OPINION:
Outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry sparked some seriously shocked conversations among the high-brow, eyebrow-raising leftists and secularists of the media and political worlds when he recently said on national TV that President Donald Trump was “ordained by God” to take the White House and lead the nation.
But really, this is not shocking.
This is not eyebrow-raising.
This is called: Christianity.
And guess what, Perry’s statements, made on “Fox & Friends,” are actually expressions of the very foundation of America’s democratic-republic form of government — the very foundation of American Exceptionalism.
“I’m a big believer that the God of our universe is still very active in the details of the day-to-day lives of government,” Perry said during a Fox segment over the weekend. “You know, Barack Obama doesn’t get to be the president of the United States without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump.”
Bible-thumping crazy?
To Big Government types, to secularists, to arrogant elitists and wicked atheists — and even to the less biblically informed and Doubting Thomases of the faith: Yes. But failing to grasp the idea that God works intricately, intimately in the lives of His children — that “indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered,” as Luke teaches — opens up even Christians and believers to, say, progressive, socialist and other oppressive forms of governments’ lies.
How so?
The line of logic is this: The less people see God alive and working in their lives, the less they rely on God for solutions — and therefore, the wider the door opens for Big Government to enter.
The less people see God as planting the seeds of greatness in the individual — as seeing their own selves as being “created in the image of God,” as Genesis teaches — the less they see their own worth, their own value, their own purposes; the more they’re willing to cede selves for the greater good. The more they’re willing to allow that government has the right, nay good governance responsibility, to take from the one to give to the other, all for the betterment of society at large.
But that’s not America.
That’s not American.
Founders may not have all been possessed of the same religious beliefs. But they were of the same mind in believing in the general right of the individual over the overreaching authority of the state.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” as the Declaration of Independence goes, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
From that, grew America. Out of that, sprung the revolutionary idea of God-given, not government granted — of individual first; collective, second. And in line with that is the very notion Perry put forth on Fox, the one where he said God has a “plan for the people who rule and judge over us” — including Trump.
These principles are all related. They’re all interwoven.
God has a plan for His people, His nations, His rulers — and it’s a plan that counts the individual as precious. So goes the thrust of America: individuals count more than masses.
Honestly, there’s no better occasion than Thanksgiving to reflect upon this matter.
Americans, more so than any other citizens from any other country, can be — should be — thankful for being gifted such amazing freedom and potential for greatness, simply as a course of being born.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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