Since we are all individuals marred by the stain of sin, at one time or another all of us eventually fail to practice what we preach. Normally, this isn’t too big of a problem as most of us don’t have that much influence beyond that of our own friends and families. However, when this tendency endemic to the species manifests itself among the ostentatiously affluent craving power, it can become a social danger as these elites attempt to assuage their consciences by extracting penance from the masses that the well-to-do are not willing to subject themselves to.

Since we are all individuals marred by the stain of sin, at one time or another all of us eventually fail to practice what we preach. Normally, this isn’t too big of a problem as most of us don’t have that much influence beyond that of our own friends and families. However, when this tendency endemic to the species manifests itself among the ostentatiously affluent craving power, it can become a social danger as these elites attempt to assuage their consciences by extracting penance from the masses that the well-to-do are not willing to subject themselves to.

In an interview posted at Beliefnet.com titled “John Edwards: My Faith Came Roaring Back” by David Kuo, the former vice presidential nominee turned presidential-hopeful discusses the role his faith has played in his public life. When asked what aspects of American life he thought Jesus would be disappointed with, Edwards did not respond about the 4 million unborn children butchered each year through abortion (an issue predictably ignored by a Democrat despite thou shalt not kill [especially innocent noncombatants] being a major theme of the Good Book) but rather with “our selfishness”, our “resorting to war when it’s not necessary” and our “ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish-short term needs”.

Strategic propriety of operations in Iraq aside as one cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear and I suppose there can’t be much done to civilize a bunch of savages that would rather go about killing each other than aspire to a decent standard of living as that is another issue. No doubt so high from the makeup and hair spray seeping into his skin that he’s succumbed to brain damage, perhaps Senator Edwards should be reminded that it was the radical Islamists that instigated the war on terror with the 9/11 attack. And while one may debate the best way to neutralize the terrorist threat in a constitutionally appropriate manner, even more disturbing is the remainder of Edwards’ response to this interrogatory.

Concern over what might be perceived as selfishness and “ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering” might sound forward thinking to some. However, what Edwards really means, ladies and gentlemen, is that you who are considered members of the middle class are not paying enough in taxes and need a greater percentage of it confiscated for redistribution to those unwilling to lift a finger to provide for themselves despite being of strong body.

Of course, Edwards does not apply his condemnation to himself. When asked about the hypocrisy of making a big to-do over what he perceives as selfishness and recently acquiring a 28,000 square foot house complete with a separate recreation building for activities the rest of us enjoy on a smaller scale in our basements (no doubt one of the numerous domiciles owned by the Senator unless he commutes daily between North Carolina and the Washington DC area), Edwards basically responds that he, on the other hand, deserves to live in such luxury because (in a manner similar to the way Al Gore justifies his own lavish levels of consumption while expecting you to adopt a lifestyle on a level of squalor that would make an African bushman living on the savannah feel deprived) of all the work he has done for the impoverished around the world.

Like most thoroughgoing Democrats, it seems Senator Edwards suffers from a touch of liberal White guilt (referred to in previous eras as the White man’s burden) but apparently not so much that he’s not going to hand over that spacey pad of his so that the downtrodden might have a roof over their heads, divert the vast majority of his fortune to feed the hungry without turning it into a self-congratulatory media event that would make Little Jack Horner’s ego look miniscule in comparison, or forfeit his occupational station to someone of a minority group. That ladies and gentlemen, especially the Caucasian gentlemen among you who are the Senator’s social lessers, is an obligation to be passed on to and imposed upon you.

While willing to use religion in general and Christianity in particular to beat more money out of you into the tax coffers, Senator Edwards exhibits the typical leftwing squeamishness about acknowledging that most of what makes America worth living in derives in one way or the other from ideas originating in divine revelation or somehow deducible from it. When asked if he thought America was a Christian nation, while relenting there was a powerful religious thread running through American history, he was bothered (meaning ashamed) of the word “Christian” and would rather think of America as a “nation of faith”.

But faith in what, pray tell? But I guess in the creedless, non-doctrinaire nation of Senator Edwards prayer would be too strong a word with non-specific mental emanations towards unspecified entities would be a more acceptable way of putting it.

