Usurpation of Church by State: Part Three

This is the third part in a series addressing how the government has overtaken the church in the role of shepherding the American people.

Draining the Coffers of the Church
The burdens of taxation during the Johnson era utterly strangled the role of charity in America. As the government expanded to perform virtually each and every function of society, the role of the Church was reduced to Sunday sermons and bake sales. The call to be salt and light was lost on an entire generation, and within a matter of decades, the American Church had lost its voice to shape the nation's ethics. In today's society, Americans freely give 10-35 percent of our income to the federal government. Yet according to the Barna Group, just 3% of Americans tithe to their church.

Then we question why our government is now collapsing under its own weight and why the church has been deemed so irrelevant to our culture. It is largely because we have commissioned Caesar to do the work that should be reserved for the church. Bigger government is not the cure for a sickly society; it is the toxin!

The Legacy of FDR & LBJ
Today, America is left with a skyrocketing debt over $9.4 trillion. Roosevelt’s Social Security program cost American taxpayers $586 billion in 2007, and Johnson’s Medicare and Medicaid programs cost $671 billion -- nearly four times as much as the entire budget during Johnson's last year in office. Government is like a rapidly growing virus. In 1925, the entire budget for the federal government was $3 billion. This year, President Bush proposed a budget of more than $3 trillion.

Soon this appetitive behemoth will begin to swallow its own tail. In 2007, with some of the lowest interest rates in recorded history, the federal government was forced to allocate more than $243 billion just to pay the interest on our nation’s debt. Thank God that our interest rates are low. If interest rates on the national debt were to reach double-digit levels comparable to the late 70’s or early 80’s, the nation could be forced to spend nearly $1 trillion just to keep up with the interest on our debt. This is lost money with nothing to show for it.

The Search for Leadership
And while President Bush supports conservative social values, he too has failed to rein in the federal spending behemoth. President Bush has shown no fiscal discipline whatsoever — from his failure to veto a single appropriations bill during his first six years, to his $1.2 trillion prescription drug plan. His legacy will burden our children.

Today's Democrats look like full-blown socialists, and those of my own party (the Republicans) do not seem far behind. Gone are the days of President Reagan, who understood the dangers of an appetitive big government. He once said, "Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." In Reagan’s first three years in office, he cut the budgets for nine of the fourteen federal departments. Unfortunately, the Republican Party has betrayed its credo of fiscal discipline. Sadly, according to the Heritage Foundation, "Non-defense discretionary spending has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Clinton."

A Christian worldview demands more consideration for those who will inherit our national debt. Truth is: our enormous debt is not going to disappear. Current projections estimate that the national debt will exceed $10 trillion ($10,000,000,000,000) in 2010.

The Crisis We Now Face
David Walker, former Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), recently released a report, revealing that America's promised liabilities have now reached a staggering $52.7 trillion. The GAO estimates that the gross debt per person now exceeds $175,000 per man, woman, and child — and more than $410,000 for every full-time worker … and this continues to grow. According to Mr. Walker, America will not survive if Congress does not cut the role of government in America ... and soon!

As America's top accountant, Walker is not alone. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently warned Congress to pull back on its entitlement programs. "The longer we wait," he warned, "the more severe, the more draconian, the more difficult the adjustment is going to be."

Yet today's politicians are more interested in building their own political careers on the backs of our unborn children than showing true leadership! They are not heroes; they are thieves. These politicians realize the perils that await future Americans, but they are too cowardly to be candid. They not only ignore the warning signs, but they are all too eager to promise even more expansions of the government's role in America. The life of our nation's solvency is quickly ticking away, and liberal politicians are mortgaging our children's future for votes.

Unfortunately, few people care about tomorrow's generations. Americans are content to keep their hands out, hoping that our politicians will promise us even more "free" money, all of which is borrowed from the sweat and tears of those not yet born. I pray that Americans will wake up before it is too late ... before Caleb James Kastensmidt (my own unborn son) finds himself in a collapsing country that has finally been strangled by the burdens of our extravagance and laziness.