Biblical Principles of Government, Week 5

Before I went to the fifth week of Biblical Principles of Government, I had the big task of reading the constitution. There are two main ways to control government, and frankly many other things. One is to give it a to-do list, and make sure that the government doesn’t do anything that’s not on the to do list. Two is to make a list, a very long list of things the government can not do. Guess which one will be shorter? The to-do list. And a to-do list the constitution is. However when the constitution was presented, some people didn’t think it was enough. They wanted wanted to make a list of things the government can’t do. So the first 10 amendments of the constitution are what’s called the bill of rights. The bill of rights are a list of things that the government cannot do. So we have a list of things a government should do and a list of things a government should not do on the constitution. While the bill of rights is not necessary, it is not a bad thing. Now the government in the United states has overstepped it’s authority. For example, have you heard of executive orders, the orders that the president make? Well many presidents have used it to make laws, republican or democrat. However it is unconstitutional for a president to use executive orders to create laws.

Now back to economics. There are two economic systems the free market and socialism. In a free market, everything is voluntary. There is not interference from the government. So if you want to work for someone for $1 voluntarily then you can. The basis of the free market is, no one trades if they don’t see value in it. With socialism there is a lot of government interference. The government decides what that thing sells for. You can’t work for that guy for $1. And there are many involuntary transactions both ways. From rich to poor or poor to rich. The basis of socialism is that the government measures value. But the thing is, there is no certain measure of value. If you pay $30 dollars for a pair of shoes it could be worth it or not worth it. You could have hundreds of pairs of shoes and those shoes could still be useful. Or you could have two pairs of shoes and not be satisfied with the deal. We have some degree of socialism if either of these two things exist.

1. Government control of capital
2. Forced redistribution of wealth

Is the government taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Yes. Is the government taking from the poor and giving to the rich? Yes. Does the government have control of capital? Definitely. So what about communism? Communism is when the government owns capital.

Obviously I think socialism is wrong, but why? So imagine there are ten families on an island in the middle of nowhere. They have tried using currency but it hasn’t worked. So one of them says “let’s try out socialism.” So they try it. There are ten families, each family works ten hours, and each family makes one of whatever they are making each hour. At the end of the first day everybody puts all their products in the middle and everybody takes 10 things home. The next day one guy and his family gets smart and says “I’m gonna rest during the hottest hour of the day.” So that night everybody gets together, but now there are only 99 things in the middle. For the sake of socialism they grab 9.9 of the things in the middle each. That family worked one hour less but got 0.9 units more. The next day another family says “Well if they can rest so can we.” So now there are two families making 9 units a day and eight families making 10 units a day. So that night there are 98 things in the middle. Everything is split up and everybody gets 9.8 things. That second family gets 0.8 units more for one less hour of work. You get the point. Eventually everybody’s gonna get smart and think about their personal gain. However the more who rest the less is produced. You see that island of people will starve to death because of socialism. Unless that is they are forced to work.

There are two types of economic losses. Motivational losses, A sort of “why work” thing in which there are two types. Working people who lose their hard earned rewards. And lazy people who won’t bother to work because they are being provided for by the hard working. For example the island happen to notice that a family is better off then the rest of them, they will take some from that family and give it to the family that is not that well off. However if that family continues to be well off they won’t just let their produce be taken from them, so they hide their assets. And on the flip side there will also be people pretending to be poor so they gain more. Because of this the island decide to have one person take some from the well off and give to the not that well off. Which brings is to our second economic loss, distributional loss. That family that is now distributing wealth is not working anymore. The less of something there is, the more it will cost. So now the poor family can’t buy anything because everything costs a lot more. And if you think that the distributional loss is only so great because the island has only ten people. Our current government has about 25% of it’s workers distributing wealth. If those people were to get jobs and make things everything would cost 30% less. Socialism is causing poverty. Because our government has so many people that could be doing something else, working distributing money. Everything costs a lot more for the lower class increasing the poverty in America. So who’s gonna provide for the poor. Christians are told if you have extra give to the poor. This way it’s voluntary. And if you adopt a free market, those who work distributing money will go and get other job which will make everything cheaper. Which is less spent by the christian which means more to donate.

