GOVERNMENT:

REFLECTING THE WILL OF GOD

Governments are a mix of good and evil, justice and oppression, compassion and neglect, generosity and paucity, peacemaking and bloodiness.  But some do a better job generating goodness, striving for justice, expressing compassion, showing generosity, and making for peace.  It is these qualities that reflect the Will of God(WOG) and nurture the Reign of God(ROG).  It is these qualities that are inherent within the FOUNDATIONAL 15(F-15) of The Obedient Government.

WOG and ROG, the FOUNDATIONAL 15(F-15), are focused on the common good.  The common good builds community.  Community connects all people and ensures the well-being of all.  

Within the community are the unique gifts each person brings for the sake of nurturing the fellowship. The individual gifts provide a purpose which provides sustenance for all.  We live for each other. 

Governments committed to the WOG/ ROG/F-15 unite individual gifts for the purposes of sharing and  sustaining all of life.  There is equality mixed with opportunity, with all given freedom to grow, yet tempered by commitment to the common good.

WOG/ ROG/F-15 are the anti-thesis of Libertarian anarchy, totalitarian control, and oligarchical arrogance. Similarly, Ayn Randian ethics have no place at the Table of God.  Political gamesmanship exists for making the WOG/ROG/F-15 actual. Governments are instituted by God for obedience to God. Obedience to God means commitment to WOG/ROG/F-15.

Democracy is the finest governmental form expressive of WOG/ROG/F-15.  Democracy must be bound to the ethics and spirit of WOG/ROG/F-15.  It is the task of the Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque, and other faith expressions to provide the guidance, the values, the character for proper governmental functioning, consistent with WOG/ROG/F-15.  

Faith communities are called to be personal and political, local and global, technical and environmental. Faith communities are called to unite the ebb and flow, the warp and woof within the world. Faith communities engage the world through the Spirit of the Other which waters the soil of humility in governmental affairs.

God calls governments to obedience, not to divisive, arrogant ideologies. In this way, God is pleased and the common good served.

Peace!