[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 138 (Monday, September 30, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11851-S11853]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ``CHOOSING GOOD GOVERNMENT''

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, as we have launched into the high-pitched 
rhetoric and the harsh charges and countercharges of the fall political 
campaign season, I found it very interesting when I heard a sermon 
preached by Dr. Craig Barnes, the pastor of the National Presbyterian 
Church, on Sunday. It so happens that his sermon topic was ``Choosing 
Good Government.'' I asked Dr. Barnes if he would mind if I shared this 
with my colleagues and with those who are interested, because I 
think Dr. Barnes laid down some very good principles for people of 
faith, people who contend they are religious believers, regardless of 
their particular sect or denomination or even their religion, to 
consider in choosing those who seek to represent us in November.

  Dr. Barnes is not one to recommend one party or another or one 
candidate or another, nor have I heard him in his sermons attempting to 
influence the choices that those of us in the legislative bodies make 
when we deal with controversial issues, but I think he had a couple of 
very good points to consider and to apply based on our tenets, our 
beliefs and judgment as to how these standards should be applied. He 
gives us a framework for making the choices that are very important to 
all of us in this election year because, as he points out, we are 
subject to the rule of man by reason of the authorization from God for 
man to establish laws and rules over one another.
  Dr. Barnes points out that we have to choose a system which is in 
conformity with God's will if we are to choose a government that is 
consistent with the principles that have been laid down by our God and 
by our faith.
  The two main points that Dr. Barnes makes are, first, to choose God's 
leader is always to choose godly character. And he points out that we 
live in an

[[Page S11852]]

era when character and integrity have sometimes gotten off the table 
for consideration. You try bringing up an issue like personal morality 
and they say that is nobody's business.
  Dr. Barnes points out that as King David discovered,
       People who do not make good personal choices are 
     compromised in their ability to make good public choices. 
     Biblical leadership is never seen as a job. It is a calling. 
     It is a way of life for which the leader is a symbol. People 
     who choose to live by the Bible,'' or by the other directives 
     that they have receive from that higher being in whom they 
     have belief, ``are given rather clear standards of ethical 
     behavior. Some things are right. Some things are wrong. [It 
     is] not wrong because it is ineffective or unpopular. But [it 
     is wrong] because it isn't the right thing to do. To choose 
     God as your authority is to resist the current privatization 
     of morality and to choose a leader who is clearly trying to 
     be led by God in his or her own life.
  The second point that Dr. Barnes makes is that choosing a leader is 
always a choice about a particular vision for our life together. And we 
have heard lots of talk about vision: Do we have vision in the 
campaign? What is the vision?
  We all know the maxim that, ``Without a vision, the people perish.'' 
But, according to some polls, almost 90 percent of us claim to believe 
in a God, and to pray. But we seem to be spiritually empty. And the 
reason we may be that is because we are no longer able to call for the 
sacrifice or discipline necessary to live by the teachings.
  We, as Americans, cherish not only our freedom but our vision of life 
under God. That is what brought the pilgrims and the Puritans here. 
That was what native Americans and Hispanics had before we came, life 
under God. Slaves that were dragged here found a vision, that they 
could build a new life in the Biblical stories of God's deliverance.
  So those who will now lead us have to offer some vision of our life 
together. This has to be more than just helping each person to get a 
piece of the pie. It has to be something that will, again, inspire 
sacrifice and commitment to the common good, something that will make 
us refuse to accept ``the way it is said'' and commit ourselves to 
``the way it can be.''
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues who may be interested, and anyone 
else who is concerned about choices we make this fall, to read and 
ponder this sermon.
  I ask unanimous consent it be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the sermon is ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

                        Choosing Good Government

                        (By Dr. M. Craig Barnes)

