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Lessons From Our Founding Fathers Pat Boone As I write these words, I'm comfortably ensconced in a comfortable window seat, 30,000 feet in the air over our country, en route from Los Angeles to New York City.
The view is spectacular, of course, and I'm not referring just to the geography below but to the perspective of who we are as a people, and where we seem to be going.
Like many, I'm sure, I seem to think loftier thoughts up here. My mind ranges over deeper and more substantive, even more poetic, subjects than I seem to have time for below.
Invariably, as I scan again the vast and endlessly varied landscape of America, something swells inside my chest. I feel an ache of thanksgiving and awe, and I often turn my face closer to the glass while I wipe away tears and whisper wonder words, love words, to the Architect and Maker of all this.
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Sometimes, when we're heading westward into a sunset, I can hardly contain my delight; I usually have to tell somebody, "Look at that! Is that the most amazing thing you ever saw?" or something similar. My wife has gotten a little tired, I think, of my constant enthusiasm and almost childish excitement at the daily spectacles of creation that confront us all but too often go unnoticed, even unseen.
I've explained to her more than once, "Honey, I'm looking through God's kaleidoscope! He knows I get all turned on by sunsets and sunrises, and I think He enjoys my enjoyment."
I even feel He's saying to me "You like sunsets, do you? What do you think of this one? And just check in tomorrow; I'll show you something you've never seen."
I don't think He creates all this monumental, indescribable beauty just to amuse Himself; I really believe He wants, even calls, us to look up, look around, look down, look inward, and investigate and admire His handiwork. And I love it!
The Bible, yes that dusty old leather bound volume sitting on a shelf somewhere in too many millions of homes today, says specifically, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament displays His handiwork."
And even if too few of us read those words (and the book itself) today, a great majority of us believe and understand the truth of them.
Recent surveys reveal that 95 percent of Americans believe in God; more than two-thirds belong to a church; 37 percent call themselves committed Christians; and considerably more people believe in angels than believe in evolution.
Why, then, are we permitting — and paying for — school books and teachers to incessantly drum this "theory" called "evolution" into our kids' brains and souls?
If this republic is still a democracy, where the majority gets to call the shots about what it wants, not necessarily forcing its will on others, but at least not being denied its will — how can this be happening, more relentlessly every day?
How can teachers, who don't even believe this theory themselves, be forced by school boards, and mandated by laws, to teach this theory, and only this theory, to all schoolchildren, as if science had actually proved this theory beyond all doubt and in spite of many unresolved contradictions?
And how can elected officials and school boards fly in the face of the majority and forbid the suggestion and examination of any more obvious and rational "theory" of creation—something other than blind, mindless happenstance and unconscious adaptation to environment?
How, indeed.
I was asked two days ago by a network interviewer (perhaps expecting some silly, indefensible answer) "Does Christ belong in politics?"
I surprised the interviewer perhaps, by responding "No, Christ doesn't belong in politics. But He does belong in politicians. Politicians, say, like George Washington. And John Adams. Like Ben Franklin and James Monroe. And Abe Lincoln. And Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan."
And like Thomas Jefferson. Remember him? Yes, the politician who first coined the phrase (not in our Constitution) "separation of church and state," that guy?
Well, he was also the man who composed our hallowed Declaration of Independence, in which he famously declared for all our citizens, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator…" That guy.
As nearly as we can determine, all these men we call our Founding Fathers were believers in God, in Jesus, and their faith in God and His word informed their judgments, their actions, and volumes of their writings.
Yes, I believe Christ belongs in politicians — if we still want the kind of society and government they intended.
In fact, I continued to the network interviewer in the vacuum my words had created, "Most people today have no knowledge . . . They sure aren't taught it in history classes . . . that while Thomas Jefferson was president, the federal government appropriated funds and commissioned missionaries to preach the gospel to the Indians! The ‘separation' he had referred to was to assure Baptists that their government would never force them to be Episcopalians or anything else, and in fact would keep its grubby hands off religious expression. But he obviously understood that Christian principles should motivate politicians and political actions. And the taxpaying citizens agreed."
And, though it's historic fact, I couldn't quite squeeze in the now-ignored admonition of the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Jay — who is credited with the contents and wording of more than a third of the Constitution — "Providence [read God] has blessed this Christian people with the choice of its rulers. It is therefore the duty, the privilege, and the interest of the people to choose Christians as their rulers."
Any school kids ever hear about these things? No — precisely because, in far too many instances, the politicians and historians of today do not experience, or endorse, or even welcome, the presence and guidance of God in their own lives and motives. And that's their prerogative; it's a free country; people can believe or disbelieve what they want.
John Jay knew that. But he and his friend Tom Jefferson knew that relativistic, humanistic jurists and politicians could — and inevitably would — alter and rewrite laws and moral guidelines and even the Constitution itself to suit themselves and their ever changing ideas of how they thought things should be.
As I look down now, we fly into the gathering dusk over New York City. In just days, we'll go to the polls — at least, if we have any civic responsibility at all — —and vote for the people who will continue to shape our future, fight over laws and government actions, and decide in no small measure what our children and grandchildren will learn, what they will believe (perhaps in spite of what we tell them), and what they will therefore become.
As our airliner descends, I find myself praying for today's many self-deluded scientists and educators, that they will look up from arguably un-scientific textbooks at the empirical, undeniable evidence all around, above, and in them, and actually see the light — God's light — that inhabited our Founding Fathers.
And I pray, in league with our first Chief Justice Jay, that the lifelong beneficiaries of our still Judeo-Christian society will find, support, and elect men and women who will defend its Judeo-Christian foundations.
Editor's note:
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