sticks to carrots

Monday October 13th, Isaiah 25: 3 Therefore strong peoples will honor you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you. 4 You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. Both those nations who are friends and those nations who are enemies will be impressed and drawn into the act of caring at seeing a nation who cares for the poor and needy. Funny how so few in politics get that. The recent shout-outs of joy at the number of inmates receiving the death penalty, the let him die shouts in response to the hypothetical man without insurance, the drive to cut safety net programs in favor of tax breaks for big business and wall street are all the antithesis of the reality God calls us to bring about in our nations. When it comes right down to it, God is simply calling us to follow very simple rules of life, the ones most of us try to teach our children. It really is kindergarten stuff, if you are nice, you will have friends, if you are mean, you won’t. The U.S. military budget is slightly more than all the other military budgets in the world combined. Now I am not saying that we should not supply and pay our military well, I think we should, I also think that there needs to be some perspective, and placing this much emphasis on the stick over the carrot is not a good thing. A heaven balance in the other direction is what God calls us to. Every great empire that has ever fallen in the history of the world has done so because they have overextend themselves militarily and/or shifted the wealth to a very small group at the top, both of which are our current situation. An no, Reagan did not bring down the Soviet Union, it was the Soviet Union that brought down the Soviet Union the same way our current policies and the policies of those who cry for increased power and wealth to the top 400 and the military, if left to continue, will bring us down. If we don’t switch our priorities from sticks to carrots, our financial crisis will be the least of our worries.