       Americans have always been ambivalent about authority. We 
     know we need it. We honor and respect it. But we are still 
     suspicious of it.
       This is not surprising for a nation whose founding 
     documents include a Declaration of Independence, which we 
     cherish. But that independence has also been written on our 
     hearts. It was what propelled us to explore the frontier and 
     tame it with our hands. It was what almost split the nation 
     in two over a Civil War. Our spirit of independence has led 
     us to honor innovation and creativity, and a competitive 
     economy where we are free to improve ourselves. It has even 
     sent us overseas to fight tyranny and aggression, because we 
     cannot stand the thought of people not being free. Every 
     healthy American teenager knows about the longing to be free, 
     and that longing never goes away.
       So we are very careful about giving even some of this 
     freedom away. But we know we have to. We give it to parents 
     and teachers, to employers and to the elders of the church, 
     and we give it to the government who can tell us what to do. 
     They can restrict our activities with laws and regulations 
     and they can direct us toward a particular future. We give 
     these leaders power over our lives because we know we cannot 
     live together without some authority. But we don't really 
     like it.
       One of our favorite American beliefs is that the real 
     authority still lies with the individual who at least chooses 
     the people to lead us. Very conscious of this, leadership 
     today has tried to move beyond the hierarchial models of the 
     past where the person at the top ran the show. Now, the last 
     thing anyone wants to be accused of is being authoritarian. 
     So we have developed a new emphases on ``participative 
     management'' and ``building consensus.'' But we are 
     discovering this can digress into little more than servicing 
     complaints. In essence, many leaders today are saying, ``I'm 
     must here to give you what you want.'' (``So I can stay 
     here.'') This has led many social and political commentators 
     to ask who really has authority in a free society? The leader 
     or those who are led?
       According to Romans chapter 13, the answer is neither one. 
     ``Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; 
     for there is no authority except from God.'' Now that is a 
     rather strong statement. And just in case we want to gloss 
     over it, Paul says the same thing three times in this 
     passage. ``There is no authority except from God . . . Those 
     authorities that exist have been instituted by God . . . 
     Whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.''
       At first we want to object by asking what about tyrants 
     like Hitler or Stalin? What about the boss or teacher who 
     abuses their power. Is there authority from God? But then we 
     remember that the Apostle Paul, who was inspired to write 
     these words, lived under incredible tyrants like Claudius and 
     Nero. Paul knew about leaders who abused authority, but he 
     also knew about the sovereign power of God.
       As a Jew, Paul was steeped in the Old Testament 
     understanding of God's Kingdom--God's reign on earth which is 
     greater than the kingdoms of earth and uses the kingdoms of 
     earth for his own purposes. Which means all governments are 
     under God. To the degree that human leaders obey God they are 
     being faithful to their calling. To the degree that human 
     leaders break God's commandments they are stepping outside of 
     their authority, which can only come from God.
       Actually the Bible is filled with illustrations of people 
     who because they obeyed God could not obey their leaders. 
     When Pharaoh ordered the midwives to kill all the Hebrew 
     babies, they began to hide them and Moses' life was 
     preserved. When Nebuchadnezzar ordered everyone to bow before 
     his image. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego refused to obey. 
     When Darius outlawed praying, Daniel continued to pray. When 
     Herod ordered the death of the children in Bethlehem, Jesus' 
     parents fled to Egypt with their son. When Peter was told by 
     the Sanhedrin to stop preaching, he told his religious 
     leaders, ``We have to obey God rather than man.'' In everyone 
     of those cases, people of faith were making heroic choices 
     about who would govern them. And in every case, the choices 
     were guided by a prior commitment to serve God the only real 
     authority we have.
       The Bible says nothing about either covenants or contracts 
     between people and their leaders. That makes for good social 
     and political theory, but it is not how the Bible orders our 
     life together. The Bible claims both the people and the 
     leader are under a common obligation to live under God, and 
     the leader is but an instrument of divine purposes. Thus, we 
     must help our government succeed in its calling to serve God. 
     We cannot disregard the laws and direction of our leaders 
     just because we had other preferences. We must still honor 
     good leaders even when they make bad mistakes. In the words 
     of B.B. King, ``Only a mediocre man is always at his best.'' 
     The only time we can refuse to obey our government is when in 
     a great crisis in conscience we become convinced it has 
     determined to lead us away from life under God's authority.
       Rev. Michael Cassidy, a leader of the South African 
     church's resistance to apartheid tells about the time he was 
     summoned to appear before President P.W. Botha in Pretoria. 
     When he entered his office, the president stood and began 
     reading Romans 13. Botha claimed the passage called for 
     unequivocal support of the Nationalist Government apartheid 
     policy. Rev. Cassidy responded by reminding the president he 
     too had read the Bible and began quoting from Revelation 13, 
     which describes governments that become dragons when they 
     devour God's people. The authority doesn't lie in the leader. 
     The authority lies in God, whom the leader also serves.
       Here in the land of the Free, we are given a wonderful 
     opportunity to make choices about who will lead us. We can 
     elect leaders. We can choose an employer, or a church, or a 
     politician. Behind each of those choices. for people who 
     believe in God, is a decision about which leader will bring 
     us closer to the reign of God. Let me offer two guidelines to 
     help us in our choices about who will lead us closer to God's 
     kingdom.
       1. To choose God's leader is always to choose Godly 
     character. We live in an era when the issues of character and 
     integrity have somehow been taken off the table for 
     consideration. Try bringing up the issues of personal 
     morality of a leader at work and you are likely to be told, 
     that is a private issue. The question is can he or she do the 
     job.'' But as King David discovered people who do not make 
     good personal choices are compromised in their ability to 
     make good public choices. Biblical leadership is never seen 
     as a job. It is a calling. It is a way of life for which the 
     leader is a symbol.
       People who choose to live by the Bible are given rather 
     clear standards of ethical behavior. Some things are right. 
     Some things are wrong. Not wrong because it is ineffective or 
     unpopular. But wrong because it isn't the right thing to do. 
     To choose God as your authority is to resist the current 
     privatization of morality and to choose a leader who is 
     clearly trying to be led by God in his or her own life. The 
     evidence of that is not only in things like sex and money, 
     but also in the morals we don't talk about as much in 
     Washington--like humility, and graciousness, and the refusal 
     to become mean just because it helps you survive.
       2. Choosing a leader is always a choice about a particular 
     vision of our life together. In a recent article in the 
     journal First Things, Thomas Reeves asks why does our country 
     seem to be so spiritually empty when according to the Gallup 
     poll 90% of us

