One Nation, Indivisible

Posted on July 8, 2002 in Secularism

People are making the recent Pledge decision anything but what it is. One fruit loop on #politics declared that 75 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that you could not be forced to say the pledge. This new decision, he insisted, says that you can’t say the pledge voluntarilly. He thought himself clever. He was dead wrong.

The decision merely states that the government cannot use the pledge as an official document or expression of national loyalty because it contains the words “under God”. Our government is without an opinion on religion according to the Bill of Rights. As an American, you can practice what you please as long as you do no harm to others. Good Christians should applaud the decision because the Gospels and the writings of the apostles repeatedly point to a separation between church and state. They existed in a time when the Roman Emperor styled himself as both ruler and as god made manifest in his person.

Over the last few generations, however, some zealots have allowed government encroachment, Roman style, into religious affairs. The words “in God we trust” appear on our money. “One nation under God” was a feeble attempt to make it hard for atheist communists to say the pledge. The only people who suffered were believers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Quakers, who followed the biblical injunction against the saying of oaths (Matthew 5: 33-35; James 5:12). Whether we have received any special blessing from having the phrase “under God” in the pledge is dubious, as one #politics chatter pointed out:

[20:13] < Warpster93> alephnaut, I’ve made the point that since god was inserted into the pledge, claimed by this country, as it were, we’ve had our best and brightest assassinated, lost wars, been attacked by terrorists, and lost much of our middle class. Somehow, if there’s a god, he’s not pleased at being so claimed

the Gospels and my understanding of the Christian way of life, Christians should applaud the removal of the words “under God” from the pledge as well as it’s removal from our coins and other tokens of our public life. Caesar is not God. That’s the point of the story of the tribute money. When a government associates itself with God, it is acting as antiChrist. It misleads us, allowing it to deflect criticism made against it by believers. If you criticize your government, the implication goes, you attack God. Again, I say, the government is not God’s instrument on earth, but an institution of men. More than a few whiners about the recent pledge decision need to reread both their Constitution and their Bibles. The State is not God. Do not allow it to mislead you into thinking it is.

“….one nation, indivisible….” the pledge used to go before commie-baiters inserted the phrase “under God” between the words “nation” and “indivisible”. Now what’s wrong with that? Not a darn thing! It’s truth in advertising. Government is by the people, of the people, for the people, not the Divinity.