Join us as we unravel the dynamic between church and state, questioning our shifting values and the impact of eradicating God from public discourse. From courtroom controversies to national security threats, this conversation challenges us to reflect on the consequences of hiding religious beliefs behind neutrality. Ronald L. Dart presents a compelling narrative on the historical and contemporary implications of sidelining faith in our nation’s critical spheres.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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In a courtroom in Cincinnati not long ago, a man stood having pleaded guilty to raping an 8-year-old 10 times. The judge had the unpleasant duty of sentencing this man. She wanted to say something appropriate when she sentenced him. You know, judges always do. They have some sort of a soliloquy, something to say as they pronounce sentence on the man. So she came up with the words of Jesus. But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and they were drowned in the depth of the sea. She proceeded to sentence the man to 51 years in prison, saying, I hope God has mercy on you and the hell you have created. Sounds good to me. But a year later, the sentence was overturned by the District Court of Appeals because Judge Melba Marsh had allowed her religious beliefs to influence her in giving the man a harsher sentence. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would not have needed to open the Bible to have been willing to give the man 51 years in prison. That doesn’t seem like a terribly excessive sentence for someone who would rape an 8-year-old 10 times. You think these things through. Why in the world should that man be out on the streets before the end of his life? But I don’t think the appellate court judges really understood their Bible. Because if Judge Marsh had used the Bible, the man should have had the death sentence. That’s what would have happened to a man who raped an eight-year-old girl once in biblical times. Now, this pattern of having sentences overturned because the judge allowed some implication that he might have religious beliefs, or she did in this case, to creep into the sentencing process, they’re getting cases overturned. Nebraska Judge George Thompson, he had a man to sentence who had sexually assaulted a 13-year-old boy. He gave him a sentence from 20 months to five years. Now, mind you, this fellow normally, under normal circumstances, if he’d been a good guy in prison, would have been out in 20 months. He could have been there longer if he’d been a bad boy. But the judge read a scripture concerning homosexual behavior when he sentenced the man. The Nebraska Supreme Court overturned the sentence, and in his new trial, the judge gave him four years probation. So he is out. He may be in your neighborhood. Where are your boys right now? You know, I can’t help but wonder what the courts would have done if the judge, who was a Christian, had quoted the Koran while he was sentencing a Muslim to jail. Think of that little equation for a moment. He’s not a Muslim, and therefore it’s not his religious beliefs. He cites the man’s own religious beliefs to him in sending him to prison Where’s this thing going from here? Well, one thing that can happen is that the judges can keep their religious opinions to themselves and still hand down the same opinions, which they almost certainly will, the same sentences. In which case, then if you want to put a stop to it, you’re going to have to start looking for judges with no religious beliefs at all. Of course, the Constitution prohibits that. Then there is the judge that’s in a fight because he has the Ten Commandments on the wall of his courtroom. Now it would be okay if he had Hammurabi’s Code on the wall of his court. That’s another ancient code of laws that just doesn’t happen to be in the Bible. It was found on a rock in the Middle East. If Hammurabi’s Code, which has many of the same commandments, had been on his wall, that would have been okay. You know what’s puzzling me about this? We got along just fine as a nation for 200 years with judges who every once in a while would quote Scripture in court. And no one would have batted an eye all those 200 years if a judge had had the Ten Commandments behind the bench or a Bible in plain sight alongside of his gavel. That went on, you know. That was the way things were. It was that way generation after generation throughout the history of this country. Now, what’s changed? Why is this going on this way now? Well, I think it’s we who have changed. We are sitting at the end of a long trail where those who want God out of public life and private life have worked quietly and not so quietly toward their goal while everyone else just drifted and took our freedoms and took our values all for granted. They have enlisted religious people in the cause under the banner of separation of church and state. Now, don’t get me wrong. There should be no established religion in this country. But to separate church and state is one thing. To separate God and state is another thing altogether. The true dyed-in-the-wool atheist, you know, is a very rare breed. Nearly everyone in this country believes in God in one way or another. So why do we want to separate God and state? And maybe more important, what are the consequences of the separation of God and state? We’ll talk about that in just a moment. But before I go to the break, I have a special offer for you. We know that a lot of you listen to the program regularly, but you just don’t get around to writing or calling. The world is a busy place. It’s getting busier all the time. But we would really like to know you’re out there and that you’re listening. And we want to send you something special for letting us know you’re there and for letting us know what station you’re listening to. This offer is for first-time contacts only. If you have never written or called us, get in touch with us, give us the call letters of this radio station, and we’ll send you free of charge an album of these broadcasts entitled Making Life Work. It’s 12 programs in an attractive album, and it usually retails for $30. But for a limited time and for first-time contacts, we’ll send it to you free and without any obligation. Not only do we want to know you’re there, we want you to have this valuable instruction from the Bible on the things that make life work and the things that cause it to come apart. In a moment, we’ll tell you how to get in touch with us. Please get in touch.
