"In God we Trust"

I got one of those e-mails today that threatened me with total separation from the human family if I failed to pass it on to everybody in my contact list. I am ashamed to admit it but those things nearly always get my attention. The only ones that I feel safe in ignoring are the ones with pictures of either puppies or clouds over quotes from some dead person about inner peace or knowing one’s self. The rest, that include pictures of soldiers, flags, little kids or God, I feel compelled to pass along to selected contacts that I don’t mind embarrassing myself with. You easily decide which ones go to your perverted friends and which ones you send to the people in your Sunday school class.

One came today I quickly closed deciding it posed no real threat to my future well-being and would not cause any bad consequences if I simply deleted it right then and there. As the day went on I kept thinking about the ideas that e-mail contained and its message made more and more sense to me the longer I thought about it. The jest of the message was that if the anti Christians wanted to insist in taking “In God we Trust” off anything related to the government, then the rest of us should simply start using the phrase on any and everything we do. The more I thought about this idea the more sense it seemed to make.

I have never agreed with the Roy Moore thinking that it was the government’s place to spread my religious beliefs to our fellow citizens. I think that is akin to expecting the government to raise our children, care for our old folks and to enforce a system of morality and religion we want to believe in but don’t want the responsibility of perpetuating. That is not the government’s job and Christ taught us that lesson while he was here.

The idea in the e-mail today was for Christians around the world to tag ourselves as believers by using the ‘In God we Trust’ thought in everything we do. To include the phrase in our signature lines on all our correspondence, on our business cards, in our literature and in way we communicate with others. The more I thought about the impact of this simple effort the more I liked it. Every person that has contact with a person following this discipline would be witnessed to, hopefully many times every day. In doing this a person is not saying he or she is better than anyone else, more saintly or better than the next guy. They are simply letting everyone he or she knows and deals with daily know they have a God in whom they trust. How many more times would God’s name of be brought to the attention of countless millions of people a day if we all started including this simple statement on everything we did.

The phrase is not offensive. It promotes no church or denomination, it is adaptable and relevant to all religions in the world today, it simply identifies one as a person who trusts God. To those who have no use or need for a God it means no more than a person saying ‘I’m a man’ or ‘I’m an American’. To those who do believe or are searching it can be an affirmation of their own belief or an encouragement in that there are others who do believe and are not afraid to proclaim that belief. This movement has the potential to witness to countless people every day and bring them together as believers.

It is past the time for us to depend on government to perpetuate the spirit of our faith. I would have no problem offending anyone this simple statement would offend. If I’m living my faith as I think I should I might even cause someone else to become a little bolder in his or her own spiritual walk.

I’ve already deleted the message I got this morning. It really made much more sense than these ramblings I tried to write here, but I hope at least one person more gets the message I’m trying to send. If you think I’m a religious nut or if I may offend anyone I would simply say: ‘take a ticket and get on to the back of the line’. You’ve got to trust someone and I’ll take the one I choose everyday.

‘In God I Trust’