unPHILtered: The Way I See It (8 page)

Look, you’re basically going to be able to influence your children for about twenty years, maybe a little bit longer. Start at an early age and teach them about God and Jesus, love and forgiveness, peace and patience, goodness and gentleness. Be imitators of God, forgive each other, and live a life filled with love. Love your children, discipline them, and teach, correct, rebuke, and train them. Do it very carefully. Remember, the greatest gift you can give your children is love. More than anything else, always make sure they know that you love them.

S
hortly after my last book,
Happy, Happy, Happy
, was published in May 2013, I was asked to sign a couple of copies for former U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Ross Perot. I was told that McCain and Perot like the way I operate, and I have immense respect for both men. McCain was a war hero in Vietnam and is a longtime U.S. senator from Arizona. Perot, who ran for U.S. president twice in the 1990s, became a self-made billionaire by building a fortune in computers. I was surprised that they wanted to read my book. So here’s the inscription that I wrote to each of them: “Based on my observations, my conclusion of our current political situation is one word: embarrassing.”

Now, I love my country and every one of my fellow citizens, but there are some things about America that are flat-out embarrasing. And it starts with the people who are running our country in Washington, DC, and the people who are putting them there.

I don’t consider myself a Republican or a Democrat, a left-winger or a right-winger, conservative or liberal. I consider myself a Christocrat because I advocate the principles of God’s Word and God’s government. My obedience to God is much more important than my loyalty to any political party, platform, or ideology. I know that only Jesus can resurrect me from the dead, so only He should govern me. Now, I’ll follow the laws and rules of this country and be a good, taxpaying U.S. citizen, but I ultimately answer to only one higher power and that’s the Almighty. No government can thwart His will.

Regardless of what you might have heard or read over the last six years, change comes only by repenting and hope comes only by faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If you truly want change and hope in America, we have to put godly men back in Washington, DC. I don’t believe you should vote for a politician unless they will at least mention God. I also believe that at some point during a political campaign, the candidate needs to say, “I’m running because I love you and I’m really concerned about our nation.” I think it’s time for the people that we elect to represent us to tell us they love us. It would make me feel a lot better about the process and
what’s going on with our government. If I knew the politicians actually loved me, I might have a better feeling about where our country is headed. I certainly don’t like the direction it’s headed now, that’s for sure.

When I consider America’s national deficit, our system of entitlements, and all of the problems we’re having around the world, I’m absolutely sick about what’s going on in Washington, DC. But Americans have to realize that whatever happens on Capitol Hill and in the White House is actually a reflection of the ones who put them there. And in America today, there are more ungodly people than there are godly folks. Ungodliness is ruling our country. It’s the electorate that we’re seeing in our nation’s capital. The problem is not just our elected officials—it’s the ones who put them there. Our nation elected them and they are an exact representation of who we are as a country. The people of America put them in office, so we need to quit bellyaching, griping, and complaining about them. The reason they’re in our government to begin with is because ungodly people elect ungodly politicians. Elected officials in a democracy are simply replicas of the electorate. They are a reflection of who our country is made of. We are the problem.

When people don’t say yes to Jesus, they are unable to say no when they need to. When people lose the ability to say no to sin,
they end up with the depraved leading the depraved down the road to tyranny and finally to utter destruction.

We’re the problem, we really are. It’s America at large that’s at fault. When we evaluate the officials in Washington, DC, we are really only considering the evidence of the problem. When our nation puts them in office, we all feel the wrath of our own sin being put upon us. We say, “Boy, we’re feeling a lot of wrath from this and a lot of money is coming out of our pockets. What in the world?” You have to remember that they are but a picture of the people who put them there. The ungodly put the ungodly in office. And now we’re expecting them to be godly and treat us with love and kindness? It is impossible for the ungodly to elect the ungodly and then expect godliness to come from them. The corrupt elect the corrupt and the corruption continues. The depraved elect the depraved and the depravity continues. If you want kindness, love, peace, patience, goodness, and faithfulness—the characteristics you will find in godly men and women—you better get godly in a hurry and elect as many godly politicians as you can. When the biggest requirement for running for public office in this country is simply stockpiling a huge war chest of money to ensure a candidate can win, it shows that the foundation of our political system is broken. What about a candidate’s character, morals, and integrity? Does what’s inside the candidate’s head not matter?