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Join us online at borntowin.net. That’s borntowin.net. Read essays by Ronald Dart. Listen to Born to Win radio programs every day, past weekend Bible studies, plus recent sermons, as well as sermons from the CEM Vault. Drop us an email and visit our online store for CDs, DVDs, literature, and books. That’s borntowin.net.
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The separation of church and state is a good idea. No one wants ecclesiastics and clerics using the state, actually, to impose their religion on other people. That’s a bad idea all the way around, because religion, faith in God is a very personal matter. But for 200 years in this country, we were able to think of God and state, and the state was in a position to appeal to God, to call out to God, to call a day of fasting and prayer to God, to give thanks to God, because we realize that there is a Creator, and that all of us were endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, and it’s all a part of the basis of this country. So the idea of God in some connection with the state is no problem. But what happens when you decide to become a purely secular state with no acknowledgement of God whatever, which seems to be the direction that we’re headed? Well, in the very beginning of the book of Proverbs, wisdom speaks with the voice of God. Wisdom cries out, Proverbs 1, verse 20. She utters her voice in the streets. She cries in the chief place of concourse. She’s in the opening of the gates. In the city, she utters her words, saying, How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? Just how long are you going to be stupid about this? And only you scorners. How long are you going to take pleasure in your scorning and the fool’s hate knowledge? You’d better listen to my reproof. If you do, I’ll pour out my spirit to you. I’ll make known my words to you. But because I have called and you refused, because I have stretched out my hand and no man paid any attention, but you have said it not all my advice, you wouldn’t have any of my reproof, then I am going to laugh at your calamity. I’ll make fun of you. When your fear comes, when your fear comes as a desolation and your destruction comes as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you, I will laugh. Well, if you can just visualize walking up to somebody or somebody walking up to you at a party and saying, Hi, my name is Bob, and you put out your hand, and whoever it is you’re reaching your hand out to just simply turns away, walks off. He says, I’ve called, and you wouldn’t call me back. I put out my hand to shake hands with you, and you just turned your back on it. You wouldn’t listen to my advice. You wouldn’t have any of my reproof. And now you’re in trouble, and you want my help. Isn’t that funny? Now tell me, why should anyone think it would be otherwise? God calls out to us and we pretend we don’t hear him. He extends his hand and we refuse to take it. Why should we think for a moment that God will respond when we call to him? Therefore, they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, he says, and be filled with their own devices. None of this requires God to lift a hand. He isn’t going to beat you about the head and shoulders. All he has to do is watch while you reap the results of our own stupidity. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. You know how God looks at us? He looks at us as a bunch of simple-minded dolts. We are rich as creases, and we haven’t got a clue what to do with it. We’re stupid. Think about what we have done. We have the English-speaking world where the richest and most powerful nation and collection of nations the world has ever seen. When we spoke, the world trembled. We reached out and rescued the world when the world was about to come unstuck. As late as the Gulf War, we could persuade a whole group of nations to go in and destroy a petty dictator in a matter of days just to stamp him almost out of existence. And we could have done that. Now we’re reduced to lobbing cruise missiles in from a safe distance. We mustn’t get any of our boys killed, of course. I learned a day or so ago that a couple of those cruise missiles didn’t explode, and they’re now in the hands of the Chinese, who are back engineering and finding their own way to make their own missiles. And one of these days, we just might be on the receiving end of a cruise missile instead of on the sending end. Because we are still not rich enough, we have sold high technology to our enemies so they can advance their nuclear and missile capabilities. Our cities are now within reach of an enemy that can lob multiple entry nuclear devices into our nation and kill millions of our people. And if I can believe the news stories, it is because we wanted to make more money. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them. Our own people have sold us out by giving nuclear weapons technology to the Chinese. When they recently, the CIA was investigating this thing, and they showed nuclear scientists what the Chinese have, they nearly fainted. The Chinese penetration of our nuclear laboratories is, in the words of Newsweek magazine, total failure. And our government, because our foreign policy involves trade to make still more money for their campaign contributors, did not act vigorously when they learned about it. