Don't shoot Joe; he's just the piano player, there.

 

In fact, I breathe.  I truly do.  I take up space, and consume resources.  I interact with my environment.

I practice religious freedom, not the freedom to impose my religious beliefs on the government.  Think of all our denominations; and imagine if every denomination voted its Pharisee ethics into law.  It would be a Christian version of Sharia Law, with no freedom for everyone, and everyone forced into the same box.

Washington stated that this was God's nation, and this was as per George's personal religious beliefs.  The Constitution may not support George inflicting the anxieties of his religious sect/denomination on the country, but the Constitution will guarantee his free exercise of his own religious beliefs.

Civil liberty.  and the Civil Rights side comes in when George tries to shoehorn everyone into avoiding alcohol or women wearing only long dresses, down to the ankle.  George would be prevented, in this instance.

So goes it with abortion, where perhaps Biden finds abortion to be an abomination of God, but cannot bring the law to ban it.  Because the country doesn't belong to just Joe, but it belongs to the people that support abortion, too.

So Joe gives people rights, and Rome won't grant him Communion.  However, Pastor Butch claims to have once did Communion on a small-scale, while driving along a lonely Texas secondary, with Dr Pepper as the blood of Christ, and Snickers as the body.

Anyway.  The social traditionalists on the right point to the country being founded on "Judeo-Christian values", which to them seems shorthand for, "let my personal ethics be made into law", where the country is far more of a plurality, at least as much as ever.  In the beginning of America, people came here for freedom, and yes there was Christian plurality, but Baptist beliefs seemed otherworldly, making them form their own state, and then came the Mormons, which is the real truly American sect, weird mutant that it is.

I take up space, and hope, beyond the general financial prosperity, but for education for our youths.  Education is the doorway, in either a Socialist or Capitalist system.  Education opens not only the chance for financial prosperity, but for one to function within the system, and even somewhere in that we find inner peace through knowledge.

We rightly divide the word, making ourselves, "a workman, approved".  The renewing of our mind, through study and prayer.

A dark world, so we hope for something more beyond it.

Oh, an intercessor in the Paraclete of the Holy Spirit, is all fine and good, but what a great boon to know you get to sit at the feet of the Father?