There’s no use in arguing about the current state of our government. Political debates in this country have become nothing
but televised shouting matches. The political talking heads on TV do nothing more than try to shout over each other. We need to rise above the vitriol and learn to love the people who disagree with us. We need to love our neighbor who believes in abortion, we need to love the atheist who wants to keep creationism out of schools, and we need to love the recent college graduate who wants to take down the nativity scene at the courthouse. It does us no good to argue with them. As it says in Second Timothy 2:23–26,
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.”
All we can do is love the nonbelievers and try to turn them.

You might ask, “Well, how do we change it and get that bunch out of Washington, DC?” You yourself are going to have to repent, turn to Jesus, and put people in Washington, DC, who fear God and love their neighbors. If we don’t change, we’re going to have more of the same forevermore until it finally collapses. Don’t think it can happen? Look at the Roman Empire.
The Romans were the greatest military force in the history of the world. They conquered lands from England to Africa and from Syria to Spain during the first and second centuries. But then Rome rotted from within because of sin, political strife, disease, greed, and corruption. The Romans toppled themselves, and now Rome is only shoving out pizzas.

I truly believe that America will become ruins if it doesn’t change. We have met the enemy and it’s us. Where there is no Jesus, you end up in a society where everything is political. That’s why there’s so much political correctness in our country today. Our politicians and electorate think all of our problems can be fixed with politics. But politics isn’t the answer; Jesus, repentance, and the elimination of sins are the only answers. Sadly, arrogance, corruption, greed, depravity, and degradation are now the centerpieces of the American dream. America is reeling, teetering, rotting, and struggling within herself. She, America, is fighting for her existence. She is in the beginning of her collapse under the weight of her sin. All of the great republics before us succumbed to the same forces of evil she is now experiencing. Looking at America is like watching a rotting carcass: it smells, and the vultures will gather around her until she finally disappears.

Now, I’m only an average-intelligence man, and I’m sure the intellectuals and academics are going to disagree with me, but I’m of the belief that two principles are the driving forces
behind most of the political structures on earth, especially the current one in the United States. The government puts forth these two principles, marries them, and then believes they can fix anything. It basically comes down to this: give us
money
and
intellect
, and we can accomplish anything. That’s pretty much the standard modus operandi of America. The U.S. government tells us they have the best people, the gurus with all of the brains. They tell us to listen to them because they know what’s best for the populace. What do they keep saying? “Trust us! Trust our intellect.” Well, if that in fact is true and all they need is intellect and money, then how in the world are we $17 trillion in the hole and counting? You don’t get that far in the hole by being smart. Find out what the term
balanced budget
means, Jack!

Politicians who claim we can spend our way out of debt are at fault. They are sickened fools. What’s the difference between intellect and wisdom? Intellect leads to the slaughter of human beings while they are in their mothers’ wombs. Intellect, as it turns out, has plunged America into $17 trillion worth of debt. Wisdom causes one to fear God! Whoa, even a man of average intelligence can be wise.

Why does Congress continue to raise taxes? I thought their premise was that if politicians were smart enough and threw enough money at something, they could solve anything. But they haven’t fixed much of anything lately, and they keep dipping into our pockets for more money. Our government officials
always say the same thing: give us more money and we can fix it. Our government believes it can fix every one of our enemies worldwide by giving them more humanitarian aid. The U.S. believes it can buy its friends through nation building, foreign intervention, and preemptive war. Well, how has it worked out in Afghanistan and Iraq? We have rapidly growing domestic entitlement programs that aren’t sustainable and rarely accomplish their stated goals. Politicians believe they can fix our educational system with more funding. Yet, according to recent worldwide testing results, American high school students rank behind students from countries like Slovakia, Portugal, Vietnam, and Russia in math. Our students rank near the bottom in science, too. Are you kidding me? It’s embarrassing. These statistics fly in the face of what the politicians are telling us—that money can solve our problems.

I understand that a political structure is, in fact, going to be what ends up steering a country in the way it should go—or at least the way the politicians want to make it go. While some issues can be politically fixed, I believe spiritual, godly men would be much more effective politicians and lawmakers than ungodly men. The reason the current political parties rarely, if ever, change their minds is because there is no gospel in any of their arguments—none! Hey, Washington, DC, quit shoveling us horse manure, repent, and turn to God, and our nation might survive.

Our founding fathers were godly men and created the
greatest republic in the history of mankind. It only took us two hundred and thirty-eight years to screw it up! Great men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Daniel Webster knew that morals and religion were necessary to form the government they were establishing. George Washington, the very first president of the United States, said in a Thanksgiving proclamation in New York on October 3, 1789: “It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor: and whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me ‘to recommend to the People of the United States, a day of public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.’ ”