God and Government

I know, I know. People hate seeing those words together, but for me, each one helps me understand the other better.

See, all day long I've been perusing various schools of thought about this whole Obamacare thing. Personally, I'm against it. Personally, I think it's a terrible idea. Personally, Obama gives me the creeps. But that's not really my point.

Whilst perusing through various opinions, I found this post speaking out against Obamacare, or those who vote for it at least.  On the same site, there was another post speaking out against God for not preventing/stopping the fires in Colorado.To me these are completely contradictory statements.

On the one hand, we have someone telling the government to back off. Your help only weakens us and promotes bad behaviors. You're really not doing us any favors!

But, God, YOU need to help us more. YOU need to protect us from all harm and danger. If you really were God you wouldn't ever let anything bad happen to us.

The same reasons we don't want government to micromanage our lives are the same reasons God has to sometimes let bad things happen. If we didn't, we wouldn't learn anything. We wouldn't grow or progress. We'd just be dependent forever.

So while I am by no means and expert on government, my belief in God helps me to better understand the kind of government we really need. That doesn't mean we stop caring about the poor and the needy at all! We do want to help them! But WE need to help them, not the government. The more the government lets us resolve our own problems, the stronger we will become and the more willing and able we will be to help those around us.   The government can send the poor and the needy a check every month, but it can't sit with them and listen to them and truly help them like a friend or neighbor can. The poor and the needy need a lot more than just food and healthcare. We all need to help each other, and in helping each other, we will  come to understand God better.