I Love My Country, But…

“I love my country, but I fear my government.”

I don’t know who coined that phrase. I’ve heard it for decades. It reflects a conscious awareness that the government can easily become corrupt and interfere with the God-ordained freedoms of man. I use this as my status today to hopefully bring some perspective to our real situation. If John McCain or Mitt Romney were being sworn in today, you’d be reading this same note and seeing the same status.

Let’s start with this: Today is January 20, 2009. And your share of the US debt is now $34,840.50. Look at your spouse: Their share is also $34,840.50. And for each one of your kids? That’ll be $34,840.50, please.

In one sense, today we are supposed to celebrate history and hope: History that we have our next president (who happens to be black, which really doesn’t matter in a genuinely color-blind society, right?) and hope that this same man can save America and save the world. Nothing personal, but I don’t buy it for second.

Barack Obama is my president. I pray for him and hope he succeeds in executing the office of President as prescribed in our founding documents. If he is to honestly fulfill his charge, he will adhere to the Constitution of the United States of America. Today he will swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. But if the past 100 or so years is any indication, he won’t. Like so many before him – Democrat and Republican – he will take dramatic liberties with this grand document and govern on the basis of his values and those of his party. After all, that’s what we all have really come to expect, isn’t it?

But President Obama will come and go – whether it be four or eight years – and the next president will take it from there. Just exactly where they take it remains to be seen, of course. But the combined efforts of our most recent presidents – Bush, Clinton and Bush – coupled with the stated intentions of President Obama and his party-led Congress spell a dire future for the United States.

Did I mention your share of the national debt? Add seven cents to it – that’s how much it’s gone up since you started reading this note.

We are spending ourselves out of existence. No government that has relied on deficit spending has lasted long. Yet our spending is more out of control than ever at a time when we should’ve been digging out of debt. And President Obama promises more of the same.

The current economic mess is a perfect collaboration between government incompetency and a public that willfully buys into what the government is doing without using common sense and critical thinking. The stage is now set for the government take-over of all sorts of private enterprises, from the banks to healthcare to – you name it. They may do it through direct ownership or through more strident regulations and higher taxes.

But any notion that “the free enterprise system failed” is wrong. Free enterprise works when the men and women engaged in it are honest and fair and when government meddling is kept to a reasonable minimum. But now my fellow Americans are more willing than ever to place their personal hopes and dreams on the coat tails of a 47 year old man, with practically no business experience, to save the economy.

Not me.

America became the greatest economic force in the world DESPITE the government and despite intervention over the years. Did we make mistakes in our history regarding business and trade? You bet. And we learned from that and corrected our course. Yet President Obama has said that only the government can get us out of this situation.

No.
As with FDR during the great depression, government is more likely to make matters worse and prolong the economic agony.

The solution is not government. It’s found in the words of another great president who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Today, those words are lost on our elected leaders, aren’t they? In many quarters Americans are showing up to work and doing their darndest to address the economic challenges we face. They are ‘doing for their country’ by doing their jobs, raising their kids, volunteering and contributing to a better society – not a better “government.”

In this world my hope is not in any elected official. My hope is not in Barrack Obama. My hope is in the REAL agents of Change, like…
Nathan Berry, my coworker who faithfully works hard to keep our customers satisfied and able to save lives in health care.
My sister Lori for redeeming the lives of physically damaged people through occupational therapy.
Jim Isenberg, a teacher who is shaping young minds and currently training them how to resolve conflicts.
Marnie Moore and countless others who serve in healthcare from nursing to doing laundry.
Murphy and Christine Crowson and their family, who are mission workers in Africa.
Lisa Steele and her extraordinary work in teaching English to immigrants in our community.
Melody Hartline for the ministry she has led in helping families support their aging parents.
Steve Baggett, my cousin who tirelessly advocates for organ donation awareness.
Beth (my misses), Katherine Gerber, Nancy Dodson and countless other home-schooling moms (and families) and stay-at-home moms.
(I could go on… )

These are the souls that fuel my optimism. They are the ones that make America work and succeed. Not Bush. Not Clinton. Not Obama.

As for fear? Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the mastery of it. And any ‘fear’ I have of my government – past, present or future – is indeed mastered by the knowledge that my hopes are not invested in how the government or the president succeeds or fails. It is not about cowering in a corner for four to eight years, but about standing firm against its folly and misguided thinking — and standing with the true champions of American greatness and the true hope I have in Jesus Christ.

So good luck President Obama. I mean that, and my prayers are with you.
As for my hopes, they are placed where it really matters – and where meaningful differences are really made.

I love my country, but not because of the people in government office…
Because of the people who keep other people in their heart.