I Kings 12-13
Romans 14
Psalm 141; Psalm 142; Psalm 143
“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit so inject it with strange concoctions that Herod wants you to take, and that are proven not to work.” Slaves 78: 17b
Doug Giles in his book - Dear Christian: Your Fear is Full of Crap (Available on Amazon)
As we round out our month of American Heritage, I want to return to the documents on which our nation is founded. Key for us is that our Constitution, and its application of Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, was based on the Sinai Covenant Moses brought down from the Mountain of God to Israel in Exodus. The Constitution is was a legal document, but the most important document was a cultural document, the Declaration of Independence. In that cultural document, the most important sentence is, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The foundational word in that sentence is, Creator. No other nation in history embraced that word at its foundation. It might be worth seeing how our faith filled and brilliant Founding Fathers viewed the King’s government in their day:
Grievances in the Declaration of Independence
Grievance 1 - "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.“
Grievance 2 - "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them."
Grievance 3 - "He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only."
Grievance 4 - "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, and also uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."
Grievance 5 - "He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people."
Grievance 6 - "He has refused for a long time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and convulsions within."
Grievance 7 - "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
Grievance 8 - "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers."
Grievance 9 - "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries."
Grievance 10 - "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance."
Grievance 11 - "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
Grievance 12 - "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power."
Grievance 13 - "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation."
Grievance 14 - "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us."
Grievance 15 - "For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States."
Grievance 16 - "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”
Grievance 17 - "For imposing taxes on us without our consent."
NOTE: Grievance 17 is the most popularly cited reason for the American Revolution. Yet, there are 16 other grievances the founders listed before this one.
Grievance 18 - "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Jury trial."
Grievance 19 - "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses."
Grievance 20 - "For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies."
Grievance 21 - "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments."
Grievance 22 - "For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.”
Grievance 23 - "He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us."
Grievance 24 - "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."
Grievance 25 - "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."
Grievance 26 - "He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands."
Grievance 27 - "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions."
Jay