessing is a shift in the significance of religious beliefs in our nation. They are now being shoved to the periphery, whereas they used to be right at the center of our culture. Two hundred years ago, the Founders recognized the priority that religious faith had in society. When James Madison wrote his famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, he clearly expressed the consensus of the age when he said,

It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. [emphasis added]

Madison’s perspective was that our allegiance to God and what He requires of us is greater than the allegiance we owe to our government. Today, we are in the process of reversing that. Here, I believe, is where the real battle for the soul of our nation lies. Yes, I’m concerned about the economy, taxes, healthcare, foreign policy, and all the rest. Yes, I speak out constantly about the need to limit the federal government to the authority granted it in the Constitution. But even more than all that, it is imperative that our government not declare itself to be above an individual’s conscience before God. Government is not God; only God Himself can make that claim. We owe our ultimate allegiance to Him, and Him only.

That’s why I write about the dangers of another four years of Barack Obama. His mindset is the new one, the one that subordinates religious beliefs to the dictates of whatever the government deems more important. The danger is real, and it must be met head-on and defeated.

Forty-three organizations, mostly Catholic, have sued the federal government over the HHS regulations in Obamacare that would force them to violate their religious beliefs. Some people don’t care because they view this as a birth control issue, they are secular, and they consider the Catholic church to be positively medieval in its strictures against birth control. Others, among them Protestant Christians, are tempted to stay on the sidelines because they don’t agree with the church’s stance on the issue and they’re not Catholic.

Those Protestants need to beware. It won’t stop with Catholic doctrine. The juggernaut of state control of religious beliefs will encompass them sooner or later. Actually, the time is now. I teach at a Protestant university. Those regulations may tell us to offer abortifacient drugs, which would be against our doctrinal beliefs. Catholics, Protestants, and anyone else concerned about the survival of religious liberty in this nation ought to be on the alert and standing against this policy.

You would think a First Amendment case of this import would be receiving a lot of publicity. However, as usual, the president’s supporters in the mainstream media are doing their best to minimize coverage. Even when they do cover it, they will twist it into a birth control debate, knowing that most Americans will be on their side and will miss the real threat.

Amazingly, while this serious case is going forward, the media finds the antics of the pope’s butler more significant. I wasn’t sure what I thought of the following cartoon when it came out—not sure I would share it because I thought it might be slightly blasphemous. But upon further consideration, I concluded it truly makes its point, and I don’t think the Lord minds.

This is the equivalent of the Biblical warning about straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

So what’s the president’s response thus far?

Well, not precisely. But I do believe if he wins reelection, what has transpired already will seem tame compared to what will follow after. Those of us with religious convictions are on his radar—we are targets.

As I noted earlier this week, progressives have a way of framing a debate to favor their views. They’re really quite adept at changing the entire focus of the debate, shifting it away from the real issues to something phony. In the process, the Constitution, and the religious liberty it protects, are forgotten:

They are aided in their attempt to redirect the discussion by a more-than-willing media. Sometimes, it’s difficult to distinguish any difference between the leftist ideologues and the media itself:

Those who stand for the Constitution and for traditional Judeo-Christian morality, meanwhile, are characterized as extremists. How dare they introduce their religious beliefs into the debate!

The hypocrisy is pervasive.

It all began with George Stephanopoulos—of Clinton White House infamy—asking a question at one of the Republican debates. He wanted to know if states had the authority to ban contraception. The question baffled the candidates, particularly since no one had ever brought up the issue. Perhaps it was intended to stem the rising candidacy of Rick Santorum, who was becoming more prominent at that time. Yet Santorum, despite his personal views on the subject, had never indicated any interest in banning contraception; in fact, he had stated the exact opposite.

Why did Stephanopoulos broach this non-issue? No one could quite figure it out, except as a way of stopping Santorum.

Then, not long after, the Obama administration came up with its mandate that religious organizations had to offer contraceptives and abortifacients in their hospitals and healthcare plans. Was Stephanopoulos’s question the preliminary to the mandate, getting the public used to it ahead of time? Was he in collusion with the White House? Those queries remain unanswered, but the timing was unusually fortuitous for the administration.

Those plans went awry when the religious community cried foul and cited First Amendment protections for religious liberty. That seemed to throw the Obama team off-balance for a while, but then they attempted a new tactic—change the issue from religious liberty to the right of women to have contraceptives. Convince the public that conservatives are anti-women and are bent on setting up a theocracy. In other words, scare the public by constructing a straw man, a technique used by progressives ad nauseum.

When Darrell Issa, the congressman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, held hearings on the religious liberty issue and its violation in the HHS mandate, the Democrats were able to offer their own witnesses at the hearing. At the last minute, they wanted to change one of their witnesses so that Georgetown student Sandra Fluke could testify. Fluke, a feminist birth control advocate whose goal is to change the Catholic university’s policy on not providing contraceptives, was not an expert on the First Amendment or religious liberty, and was denied a spot at the hearing for that reason, as well as for the late notice.

So what did the Democrats do? They arranged their own “hearing,” which was not official but primarily a publicity stunt, so that Fluke could “testify” to the hardships students face by not having contraceptives provided for them via the taxpayers. She made it sound like contraceptives were somehow scarce and extremely expensive; they are neither. In effect, she wanted a subsidy for herself and other students.

We have become a society so seared in our consciences when it comes to sex that dissent over a policy that promotes promiscuity is liable to get one in trouble.

That’s where Rush Limbaugh came in. He saw how ludicrous the entire proceeding had been, and commented on the blatant hypocrisy of the progressives, turning a religious liberty concern into a “threat” to women’s “rights” for political purposes. As he ridiculed the idea that taxpayers should pay for a woman’s sexual activities, he used a couple of words to describe Fluke that got the media in an uproar. First of all, never mind that the Left says far worse things daily—one need only replay the constant derogatory and disgusting comments about the Palin family. Yet the progressive Left demanded that advertisers drop Limbaugh’s program.

Over the weekend, Limbaugh issued an apology for the use of words he regretted uttering. I listened to his explanation yesterday. He said his apology was heartfelt; he had lowered himself to the level of his accusers and had played into their hands. Some say he apologized only because he was losing sponsors, but I believe he meant what he said. The apology was appropriate; we should never mirror the traits of those who dishonor themselves by their despicable words and actions. By the way, I expect him to weather the storm; the attempt to shut him down won’t succeed.

But what has happened? The real issue—religious liberty—has been overwhelmed by a non-issue—contraception—and the Left has successfully framed the debate. This is what they always attempt to do. We have to stand against such tactics and respond in ways that show we have a different character.

The debate needs to be reframed in a proper way. There is much at stake as Obama tries to run roughshod over the Constitution and religious liberty. He must not be allowed to win this debate. We must walk in wisdom. May God grant us His mind and heart as we proceed.