Today, I'm going to get into a controversial subject, religion. But have no fears; I'm not going to debate that subject in itself but only use it for background. Oh good, I didn't see anyone leaving
. Nearly 500 years ago on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Why is this important? This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. During the next couple of centuries, the early settlers, most of whom were Protestant, settled in America. Their religion was very important in their lives, their thoughts and actions, and in their governments. How important was it? Research shows that 34% of our Founders' quotations between the years 1760 and 1805 were taken directly from the Bible. As we read about the debates in the formulation of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we see how important the Bible and religion were to our Founders. They recognized the existence of a higher authority as noted in the Declaration and regularly included prayer during their deliberations. Let's take a slight turn here and discuss a topic that seems to be very important to us today. That topic is values. What are values? They are defined as a person's principles or standards of behavior; one's judgment of what is important in life. So we see that values are strictly personal. Everyone has them; President Trump, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Billy Graham, and so forth. And we can't say that their values are right or wrong. We may not agree with them but that doesn't make them wrong for that particular person. So what's missing here? Let's look at another "v" word; virtue. What is virtue? Simply, it's behavior showing high moral standards. So isn't virtue just values with high moral standards added in? As opposed to values, we can evaluate virtue and identify it as right or wrong based on moral judgements. Our Founding Fathers often mentioned "virtue" in their many debates and discussions. In William Federer's book, "America's God and Country" which is an Encyclopedia of Quotations, the Index has 76 referrals to quotations having the word "virtue". It was a very important concept in our history. Let's now go back to religion and look at the Ten Commandments. We'll skip the first 3 or 4 which relate to God and consider the remainder of them which relate to us and each other. These cover moral issues such as murder, adultery, theft, lying, and so forth and are mainstays in all societies and cultures. If a society ignores these, history shows it is doomed to failure. Is our country looking past the importance of these rules? And as individuals, do we always include morality when we decide on our values? How much effort do we make to turn our values into virtues? This recent election cycle has uncovered many peoples' values. How much virtue has it uncovered? Very little, if any, I'm afraid to say. Isn't it time to again look to our Founders and the things and ideas they deemed to be important for our country and then follow their lead? I think so, if we are to maintain our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. It would be interesting to see how the progressives and their controlled media would handle putting virtue into their actions. Would we laugh, or cry? It could be entertaining to watch. We can only hope.
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April 2017
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