Should Donald Trump The Law?

Message of the Month—Donald’s Flag Pole

In the Bible, the ancient man Job had his critics who were often very wrong. But his critic Elihu surely didn’t err when he described God as a just ruler. God “shows no partiality to princes and does not favor the rich over the poor, for they are all the works of his hands.” (Job 34:16-19)

Our more down-to-earth rulers are expected to do no less: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” (Leviticus 19:15)

Those reminders are needed, because the real word often isn’t a fair place:
“The poor are shunned by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends.” (Proverbs 14:20)

My church is a block from the ocean in Seal Beach, California. For many years we had steady growth and were bursting our seams on our wonderful but tiny property with just 12 parking spots. We needed and had room for a 400-seat sanctuary. Ample parking could be rented a block away. Enter the California Coastal Commission and its rules. Finally, we reluctantly quenched the plan.

Now enter Donald Trump, who does what he wants regardless of the Coastal Commission. Eight years ago he erected a 70-foot flagpole at his exclusive seaside golf club in Rancho Palos Verdes. The Coastal Commission wanted it moved 30 feet and reduced to 26 feet.

The Rancho Palos Verde city council supported Trump and a host of patriotic arguments were paraded. The Coastal Commission now says the flag can stay if the city’s height rules are modified.

So “The Donald” wins with a fait accompli while flaunting the law. A coastal commission member said with resignation, “I’m disappointed at the Trump Organization for putting up that flag without adhering to the rule of law. However, I think this flag now has become a symbol and to the people in this community this flag symbolizes patriotism.”

Real love for country leads to deep regard for and submission to its just laws. The same is true in the spiritual realm, as Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15 New International Version)

Religious Liberty Vigilance –

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
– 1st Amendment (Our “First Freedom” in the Bill of Rights)

“…to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical – Thomas Jefferson (Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786)

1st Issue: The “Hobby Lobby” Supreme Court Decision

On June 30 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Hobby Lobby’s argument that it should not be required to provide for certain contraceptive coverages in its health benefits—covering what it believed to be possible abortifacients, coverages that it argued wrongly burdened its religious liberty.

The main counter-argument I’ve heard and read is that a company like Hobby Lobby by its very nature cannot have religious convictions. The other more aggressive argument is the “culture war” claim that this denies rights to others and imposes religion on others (see copy of full-page ad at end of this newsletter). Remember, contraception is a “secular sacrament” today.

Now imagine that you and your family (this scenario isn’t intended to parallel Hobby Lobby) prayed seriously and thought deeply about starting a business through which you would serve and honor God in every way. Your business dealings are honorable; you pay your workers well and give good benefits. In honor of “the Lord’s Day” you refuse to be open on Sundays. You strive to “act Christianly” from A-Z. You don’t bifurcate personal religion from all of life.
Along comes an expansive government mandate that you and your family, the owners of your business (corporation), believe forces you to violate your faith-founded and faith-operated convictions. But opponents claim that such religious convictions can only be held by individuals, not by corporations. Let’s look at that.

Many investors opt for “socially responsible” investment instruments. While what’s “socially responsible” and what isn’t is in the eye of the beholder, all such investors look for high-level corporate responsibility and societal concerns (whatever they are) in their investment decisions. Just do an on-line search of “socially responsible investments” to see all that’s there.

Remember Apartheid? Many businesses, some under pressure from stockholders, divested themselves of their business transactions with South Africa. Without a doubt, many of these stockholders made demands based on their religion-formed consciences.

Today some pharmaceutical companies have, as a matter of ethical conviction, stopped manufacturing drugs used in lethal-injection executions. In other words, they don’t want their drugs used to end human lives.

Hobby Lobby and others don’t want to be forced to have anything to do with paying for pharmaceuticals that, according their ethical convictions, might result in the destruction of human lives.

If corporations can make business decisions based on deeply held ethical values (which they do), why can’t they do so if these values have religious roots? Take to heart this statement:

For many religious people, their faith is not just a purely private hobby. It is rather a set of moral principles that infuses every aspect of their lives, including their activities in the commercial world. If atheists like me can use publicly traded corporations to pursue secular moral principles, it is not difficult to see how religious people can do the exact same thing with their own beliefs.

(Ilya Somin, “Can people ‘exercise religion’ through publicly-traded corporations?”, The Volokh Conspiracy [a daily legal blog of libertarian leaning], July 12, 2014)

2nd Issue: The World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C.

My wife and I toured the memorials on the Washington Mall in July, lingering at each and taking in their deep meaning. We were impacted by the World War II memorial while lamenting that it wasn’t built for 60 years—when veterans of that war were passing away a thousand a day.

