All of the hub-bub about Jefferson is nothing new, nor is the battle over David Barton's book, The Jefferson Lies. Personally, I enjoyed the book, and appreciate David Barton's hard work, but his critics don't seem to understand the truth of the matter. Perhaps Mr. Barton is not clear enough. Perhaps their campaign of deconstructionism is just so embedded into their souls that they can't believe there could be an alternative to their beliefs. Trust me, as a Christian, I constantly battle with my faith, testing it, and then reaffirming that I have it right.
Doubt is in our nature.
Religion, like any other man-made venture, is not perfect. However, God is. That is why I am not religious, but I do have faith. The founders were the same way. They recognized the Divinity of Christ, and they recognized the existence of God, but they had a few hangups about religion. Considering America's roots, that makes a lot of sense. Religious freedom was the primary motive for many folks that came to America. The Pilgrims specifically came to the New World seeking religious freedom, in order to escape the powerful dictates of the State Religion back home.
America's roots are found within the principles of Christianity. Our identity is that of a nation founded with Christianity as the primary faith. The purpose of this nation was to be a nation that would champion its Christian founding, while tossing aside the chains of religiosity. In other words, we were a nation where the politicians prayed, and the pastors preached politics, but the government did not control the church, and the church did not control the government.
It is not an all-or-nothing equation. It is a kind of symbiosis.
In today's society, the secularists do whatever they can to stick God in the eye. The battle in our culture, and our political structure, can be traced back to the same source. It is beyond left versus right, blue versus red, and democrat versus republican. With issues like abortion, gay marriage, and government dictating to us what our rights are and are not, it is apparent that the whole culture war we are involved in finds its roots in a condition that goes all the way back to Eden. It all comes down to one question. Will we be obedient to God?
If your rights are God-given, then why is government defining them? If our walk is to be a Christian walk, why are secularists the ones teaching what our walk should be in the education system and entertainment industry?
Everywhere I turn, I recognize the disobedience to God permeating throughout our society, and I am saddened by it.
The word "Obedience," however, brings us back to that all-or-nothing attitude of the liberal left.
We tend to try to humanize God. We give him human definitions, and human emotions. The fact is, God is not human. He created humanity. Surely, we are in His Image, but as spirits, not as humans.
My son once asked me, "How can I follow a God that is jealous. Jealousy is a base emotion. I can't follow a being that is up there somewhere enraged with jealousy."
"It is true," I explained to him, "that God is a jealous God. But his jealousy is not the same as human jealousy. His jealousy does not even come close to the definition you have in your head. He created us, therefore He does not want us worshiping false gods. He only wants us to recognize Him as our Creator, as our God, and as our Savior. In that way, He is jealous. But if you were Him, wouldn't that be the way you wanted it? If you hypothetically created your own race of beings, would you want them giving the credit to some fake god they made up?"
All-or-nothing.
He wants us to be obedient not to enslave us, but to protect us. Immoral actions have consequences. For example, if a person remains a virgin until marriage, marries a virgin who carries the same moral standards, and never has sex outside of that marriage will the person be at risk of contracting a venereal disease? To remain safe from the consequences of sexual immorality, all we must do is obey God.
The same is true in everything in our lives. Follow God's moral standards, and you will avoid the consequences of bad behavior. The liberal left, however, says that morality is what you want it to be, and then they work through government to remove the consequences. They encourage our children to be sexually active. "It's okay, as long as you wear a condom." Besides, even if you get pregnant, you can kill the baby inside you with an abortion.
No consequences.
Except that there are consequences to the attempt to eliminate consequences, too.
In a world of political correctness the standards for what is moral has been flipped, and the knives are out for those that believe in God. Christians have become targets, and Thomas Jefferson's faith is being doubted as a part of that attack. David Barton says we have forgotten our Christian roots. He does not mean that in the terms of a lapse of memory, but that our society has purposely revised it so as to hide the truth.
David Barton's book, The Jefferson Lies, attempts to set the record straight.
History is a funny thing, however.
There is an old saying, "History is written by the victors."
True, though I think that is not always true. Sometimes, history is written by the well-funded.
That does not mean that the truth about our history has been completely hidden.
Historical truths are what Barton presents in his book, and his sources are not ones readily accepted by the academics, who, if you may remember, have a goal of deconstructing our history so as to revise it to fit their secular narrative. Therefore, it is of no surprise that academia, and even so-called Christian Conservatives, have challenged the authenticity of the sources, or the historical narrative, of Barton's book. We have been taught a distortion for so long, even those who should recognize the distortions for what they are, are unable to do so.
Hence, the creation of another book by, who the Humanists call Christian Conservatives, "Getting Jefferson Right."
While Barton tries to tackle seven myths about Jefferson head-on, two Grove City College Professors try to tackle Barton's findings head-on.
The Leftists love it, too. Every liberal left website I can think of has an article about how the "Getting Jefferson Right" guys really stuck it to Barton. And then, Barton's publisher nixed the book, as well (no worry, Mr. Barton found an alternative to Thomas Nelson to publish his book).
For the Leftists, the developments of the whole thing has got to seem so very rich.
As I said earlier, the left is an "all or nothing" mindset. Either Thomas Jefferson was a "far right extremist Christian," or a humanistic secularist. The truth, however, is somewhere in between. In reality, Jefferson was neither. He considered himself a Christian, but he was not fond of Christian religious institutions.
In a letter to Mr. Charles Thompson, printed in my copy of Jefferson's Bible, Mr. Jefferson wrote in reference to what he did cutting and pasting from the Bible into his document, for the purpose of presenting to the Indians the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a simple format that they would better understand, "It is a document in proof that I am a REAL CHRISTIAN, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics of deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature."
The all caps are in the book, not added by me.
Thomas Jefferson, as stated in that letter, saw himself as a "Real Christian." He was a man of faith, but he had no faith in man's concoction of religion.
Again, when we look back at the roots of English Colonization, and how those folks were trying to escape the tyranny of the Church of England, where the King was set up as the head of the church, the founder's dislike of religion makes a lot of sense.
The founders used Christian principles to found this nation, and considered it a Christian nation, but on the same token, as stated in the Tripoli Treaty, this is not a Christian nation in the same theocratic way a Muslim Nation would be, or the Holy Roman Empire was. America is not a Christian nation as a theocracy, but a Christian nation in the sense that the people are Christians, the principles come from Christian roots, and that the leaders in government prayed for guidance and believed that the founding of this nation was only possible because of Divine Providence.
As Benjamin Franklin indicated during the Constitutional Convention, "And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?"
Franklin's recommendation was for the delegates of the Federal Convention in Philadelphia to pray before each session, and though they did not bring in a clergyman to lead the assembly in prayer as he recommended, they did go down to the nearest church down the road to kneel and ask for guidance from God. It was at this point that the convention gridlock loosened, and they began to make progress.
The Jefferson Lies, despite the opposition, presents a compelling case in favor of Jefferson's Christianity. I believe that "Getting Jefferson Right" gets Jefferson wrong. Thomas Jefferson was a man of faith. Perhaps not a religious man, but he definitely was a Christian.
The truth is out there, and in the end, it will set this nation free.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
The Jefferson Lies: David Barton (2012)
America and Israel: W. Cleon Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap, National Center for Constitutional Studies, (1981).
The Barton Lies: The Religious Right's Favorite 'Historian' Gets Hit with a Dose of the Truth - The Humanist
Was America Founded As A Christian Nation? Skeptics Say 1796 Treaty with Tripoli Says No - Political Pistachio
The Jefferson Bible: Thomas Jefferson, (1902)
The Jefferson Bible: Thomas Jefferson, (1902)
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