Biblical Principles of Government, Week 4

Today I learned about Economics. Economics is a biblical science. Directly translated they mean “Laws of the household.” There are two types of economics, micro economics which are the economics of a household or firm. And Macro economics, which are the economics of a nation or region. However Micro economics are the same as Macro economics, and vice versa. Now onto some very important economic principles. Capital is the means of production. And also excess production. Trade is giving an item or items to gain another item. Specialization is the focusing of time of resource on a specific task. Currency acts as a medium of exchange and has to be:

1. Durable
2. Divisible
3. Portable
4. Scarce
5. Incentric value

Simply put inflation is an increase in the supply of money. It is also a transfer of money. However the more of something there is, the less it’s worth. So while paper money is somewhat durable, divisible, and portable. It isn’t scarce. Think about it, it’s paper and ink. And at the rate that our government is printing money it’s definitely not incentric. Which means it won’t retain it’s value 20 years from now. In fact inflation is stealing from us. When they print more money to spend it makes the money worth less and less. So even if the money in your account has a 1% interest rate, it looses 5% of it’s value due to inflation. The government is stealing from us period.

 

The Biblical Principle of Government, Week 3

God tells us to submit to authority. However he only tells us to submit to authorities who’s author is God. In other words Christian submission only applies to legitimate government. Now let me move on to individualism and collectivism. Individualism puts the individual paramount. Collectivism put the group paramount. In the scripture it is said that if one sheep is lost, Jesus will leave the other ninety-nine to find that one sheep. Obviously Jesus is an individualist. However if God says “thou shall not murder” that doesn’t mean you can grab a group of people and go around murdering people. If one person cannot commit murder, then many cannot commit murder. So God’s laws apply to the government. Did you know that the bible tells us what the highest tax rate should be? When the Israelites wanted a king “because everyone else had one”. God warned them that a king would take ten percent of their money and food. The reason why this is so important is because God was supposed to get ten percent of the people’s money and food. So making a tax rate ten percent or up is saying that you are more important than God. However the United States federal government is taking at least ten percent of your income. And the more you earn the higher the tax rate. The government cannot take more then they are told by God.

The Government is made out of three branches. The Executive, which is the president. The Legislative who are the lawmakers are split into two groups, the Senate and the House. And the Judicial, which is the judge. I’m going to put a concept in your mind. That those with the most power should be checked on the most. And that power corrupts good people. So we supposedly have three branches of government that have equal power, right? Well using that concept. The Executive branch has a term of office for four years. The Senate ha a term of office for six years. The House has a term of office for 2 years. And the Judicial has a term of office for life. In terms of terms of office the House is checked on the most, meaning they have the most power. The Executive is in second in power. The Senate is third in power and the Judicial is forth in power. Also there are different types of government power in our government. The Executive branch is a Monarchy. The Senate is an Oligarchy, the House is a Democracy. And the Judicial is an Oligarchy. Our founding fathers knew that each form of government had it’s pros and cons, so they put them all in our government. Because sometimes a Monarchy is good, believe it or not, you don’t want the people voting whether or not to move our fleet here or there. I realize that I was going to say that our founding fathers didn’t mean to create a government. If you mean to differ, wouldn’t a government put “murdering is illegal” in their constitution. See for yourself. Unless you propose that our founding fathers though murdering was okay, our founding fathers didn’t mean to make a government. And just to clarify I made the chart I drew much neater. I’m sorry if you can’t read my handwriting, I normally write in cursive.

The Biblical Principle of Government, Week 2

God’s church is built on Peter’s statement from Matthew 16:16, “You are the Messiah the Son of the living God.” Verse 17 says “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” Notice that he says “gates of Hades”. What are gates used as? A defensive measure. Many think that Christianity is on the defensive, however unless Satan is pounding on our walls with a huge gate, this verse suggests that Christianity is on the offensive. Early America was very Christian. So Christian, that even those that didn’t believe in God looked at the world through a Christian’s eyes. When we started to think that we were on the defensive we held up in our own little fort. As a Christian our goal is to spread the word, not stay in our own little world.

