December 13, 2004
Government 101
I started this blog as a forum for discussion of politics. Specifically I wanted to create a forum for ideological flow by which we may begin to take some firm conclusions on what exactly the socio-political view of a Bible believing person is. (And consequently, to aide those who may not believe in the Bible, a means of understanding the Biblical world-view. Personally, I know it can be confusing. I was, at one point for over eight years of my life, an atheist.)
I was very perplexed by some people’s reaction in my own church, even with regard to the Election of 2004. I noticed three things:
1) People who call themselves and rightly so live as such, Christians, may not agree entirely that followers of Christ should be ‘Conservative’ or ‘Liberal’.
2) People, though coming to Christ (hence began the work of changing their world view to match what the Bible says) may not take the effort to fully consider what one’s socio-political view ought to be.
3) That the pop-culture in America, seems to have some misunderstandings in regard to the nature of government and governance.
After doing some beginnings of research, I finally decided to post my first article on the matter.
I’m not quite sure what a text book definition of government would be but considering people as a whole I would put forth this definition/role of government: (Feel free to comment if you disagree or have something to add.)
The primary role of government, at its broadest and most basic level is to enforce and safeguard those values necessary for the proper functional health of a society. (One should note that this definition assumes that certain values are universal and can be understood and known. It also assumes that one will have the means to determine the benefit or lack thereof of ideas as whether or not they hold up to a standard by which society is benefited.)
So then the question becomes, what are those values that are necessary to safeguard in order to ensure a healthy society? This is where the debate (politically speaking) begins.
For brevity, I’ll not start the discussion on what those values are but offer up this working definition for the basic nature of government. (Any comments?)
Posted by mtriley at 01:03 AM | Comments (19)