Gen. Eisenhower’s words on D-Day were memorable. So were President Roosevelt’s words in the prayer he delivered over national radio on that fateful day (see my June newsletter). “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity…”

A move is on in Congress to place that prayer at the memorial. An “interfaith committee” (which includes at least one non-religious organization) objects: “Our religious diversity is one of our nation’s great strengths… [This bill] endorses the false notion that all veterans will be honored by a war memorial that includes a prayer that proponents characterize as reflecting our country’s ‘Judeo-Christian heritage and values.’”

Americans United for Separation of Church and State calls this “a Christian prayer” (which specifically it isn’t). More: “From the beginning, this push for the prayer has been nothing but an unholy alliance between the Religious Right and politicians looking to score cheap points with their constituents. After all, the addition of the prayer to the memorial was backed by fundamentalist groups, including the Ohio Christian Alliance and the Christian Coalition of America.” (June 24 statement)

Let’s all see this for the evasive ad hominem and “guilt by association” argumentation that it is and move on.
If Roosevelt’s historic prayer referencing “Almighty God” is Christian or sectarian or whatever and therefore shouldn’t appear at a memorial, what else needs review for possible removal?

What about Lincoln’s inscribed Second Inaugural Address?

Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Read further in his address and the religious message gets stronger!

What about Thomas Jefferson’s words on the monument in his honor?

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism.

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens…are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.

If you want to see what “religious sanitizing” can do, visit the Martin Luther King Memorial. Powerful as it is with its symbolism and elegant quotations, one looks in vain for the biblical basis and religious motivation behind his words and actions. His statue depicts a Secular King, not the King I remember, whose autobiography I’ve read, and whose sermon I once personally heard at a Baptist church in my hometown.

Certainly today’s America is more religiously pluralistic than that of World War II. But it is anachronistic and sheer agenda-driven revisionism to demand that the country that is (or imagined to be) be imposed on the country that was. Worse, it is a disservice to the significance of D-Day.

Bible Insight: The Alien Among Us (Part 2)

Last month we saw three reasons why the Egyptian king turned to suppress the immigrant people we call “Israelites” (Exodus 1:8-10).

First, Pharaoh didn’t know about Joseph. Whatever benefit he had been to Egypt, whatever high position he once held—this was gone from history. Only the present “immigrant problem” mattered, not their value in the past.

Second, there simply were now too many of them! “Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we.”

Third, these Israelites, well, they just aren’t “us”; they are “them!” “In the event of war, they will turn against us, join the enemy, and leave.”

So Pharaoh subjected the Israelites to the menial jobs his own people wouldn’t want to do anyway—work in the fields and build the king’s cities.

Pharaoh had another means of suppression to use against the undesirables—mandated birth control! One method might today be called “partial-birth sex-selective abortion.” The baby is killed after being partially delivered. In other cases, the baby is born and subjected to a sort of postpartum abortion.

“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives…, ‘When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.’” (Exodus 1:15)

Then the story gets spicy! “The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.”

When the king called them to account, they concocted a hilarious answer. “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” In other words, “The birth is over with before we can even get there!”

They fibbed! And because they refused what they refused and said what they said, God was kind to them (read Exodus 1:15-21).
The question, “When is a lie not a lie?” must await answer on some other day! A frustrated Pharaoh then demanded “the final solution”. The unwanted Jewish boy babies were to be thrown into the Nile River (verse 22).

But our God, who works sometimes through the sinful acts of people, had a different outcome in mind for a very special child. The son of a Levite man and woman, after being hidden for three months, was placed by his mother into a papyrus basket and set afloat in the Nile River under the watchful eye of his sister (see Exodus 2:1-10 for the whole story).

In God’s providential will, the daughter of Pharaoh saw and rescued the baby, taking him as her own. Not only that, she hired the baby’s mother as a nurse, who now would be paid to care for her own son!

Pharaoh’s daughter named the rescued baby “Moshe”, which means, “drawn from the water.” We know him as Moses.

Pharaoh’s harsh and calloused treatment of this immigrant nation goes down a one of the Bible’s great cruelty stories. But God does a rescue through the water to save a son of destiny, who would grow and mature and emerge as leader of the nation—who would one day confront a later Pharaoh with the famous demand of God, “Let my people go!”

Don’s Upcoming Ministries

September 9 – Lead a meeting for ministers (the district ministers of the Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches) at the Seal Beach Police Department. Topic: How ministers and churches responded to the “salon massacre” of October 12, 2011 and the lessons to be learned. Contact me for information on attending.

October13-15 – Attend chaplain training in Sacramento

www.donaldshoemakerministries.com