Like guns in America before it was emasculated and sissified by trial lawyers such as the Senator, there use to be a time when those that claimed to believe in Christ had no problem saying they were a Christian. Yet nowadays, every kind of deviancy either gets a handout from the government or a parade through our city streets while the devout are made to feel as if they are afflicted with one of the last recognized mental perversions.

Senator Edwards might talk a faith worthy of a Hallmark Card, but when it comes down to it, he offers us no more of a sure foundation than the secular humanism that has plagued the Western world for much of the past century or more. When asked his opinion of the Ten Commandments being displayed in local courthouses, Edwards responds, “How would Muslims feel if they went into that courthouse, and how would people of other faiths feel, Hindus, if they were in the same circumstances?”

Senator Edwards might be a whiz when it comes to peddling snake oil, but a discerning intellect he apparently is not. Technically, there isn’t all that much in the Ten Commandments a Muslim ought to object to as they see themselves as the corrected completion of both Jewish and Christian revelation, referring to these fellow monotheistic traditions as “People of the Book”. And even if they did not like it, why should we really care?

Shouldn’t those from exotic lands researched our traditions and history before coming half-way around the world to settle here only to discover they can’t stand this place? After all, we Christians were here first and the ones that opened up the shop.

Those like the Senator placing sensitivity over survival wail at the impropriety of Christians migrating to heathen lands and expecting the natives to abolish their own customs. Interesting how cultural relativism --- the erroneous idea that it is uncouth to criticize other ways of life in their respective zones of habitation --- protects every other nation on earth except the United States of America.

It should also be pointed out to the Senator from North Carolina that it is in nations such as the United States that acknowledge and retain a Judeo-Christian heritage primarily Protestant in its orientation in that ecclesiastical power is not concentrated in a single denominational authority that those holding to alternative religious viewpoints enjoy the most liberty. For example, where in the Muslim world are Christians permitted to worship freely without fear of harassment. And even in Europe where the Biblical basis of culture has been abandoned and forgotten, the native populations have to walk around on eggshells for fear of on the one hand offending Third World interlopers who will resort to violence at the drop of a hat to get their way and hypersensitive socialistic bureaucrats ready to impose hate speech penalties upon those daring to question the humanistic hegemony.

If we are to remove the Ten Commandments as the recognized foundation of Western and American law for fear it may offend outsiders, on what grounds should we even care if such people are offended? For it is only on a solid theistic foundation that we are able to criticize anything the government or social institutions do.

Don’t care for those mass killings that went on under Hitler or Stalin (feel free to take your pick as for some reason radical statistits tend to view one as the devil and the other a hero depending upon the political orientation in question even though each was pretty much a mirror image oft he other)? That’s too bad. For if one is going to say that law is nothing more that a statutory mechanism agreed upon by the members of a particular COMMUNITY, who are you to criticize either tyrant since you, free thinker, are not a member of their respective regime or nation.

Interestingly, often those wringing their hands the most over how all of us live too high on the hog are the ones --- to use the language we commoners constantly have our noses rubbed in --- giving the least back to the COMMUNITY in terms of useful work. Maybe if John Edwards had done something in his life other than becoming an ambulance chaser amassing from that a fortune surpassing even George Bush and Dick Cheney, the Senator would not feel so guilty that he feels the necessity to drive the rest of us into the impressment of mandatory voluntarism or whatever other schemes are boiling behind that mascaraed face of his.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties have pretty much blown it in regards to religion in general and Christianity in particular. Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying that the government that governs best governs least because the people govern themselves. Instead of standing back and allowing faith founded on the Word of God to set the human spirit free, such profound ideals in the hands of both parties have become little more than just another reason to bash us over the head as to why we should have a silly grin plastered all over our faces while our pockets are being picked to finance questionable aims and agendas we might not otherwise agree with.

A few years back a popular slogan asked, “What would Jesus Do?” In conclusion, it is my contention I doubt He would get a $400 haircut.

by Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins
Issachar Bible Church & Apologetics Research Institute

Biography - Frederick Meekins

Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.