I have been recuperating for the last year from a vicious sinus infection. Consequently I have spent long hours quietly resting and giving my body chance to combat the infection. With many extra hours of time for reading, thinking, and writing, I have also been provided the time to watch the daily news telecasts with all of their tragedy, misery, and problems effecting the people of America and the rest of the world.

As a student of history and a Viet Nam era military veteran, I have watched and observed up close and from a distance, the coming and goings of all kinds of supposedly important people, events, and activities that promised to fix everything that was wrong, correct every injustice, and make the world a better place with more prosperity and security than has ever before been known to exist. I have watched and lived through twelve different U. S. Presidents and their administrations as they come and go. I have watched the congressional membership and leadership change and leave nothing but a grandiose mess for the elected leaders following them to try to repair. I have heard and read the empty promises and pledges to make all things better and then have been forced to listen to the litany of excuses flow out of Washington D.C. when their promised actions never come into being or even so much as to get off the ground.

All such observations have caused me to come to the sad and sorrowful conclusion that no matter what the majority political party happens to be, what the promises made have been, or who the different personalities were who made the false promises,…they all have been wrong. They have been wrong because they all, regardless of political party affiliation, are looking for success in all the wrong places!

Politics determines how we all live while we are here on earth. Religion (faith) determines not only how were are to live in a Godly manner and way while we are here on earth, but also if and when and while (after our physical death),…our spirits get into Heaven. There just happens to be a wide gap between heaven and earth. Only God’s Laws and precepts have the capability to “bridge-the-gap.” Politics and all of their over-reaching sociological limitations all come to a screeching halt at the moment of physical death for all human beings….No exceptions!

We Americans are in the initial stages, at this moment in time, of choosing new presidential nominees for both political parties,…Republican and Democrat….maybe a better moniker would be Republicrats. It just seems that political affiliation has no real impact or bearing upon the mind of the ignorant. If you don’t really know specifically why you think and believe the way you do and what political party you choose to support, then for absolute certain you are making a very huge mistake and doing a great disservice to yourself, your family, and your country.

While I was preparing for this discussion, I came across a most appropriate quotation from the great German contemporary sociologist and philosopher, Jurgen Habermas. What he had to say hits the nail right on the head as pertains to why our current day attempted political solutions never seem to work. Herr Habermas was born 18 June 1929. He is world renown for his accomplishments and academic credentials. His most important work was achieved in the field of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere. Global polls consistently find that Habermas is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading intellectuals.

What Politics Can’t Do

Jurgen Habermas made this most interesting and truthful statement:
“Democracy requires of its citizens qualities that it cannot
provide.”

Politicians can conjure up an exalted vision of a prosperous, healthy, and free society, but no government can supply the qualities of honesty, compassion, and personal responsibility that must underlie it.

Fortunately, a few politicians in both parties of our U. S. bicameral system of government still recognize that faith plays a vital role in a healthy society. People of faith are charged to uphold a different kind of vision than are the unbelievers.

All believers understand and recognize, regardless of what man says, that God Almighty created, owns, and controls this planet on which we all live. It is God’s planet,…not ours. God must weep and groan whenever man in all of his ignorance tears up the earth, scars its surface, and pollutes its soil, plants, animals, air, people, water, and all other God given natural resources beyond repair.

What we believers must come to grips with and fully understand is that a person’s real worth is not determined by their physical appearance or by the amounts of income they have generated, nor is it determined by their ethnic background or even citizenship status, but rather, their worth is bestowed on them as a sacred inviolable gift from God. As such our compassion and justice as Jesus Christ clearly told us in His own words–are our care for “the least of these my brothers.”–they are not arbitrary values agreed on by politicians and sociologists, but rather holy commands from the Creator of the Universe and all mankind in general as a species.

It is plainly obvious that the Christians of this world and in particular in America don’t always live out that vision of the world. But rather they find it very difficult to maintain a commitment both to this world and the next to come,…to this life and the next to come.

All believers and unbelievers alike would do well to remember that the Holy Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey from birth to physical death than It does about the ultimate destination of heaven or hell.

In my personal opinion, based on seven decades of living my life,… including almost four decades as a born-again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, that what the world really needs is many more people completely devoted to God’s creatures, God’s children, God’s Word, and to God Himself, and as committed to this life as to the afterlife, and to this city as to the heavenly city so that the maximum benefits, rewards, and spiritual inheritance will be earned and enjoyed by those committed souls each and every day they exist here on this earth. For, as Jurgen Habermas so accurately and precisely says, “A democracy of free people must look elsewhere (within the spiritual realms) for the qualities its citizens truly need.”

Peace And Love to All of You……………….Poppa Bear