Democracy

Democracy: n, government by the people, instead of God.

I like the term 'natural law.' That term sticks in the craw of some Christians because they think of natural law as being opposed to God's law. I believe that before God created the heavens and the Earth and gave it the big spin, he had a lot of calculations to make so that it all worked right. God, being God, didn't have to sit down with a pencil, slide rule and eraser for a few eons. He got it all perfect the first time in a blink of an eye. But, if you think about getting the distance of each planet from the Sun just right and the rotation on the Earth and gravity and ...wow, the physics of making everything here work like it does is miraculous, literally. All the things which occur 'naturally' do so because that's the way God designed it. Saying that something is natural simply means that it exists in the state in which God intended it to. I believe the logic that tells Christians to separate God from that which He created is a lie told by the great deceiver. (That's Satan, not George Bush. George Bush is just Mini Deceiver.) The laws of nature, whether physical, economical, or otherwise function according to a fixed set of rules. That's what makes them laws rather than theories. Understanding and obeying these laws yields a benefit whereas ignoring them or violating them always results, (eventually), in negative consequences. Natural law recognizes the God given equal negative rights of each individual solely within the context of human interaction. Some will say that discussions of rights ignore God's position. I believe that to place God on the playing field of rights, as if to imply that some comparison of human rights to those of the omnipotent Creator and Ruler of all is even possible, is blasphemous. How do we know God gave us rights? He told us not to steal, murder or bear false witness, for a start. The number of times possessive pronouns are used throughout the Bible must have meaning as well; his, hers, mine, yours, theirs, ours. I don't think that's a Biblical Faux Pas.

"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Yep, that's ALL. That's me and you and our pastors, politicians, friends, family, and everybody else, no human exceptions. What is sin? It's every time we put ourselves in God's place, every time we think we know better than God. When we are self governing, which each of us does every day in regard to thoughts and actions too numerous to consider, we choose to act on those thoughts, based on what we believe God would have us do or to ignore God and do things our way. Because we're fallible humans our discernment in this area misses the target more often than not and we rarely hit the bull's eye. However, the damage we cause can be minimized by limiting our desire to use coercive force to impose our imperfect will on others. We have our perfect example in Jesus Christ. God came to Earth as a man and lived a sinless life. He came during the Roman Empire which had the use of coercive force down to a science. Christ however, was humble. He wasn't the mighty warrior that Israel expected. But, of course when God fails to meet our expectations we always believe ourselves instead of Him. Israel was no different. They figured, this dude was obviously not the Messiah and they needed to do something about it. But Christ, who had the power to destroy the universe, did not even threaten to use that power. As a Christian, I am called to Christ's example. He didn't turn the Roman legions against His enemies. He did not employ the power of the Roman State as a means to any Earthly ends. Christ chose persuasion over coercion. He chose compassion and mercy for His enemies over the threat of violence. To use the initiation of force or to delegate its use to the state for our own personal, social, political or economic goals, regardless of our good intentions, is un-Christian. Democracy, government by the people, is un-Christian.

It is very easy to pull the sheep's skin off of the wolf that is democracy. It is only our selfish desire to ignore God's law that allows us to purposely ignore democracy's true nature. Here's what a few others thought about democracy;

"Democracy is the road to socialism." Karl Marx

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." Thomas Jefferson

"More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life." "Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life."
Mikhail Gorbachev

"Democracy is indispensable to socialism." Vladimir Lenin

"Democracy without morality is impossible." Jack Kemp

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." "I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing." H. L. Mencken

"Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism." Ernest Mandel

"A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined." Norman Mailer

"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." Aristotle

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner." Benjamin Franklin

"And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction." Robert Welch

"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." Lord Acton

"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty." "Democracy passes into despotism." Plato

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Winston Churchill

"Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy." Ron Paul

My definition of democracy is the oppression of the minority by the majority. It is a fraudulently legitimized method for government to give privilege to some by violating the rights of all the others. Is democracy in the Bible? Not specifically by name, but definitely in action.

The first recorded use of democracy occurred before the earth was even created. One of God's angels got disgruntled and thought he should be equal to God. He and some of the other angels vote on it and God cast them out of Heaven. We've been on the downhill slide ever since. The first humans, Adam and Eve, were conned into democracy by Satan. The eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge got three yeas and one nay. Israel tried to ignore God so many times, you'd think they'd have eventually caught on. Moses went up to the mountain to receive God's commandments, but while he was gone, idolatry received the popular vote and everyone had to give up their gold to make a silly cow statue. They were probably pretty disappointed when Moses came back down with two stone tablets and no ballot box to voice their opinions. In Samuel 1:8 we see everybody wanting earthly government again, and God's warning against it, and once again the people got what they wanted, good and hard. Democracy's in the New Testament too. Vote for Barabbas or get four more years of Jesus! (Don't get me started on the false dichotomy of Repuplicrats Vs. Democrans.) Many people claim that Judas' replacement was democratically chosen. Whether he was or wasn't you never hear anything else about him.

The founders of these united States loathed and feared democracy. That's why they imposed a Constitutional Republic on us instead. If you search through the declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution, you will not find the word democracy, not even once. Perhaps observing God's law and the teachings of Christ and respecting other's God given rights of life, liberty and property is better than using democracy as a means to violate those rights for some fallible human end.