Your Opinion: Replacing God with government

Dear Editor:

I think most would agree that, as Robert Bork stated, the United States is "slouching toward Gomorrah." It seems to me that few could argue that our moral and ethical standards have devolved dramatically, especially over the past 60 years

The IRS attacks groups that want to rein in big government. The Veterans Administration keeps secret lists, lists that have caused veterans to receive such inadequate care that they died. The federal government ignores the Fourth Amendment. We allow "secret courts" to approve spying on us. Last year government freed 116 illegal immigrants with murder convictions. This from our leaders. All this and no one in government seems to be held accountable.

Are we who call ourselves Christians to blame? Over 75 percent of people in the U.S. claim to be Christians; over 25 percent claim to be evangelical Christians. If this is so, how have we allowed or nation to slide into its current morass? Has our silence on issues of morality and ethics been so widespread that the majority of us have lost our way?

Fifty years ago President Lyndon Johnson pushed for legislation that would result in our nation becoming a Great Society. Government would become our god.

In 1963 Social Security was our only nationwide income redistribution program. In 2009 the federal government spent $746 billion on means tested welfare, five times the amount needed to raise the income of every person in American to above the poverty level; that money came from the pockets of taxpayers.

Government has extracted trillions of dollars from us, redistributed it, and yet the percentage of people in poverty has not changed. Why have we Christians allowed this? Do we no longer believe that our God can take care of us? Do we not believe that He will provide us with adequate resources to help others? Why have we transferred the duty to take care of widows and orphans to the god of government? Where does Scripture teach us taking care of widows and orphans falls to Caesar? If we adhere to Christian principles,We the People can do a far better job than government, when redistributing the resources God have given us.

Perhaps in this post-Christian America we Christians no longer understand the meaning of Christianity. Perhaps the majority of us now worships the false god of government.