Monday, March 22, 2010

The End of America

I'll be honest. Last night I went to bed a bit perturbed. This morning I woke up a bit perturbed. Still to this moment I am a bit perturbed. You see, last night the health care bill passed and all that is left is for Obama to sign it. I am against this bill and in general, this brand of health care reform. Now notice that I did not say that I'm against health care reform, just this brand of it.

Before I get into the main purpose of this post, I want to make some things clear. I'm not against this health care bill because I don't care about the poor. I don't believe that not having health insurance is a result of not being willing to work, and the reason is because I do work and I cannot afford health insurance for my family. In fact, my wife and I have our son on government health care to make sure that he at least is taken care of. I am against this for mainly two reasons. First I do not believe that this fits within the realms of our constitution. I do believe that the states have the right to choose if they want to take this route, but my understanding of The Constitution does not give this type or amount of power to the federal government. The second reason is that they government has not proved that they can handle this amount of responsibility. This has been shown through their past handling of government programs. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, The War on Drugs, Public Education and the Postal Service are only a start of failed government programs that continue to run but with barely any sort of efficiency. If the government cannot properly manage education or mail delivery, I do not think I'm ready for the to try and manage my health. Now I've gotten that out of the way.

Despite all of this, I'm trying to remain positive and focused on the eternal future instead of the temporal present. Yes, this will affect me in this life, but not in the next life. What will affect me in the next life is if I go on with an improper attitude about the things that happen in this life. I am, for the most part, writing this post as a means to force me to think of some lessons we can learn from this.

One thing we an learn from this is that we've pretty much brought this upon ourselves as a nation. It reminds me of I Samuel 8 where the Israelites begged for a king. They knew the dangers of such a path and were warned again before God gave them what they wanted. Despite knowing what would occur and what the results would be, they went ahead with their desires anyway. Over all, America has become very greedy. We can easily conclude what the results of greed are, yet we are willing to overlook what will come from our desires in order to have what we want. We talk about the government not being able to handle health care (and as mentioned above I don't believe they can) but we haven't done so well with handling it either. We waited until our system was almost in the gutter before thinking of doing anything about it instead of taking care of the problem when it first started. We waited to long to do anything and instead tried to do the same as putting a band-aid on a two week old wound that has become infected. It reminds me of the principle taught in Romans 13. In the realms of politics, God is going to give us exactly what we deserve. We've failed to handle the problem and thus have lost the opportunity to try and fix it ourselves.

Second, this should be a reminder to us about our health. America, for the most part, is very unhealthy. We complain about high food bills, but usually eat more in a week than many in other countries may eat in a month. We're lazy and I'm fine with admitting that. One brother made a very good point and I cannot improve on it so I'll just quote him when he said, "I had to have gallstones taken out because I didn't eat well in college. Insurance paid for most of that. If that money had been coming from my neighbors, I would feel more guilty. Now I'll watch out for my well-being more. I hope." This should be a great reminder for us to try and be healthier. Now that we more responsible for the health care of others, we also need to do our best to stay healthy and not dry up the funds that can be used for those that actually need health care. Our bodies are temporal, but they are from God and we need to be good stewards of them.

All morning I've heard about this being the beginning of the end of America. It might just be, but there is only one kingdom that was ever designed to last forever, and that is the kingdom of God, the church. I may face high taxes and may be the victim of an abuse of federal power, but I'm still a Christian and I still belong to the church that Christ died for and that is what is the most important thing in my life. In all honesty though, the beginning of the end of America did not start with government run health care or Obama becoming president. The end of America began with the nation forsaking the principles of godliness and taking on the serving of one's self.

Love you all,
Carl

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