{"id":3975,"date":"2019-04-17T19:48:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T00:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=3975"},"modified":"2019-04-18T10:42:59","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:42:59","slug":"provide-vs-promote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=3975","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;PROVIDE&#8221;  vs  &#8220;PROMOTE&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Constitution of the United States of America states very clearly the role of government&#8212;the role of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">our<\/span> government.<\/p>\n<p>The two phrases with the words &#8220;provide&#8221; and &#8220;promote&#8221; are unmistakably simple, yet we have practically reversed them in America today.<\/p>\n<p>The government is to &#8220;provide for the common defense.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That is a legitimate, Biblical, God-ordained function of government.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;. . . punishment of evil-doers, and praise of those who do well.&#8221;&#8212;&#8211;His Book<\/p>\n<p>The government is to &#8220;promote the general welfare.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That is also legitimate and Biblical, so we may live in peace.<\/p>\n<p>Our government is to promote and preserve the option for us to pursue our own welfare without interference from the government&#8212;capitalism not complicated with regulations or handouts.<\/p>\n<p>The part we have twisted and reversed in recent decades is the mistaken assumption that government is to &#8216;provide&#8217; the general welfare.<\/p>\n<p>No! No! No!&#8212;Not in any shape or form!&#8212;Not even a little!<\/p>\n<p>That is not the government&#8217;s job, and it does not work, it never has, and it never will, no matter how many promises of &#8216;free&#8217; stuff persuade fifty-one percent of the people to vote for socialism.\u00a0 That might happen, but it will not work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If any would not work, neither should he eat.&#8221;&#8212;&#8211;His Book (and you can take that to the bank)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We have allowed the government to take over the church&#8217;s legitimate mandate to provide welfare where it is genuinely needed (only the church can discern genuine need).<\/p>\n<p>And now the government is taking over the church&#8217;s freedom&#8212;&#8220;freedom of religion&#8221;&#8212;also an undeniable, legal right given by our Creator and guaranteed by that same Constitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Constitution of the United States of America states very clearly the role of government&#8212;the role of our government. The two phrases with the words &#8220;provide&#8221; and &#8220;promote&#8221; are unmistakably simple, yet we have practically reversed them in America today. The government is to &#8220;provide for the common defense.&#8221; That is a legitimate, Biblical, God-ordained [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-financial","category-political-cultural"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3985,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3975\/revisions\/3985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}