[[Page S11853]]

     claim to believe in God and to pray? One of his suggestions 
     is that our religious leaders no longer have a vision of 
     another way of life. Thus, we are no longer able to call for 
     the sacrifice or discipline necessary to live by the Spirit. 
     So the prayers of the people have become self-indulgent 
     expressions of consumerism, where we keep asking God to 
     give us something we can't get for ourselves.
       John Updike's novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies, begins 
     with a Presbyterian preacher named Clarence Wilmot who loses 
     his faith at the turn of the century. For Rev. Wilmot it 
     seems Christ is still hiding in the beauty of the lilies 
     across the sea from us. He cannot find the Savior. He's 
     overwhelmed by urban poverty and the injustice of his own 
     parishioners. He finds no answers in the new liberal theology 
     that adores scientific and cultural potential, but has little 
     to say about God. Eventually he drops out of the ministry and 
     becomes an unsuccessful encyclopedia salesman. No longer able 
     to proclaim truth, he now peddles information.
       The novel then traces how this loss of faith and vision is 
     visited upon his children and grandchildren. Clarence's son 
     becomes frightened of life. The author writes, ``Nothing made 
     Teddy indignant. He was curious about the world but never 
     with any hope of changing it. He had no faith to offer. Only 
     the facts of daily existence.'' Clarence's granddaughter 
     became what the author calls a ego-theist who is preoccupied 
     with herself. She doesn't seem to be troubled by morals, but 
     finds it useful to pray to God for success. His great 
     grandson became so lost and disillusioned that he fell easy 
     prey to a cult leader who destroyed his followers in a fire.
       Throughout the novel, the reader watches these characters 
     make one bad choice after another. The book ends without any 
     redemption or hope, but simply with two words, ``The 
     children.'' I was so upset, I slammed the book shut and threw 
     it across the room. It was an awful book. But it's true. 
     Without a vision of life, without something more than our 
     current preoccupation with information and success, we are 
     destroying not only ourselves, but our children.
       To be American means to cherish not only our freedom, but 
     also our vision of life under God. That was what brought 
     Pilgrims and Puritans here. That was what Native Americans 
     and Hispanics had before we came--Life under God. Slaves that 
     were dragged here, found the vision to build a new life in 
     the Biblical stories of God's deliverance. Immigrants that 
     piled into the land came with the vision that there was a 
     life here for them too--as Americans under God.
       So those who will now lead us have to offer some vision of 
     our life together. This has to be something more than just 
     helping you get your piece of the pie. It has to be something 
     that will again inspire sacrifice and commitment to the 
     common good, something that will make us refuse to accept the 
     way it is and commit ourselves to the way it can be.
       Where will our leaders find a vision with that kind of 
     authority? From their own faith in God. The only authority we 
     have.

  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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