I hope you had a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I know I have much to be thankful for and I am grateful that I was able to express everything with loved ones over a fantastic meal. I especially enjoyed watching my grandson Ryder enjoy his first Thanksgiving.
Last week, I shared the first of two letters I wrote to the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. This week, I share the second letter I sent to him earlier this month. My motivation for sharing these letters is to encourage my readers to exercise their free speech liberty to express their needs, desires, and expectations to government leaders who have the power to pass laws and institute policies that impact our lives.
Many have the attitude that they don’t bother with politics, but they forget that politics bothers with them every day and in almost every way. These next few years will bring about the biggest changes to personal freedoms, decency, and opportunities if the Republicans who secured the Supreme Court are able to win the presidency and the Senate and retain power in the House of Representatives.
November 18, 2023
Dear House Speaker Johnson,
This is my second letter to you since you became the Speaker of the House. Since becoming Speaker, I have learned a bit more about your views on the role of religion in our government and I watched you endorse the candidacy of Donald Trump. How disappointing. Of course, you have the right to your religious beliefs, and you can endorse whomever you choose. My concern is how those beliefs and your endorsement affect our Constitutional freedoms, given your position.
As I said in my first letter, I am a long time Christian. I accepted Christ as my Savior on February 14, 1971, and have been a follower of Christ’ teachings since then. I recall when the mission of the church was to share the good news of the gospel with those who were willing to listen. We strived to live exemplary lives as lights in the darkness, full of compassion and generosity to those in need and without judgement and condemnation. Jesus taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves. He taught us to be forgiving. He taught us to welcome the immigrant. He taught us to give to the needy. And He taught us not to judge because vengeance and judgement belonged to God. Our one job was to spread the Good News.
We had no political agenda until the church was infiltrated by men seeking to exploit our voting numbers for the purposes of their own power and greed. They introduced the notion that abortion was murder by misusing Old Testiment scriptures like Jeremiah 1:5 to oppose abortion: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you: Before you were born, I sanctified you: I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” I read this as God predates our existence and that the womb is a place of formation of the human body or earth suit. I say this because Adam did not become a living soul until he breathed the breath of life after his body was formed. And in Luke of the New Testiment, it explicitly states that Elizabeth was in the sixth month of her pregnancy (after viability) when the baby leaped in her womb upon hearing the greeting of Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:36 – 41). The Bible repeatedly describes this body as temporary, as dust, as in 2 Corinthians 5:1, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The fact that nearly 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage confirms for me that life does not begin at conception. And the fact that my girlfriend delivered a baby without a brain, but with a heartbeat, who never took a breath, solidified this fact. I find it interesting too, that Jesus said absolutely nothing about abortion. He talked about protecting children who were living and breathing outside the womb. And even if a miscarried or aborted fetus is a person as some believe, they should take comfort in the fact the soul of the unborn fetus is in heaven. Religious beliefs differ, so we should let God be the judge of the person who got the abortion or the doctor who performed it. They too, are equally entitled to their religious or non-religious beliefs to guide their behavior as they pursue their happiness.
The second thing these men introduced was a notion that somehow our country was special to God and would be destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah if we allowed wickedness to persist. They kept quoting, completely out of context, 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin heal their land.” This sounded ridiculous to me because Jesus only talked about individual salvation through belief in Him. He already laid out the temporary nature of this earthly kingdom. He didn’t try to change the government to enforce God’s laws, he tried to change human hearts to ready them for the Kingdom of God.
The third thing these men tried to do was convince us that this was a Christian nation and that the founders were all Christians. I knew from history class that this was not entirely true. Some were Christians, but others were deist, and still others were atheists. They tried to convince us that separation of church and state was a mythical concept. However, the very first Amendment of our Constitution guarantees us the freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of an official religion in our government.
In more recent years, politicians have mounted an attack on the LGBTQ community using the church. I once argued with a pastor’s wife that no one chooses to be a homosexual as a lifestyle. Just like no one chooses to be transgender for the fun of it. Jesus never condemned homosexuality, although it has certainly existed throughout recorded history. He did, however, call out religious hypocrites, religious show-offs, idolatry, rich people, financial cheats, and people who judge others. He replaced the Old Testament laws with the law of love: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Let God be the judge. Jesus made it clear that people need healing, acceptance, and compassion, not judgement and condemnation from other people.
I am a Christian and I am also a patriot. I am proud to live in a country where the preamble of our Constitution states that the purpose of our government is to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Those are the things I expect my Congress and executive branch to be working on. We have real problems with access to healthcare, crime, environmental threats, national security, and poverty. These are the things you should be addressing. No one should be using our government to impose their religious beliefs on others. That is against liberty and justice!
In this nation, all people are created equal and are supposed to enjoy the same rights. We should be moving in that direction, not away from it. I value your freedom of religion as much as my own. However, neither of us has the right under our Constitution to impose our religious beliefs on others. You don’t believe in gay marriage, then don’t get gay married. You believe abortion is murder, then don’t have one.
Your job as a representative is to uphold the Constitution and to ensure that the civil liberties of all Americans are preserved, even if you personally disagree with the personal decisions of Americans about how to pursue their own happiness. That is between each American and his or her God, if he or she has one. You are responsible for saving your own soul and I hope you will remember that as you guide the House of Representatives.