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them. Isn’t it rich? Here we are, the richest nation in the world, and it’s not enough. And now? Now we tremble because our enemies can reach all our cities with nuclear weapons. Rogue states can send in terrorists with nuclear bombs in a suitcase. They can poison our water supply with chemical and biological agents. And now we’re starting to get worried frowns. Now the talking heads on television are worried and very sensitive about this, and they’re looking into this matter. And government agencies say, well, when we found out about it, we acted quickly and decisively to shut all this off. When we walked, the world trembled. Now it is us who tremble. Continuing with what God has to say, Then they will call upon me, and I will not answer. They’ll seek me early, but they won’t find me. They hated knowledge. They did not choose the fear of the Lord. Oh yeah, we have a choice. We could make this choice. So what do you think? Do we think that we can ban God from the schools, from the courtrooms, from public life? And then, when we get ready to go to war, when our boys are going to be flying in over complex and high-tech missile defenses, whenever our boys are going to be in danger of losing their lives and being shot out of the sky and then paraded before the world or dragged through the streets, when that time comes about and we’re worried about our boys from Tyler, Texas and Dallas and from Oklahoma City and from Chicago and Peoria, when we’re worried about our boys, then we’re going to call a day of prayer for all of our people to pray that God would hear us when we go to war. Forget it. You can’t have no God today and God tomorrow. If it’s no God today, it’s no God tomorrow. Pray for yourself. Pray for your boys. But if you think God will hear you when you pray for the country, you are whistling in the wind. I’m no prophet, but I can read the prophets. What do you think God would say today if he sent a prophet to speak to us? Well, here’s one in Psalm 50, verse 16. I know we’re not accustomed to thinking of the Psalms as prophets, but there are Psalms that are prophecy. Under the wicked, God says, What are you doing declaring my statutes or taking my covenant in your mouth? What are you doing talking religion, seeing you hate instruction, and you cast my words behind you? Well, any answer? When you have leaders that throw the Word of God away, who consider the instruction of God as worthless, but at the same time can go to church with Bibles under their arms, why should God give them any credence? Don’t allow the law of God to be cited in court. Take it down off the walls of your courts and off the walls of your classrooms, but go ahead and make all the right noises about God. To the wicked, God says, what are you doing talking about my law and my statutes and my covenant, seeing you hate instruction and you cast my words behind you? When you saw a thief, you consented with him. You have been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother’s son. You know, lying has always been a part of politics, but it seems to have reached a new low in recent years. High officials take bribes from thieves. Leaders sleep with other men’s wives and become the joke of fools. Political operatives tell lies and call it spinning the story. And they think nothing about trashing the reputation of anyone who challenges them. It’s just like this psalm today. You give your mouth to evil. Your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother, and you’d slander your own mother’s son. You did all this, and I kept silent. And you thought that I was altogether such a one as yourself. You know, one of the biggest mistakes a man can ever make is to misinterpret God’s silence. We do a lot of things in this world, and we seem to get away with them. Nothing happens. God doesn’t slap us down the street, doesn’t squash us like a bug, and we get out the other side and we say, whew, well, I guess maybe that wasn’t really important. You know why it is that God doesn’t punish every transgression? You know why he doesn’t squash us like a bug? Why it is he hasn’t burned us to the ground a long, long time ago? The reason why is because God is giving us room to repent. He knows how hard it is for a person to turn around immediately, to stop on a dime and pivot and go the other direction. And so he gives you latitude. He gives you room, a chance to work it all out and to turn your life around. His silence is grace to give you a chance. And we make the mistake. of assuming that God thinks like we do. It’s a terrible mistake. He says, I will reprove you. And in fact, I’m going to set all these things in order before your eyes. What things? All the things we talked about. Whereas you saw a thief and you consented with him. You’ve been a partaker with adulterers. You give your mouth to evil. Your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother and you slander your own mother’s son. I’m going to take them like little bottles and I’m going to set each one of them in a row in front of you. And then you’re going to see the fruit of that way of life. And don’t come to me and ask me to get you out of it. Don’t come to me and say, well, God is on our side. We expect God to help us win the next war. Forget it. It doesn’t work that way. In verse 22, now consider this. You that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces and there be none to deliver. That’s a little spooky, isn’t it? We like to think of the grace of God. And God is gracious and merciful and compassion and gives us more room than we would ever need to turn around. But in the end of it all, all the fruits of our doings, all the stuff that we have done is going to destroy us and tear us in pieces. Whoso offers praise, God says, glorifies me. And to him that orders his conduct aright, I will show the salvation of God.