Getting back to government principles let’s talk about power and authority. What is power? Power is the ability to make something happen. Power can be used for good and evil. Same applies to government power. Authority is what helps us regulate power. And looking closer at the word authority, the main word in it is author. Authority has an author. And the main authority in the government is God. Authority must be tied to justice. Authority must be knowable. Authority must have checks and balances. And the Author defines the use. Behind every source of law is God. So when you choose your source of authority you are choosing your God. If you believe the people should have authority, the people are your God.

What is government? George Washington once said “Government is force.” The government can also be described as a fire. It can be useful and dangerous. Just in the 19th century more people have died from governments than from WWI & WWII combined. And we’re not talking about war. We’re talking about the government killing people for their beliefs.

Now let’s talk about forms of government. Not biblical forms of government. There are five types of government. There’s

• Monarchy- ruled by one
• Oligarchy- ruled by few
• Democracy- ruled by the Majority or their elected officials
• Republic- ruled by laws
• Anarchy- ruled by no-one

Monarchy’s don’t tend to last long because everybody’s trying to get the throne. Often what happens is the Monarchy turns into an Oligarchy, a small group of people. If you look at history an you see that there were a lot of kings and dictators and you wonder how they lasted so long? That’s because Oligarchy’s often put out figureheads to represent them. Democracy’s also with time become Oligarchy’s. Because if the majority elects a few officials those few officials will end up ruling. Republics will turn into Democracy’s with time because it really depends who makes the laws. So if the people make the laws it turns into a democracy. And Anarchy’s will turn into either turn into Monarchy’s or Oligarchy’s. This happens because terrorist groups start terrorizing the nation. And in turn the people start to give a lot of power to the government to try and protect them. However the people then start to hate the government because of all the power it has. Then to stop the mayhem they turn to the people who are terrorizing them to stop terrorizing them. It’s a mouthful. That was the case with Hitler. Before his reign terrorist attacks spread out through Germany. And everything above happened. In the end they elected Hitler, who actually turned out to be the leader of the terrorist group.

The Biblical Principle of Government, Week 1

Today I started a ten week program taught by Mike Winther. It’s called The Biblical Principle of Government. Today was focused on building the foundation of what was to come. Your worldview is like a fort, in that each wall is something history and theology. Your enemies go for the weakest wall whatever it may be. This is why Christian students who went into high school and college stopped believing. When debating with someone make sure you know what you are actually debating on. This is represented by a tree. In that if you start arguing about a branch there will be no effect. You have to find the stump and work on that. And when it comes to making decisions don’t base them off of practicality. For example if two people plan weeks to rob a bank and have worked out that there was a 98% chance of success. And they fail, that’s because they based their plan on practicality. If they had based their plan on principle, and the principle was the ten commandments, they would have not robbed a bank in the first place. Because thou shall not steal. Now onto the controversial Creation-Evolution debate. First of all using science, it has been proven a mutation in the evolution could not have been possible. Because there is no order from disorder without intelligence. It’s like getting all the pieces of an air craft. There is no way it would become assembled without intelligence. The Holocaust was a horrible event no matter how you look at it, but do you know why it happened? Hitler was a believer in evolution. And since humans are just highly evolved animals there are humans that are higher evolved than others. Hitler believed that he was higher evolved the the Jews. So he killed them. There’s nothing shocking about a leopard killing an antelope and eating it. In this case it was just Hitler and the Jews. With Christianity we all come from Adam and Eve therefore all races are considered equal and the only different races are believers and non-believers.

The Bible mentions four governments. Self government, Family government, Church government, and Civil government. The source of anything determines the use of something. So where do rights come from. If they come from the government the government would have the ability to take away our rights. If they come the majority then the majority would choose to take away the rights of the minority. If it came from the bill of rights, the people who made the bill of rights could take away rights. If rights came from space aliens, space aliens could take away our rights and etc. If rights came from God he would have the ability to take away our rights. However the good news is that our God gave us our rights and he never changes.

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