Is it important?
May 27, 2010 (Thursday)
I saw a cute comic strip recently. The main character, a little girl, complains that she would like to travel in time and visit an era when people weren’t so stupid and annoying. Granted her wish, she arrived at a prehistoric earth when there were no people at all.
As long as we have people, we have conflicts. We don’t all believe alike. But in our country we have the freedom to believe as we choose. Where did we get such an idea? From God Himself. He has given us freedom of choice. It has been so from the beginning.
In some countries of the world, people are persecuted, jailed and some are even executed for being Christians. What a terrible, awful, sad and tragic situation! And yet it exists and involves millions of people in such countries.
Our forefathers had the wisdom, based on disappointing experiences with established religions, to create a constitution that provided for both the church and the state to be free. That simple concept has come to be known as “separation of church and state.” It makes possible the freedoms of both.
Baptists should know their own history. They were persecuted by established churches when church and state were one. They worked hard to get enactment of the First Amendment to the Constitution, based on their having been persecuted because they were not members of a politically correct church. Take a good look at countries where church and state are joined, and you can see plainly what happens when one controls the other. People suffer. People die.
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Click here to read a recent story about persecution of Christians in a country where church and state are joined.