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Stay with me. I’ll be right back. For a free copy of this radio program for yourself or to share with friends and others, write or call this week only and tell us the call letters of this radio station and today’s date. Write to Born to Win, P.O. Box 560, White House, Texas 75791 or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE44.
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Now go, write it before them in a table, write it down in a book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever, that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord. Oh boy, does that ever sound familiar. It’s a description that could match our people today. You want to know what Isaiah would say about our world? You just heard it. That’s from Isaiah 30, beginning in verse 8. He said, they say to the seer, see not, and to the prophets, prophesy not to us right things. We don’t want to hear these things. We want to hear smooth things. Prophesy deceits. Preach unfaithful things because we don’t want to face the truth. Get out of the way. Turn aside out of the path. We don’t want to hear anymore about the Holy One of Israel. Cause him to cease from before us. Okay? That’s the deal. They say even to their preachers, they say to all their leaders, we don’t want to hear anymore about God. Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because you despise this word, and you trust in oppression and perverseness, and you lean on it. Actually, you figure that you can actually lean on your lies, your oppression, that you’re strong enough, you’re powerful enough, you can stomp on the little people, and you’re going to trust that. Therefore, this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall whose breaking comes suddenly at an instant. When I read this, I hearken back to that statement from the psalm that says, You did all these things, and nothing happened. I kept silent, and you thought I was just like you are. Well, I’ll tell you how it’s going to come when it comes. It’s going to come like the breaking of a wall. It will come down on you like a big pile, a heap of stones from a wall with water behind it that swelled and swelled. And finally, no one knowing exactly when it’s going to break, it fell on you. He shall break it as the breaking of a potter’s vessel that’s broken in pieces. Folks, they don’t break in slow motion. They don’t fall apart, all little bitty pieces of one little piece here and another piece there. And there’s no warning. There’s no warning when the wall starts to fall. You can’t say, well, it looks solid to me today. It’ll probably be all right for at least a year to be gone now. No, it may still be there a year from now. And it may be down around your ears next week. You have no way of knowing. And that’s what happens when you continue on in a way that we as a people are going, paying no attention whatsoever to all the signs that are around us. When it happens, we will be taken totally by surprise. For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest you shall be saved. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. But you wouldn’t have it. All you had to do is go back to God, shut up, sit down, be quiet for a while. And you said, no, you wouldn’t have. You said, no, no, we’ll get up on horses. We’ll ride horses. Therefore, shall you flee on horses? And you said, we’ll ride on the swift. We’ll be fast. And he says, they that pursue you will be faster. A thousand of you shall flee at the rebuke of one. You’ll be afraid of an Arab who comes in by ship some night, one man quietly. with a suitcase in his hand that has a weapon that could take out half or all of your city. You’ll be afraid. At the rebuke of five, you’ll flee, till you be left like a beacon on the top of a mountain or as an instant on a hill. In other words, you’re sitting there all by yourself. There is another psalm, Psalm 81, verse 8. Hear, O my people, and I will testify to you, if you’ll just listen. There shall be no strange God in you, neither shall you worship any strange God. I am the Lord your God that brought you out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I’ll fill it. You want lots of good things, there’s a way to do it. He says, but my people would not listen to my voice. Israel would have none of me. So I gave them up to their own heart’s lust. I let them do what they wanted. They walked in their own counsel. Oh, I wish they’d listened to me, God says. Oh, I wish they’d walked in my ways. I would have subdued their enemies. I would have turned my hand against their adversaries. The haters of the Lord would have submitted themselves to Israel, but their time should have endured forever. He would have fed them with the finest of the wheat and with honey out of the rock. Would I have satisfied you? They could have been winners. But they didn’t want God in their life. You know, God will either be in your life or out of it. He’ll not be here today and gone tomorrow. He’s not going to be gone today and here tomorrow. If we have no God in a time of peace and prosperity, then we will have no God in a time of war and disaster. If we as a people refuse to have a God today, we will have no God tomorrow. For our nations, it may be too late. But for you and your family, you can still be winners. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart.
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