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Have you ever considered what the complete separation of church and state means to young people who must go off and fight our nation's wars? How likely is it they will have heard the Gospel and have taken the path to eternal life before they are asked to die for their country? It is God, not man, who has provided the way to salvation. As Jesus tells us, it is a narrow road, and few there are that find it. Mt. 7:14. There is only one way to find forgiveness of sins and eternal life, by believing that Jesus is Lord and confessing that God raised Him from the dead. Rom. 10:9-11. No hard work, no sincere effort on our part can save us. All of our works without Christ are zeal without knowledge. Rom. 10:2. The patriotic American soldier does not earn salvation by dying for his country - no matter that the war is just and his country in the right. Nor does the German or Chinese soldier lose his salvation because his country starts an unjust war, though he may need to consider his Christian duty to continue service in those circumstances. Nations are punished or rewarded in this world according as they are good or evil, but Founder George Mason tells us that is because they can't be punished in the next world. Men can be. What makes a nation good or evil is the spiritual condition of its citizens. If a majority of them have trusted Christ and are obeying His commands to love others and witness for Him, then God will protect the nation. De. 28. If not, God will curse that nation. De. 29. Clearly, it must be a sin that earns God's curse for a nation to block young people from hearing the Gospel. We have done just that in the United States by allowing the ungodly to enforce a separation of church and state that cannot be supported by the Constitution, our founding principles, or our nation's history. The fact that our military are volunteers does not mitigate the evil. The AVF is, itself, sinful. John Locke tells us that the duty to provide the force of government - either in war as a soldier or in peace as a deputy - is an obligation that arises from from the very fact that we have formed a government to be our servant. (Deuteronomy 20:1-9 does allow temporary exemptions from military service for certain individuals and supports expelling cowards from the military.) Every other office in government should be staffed by volunteers - hirelings - not people compelled to serve by law. But citizens may be compelled to defend themselves, to serve in the one office that protects them from internal or external agressors. The reason for this is that no other job in government is concerned directly with the preservation of the lives and property of the very citizens who have formed the government. Thus, when our nation - our government - is attacked by criminals from within or a foreign army from without, the attack is a direct attack on us, the people who formed that government, ourselves. Our right to defend ourselves, from either individual or collective attack, comes from our duty to God to preserve our lives. Viewed as John Locke and our founders saw it then, the All Volunteer Force is just one more way for some of us to escape our duty to God. |
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