To Sign or Not to Sign...

     Ok, here it is... Our first adventure... I heard that some of you were having a difficult time posting comments on my blog, and I am working on resolving the issue, but in the meantime you can feel free to comment on Facebook or even to send me an email with your thoughts. So let's get started... First, let's break this down politically. The government needs to run right? No matter what your view on whether it's too big or too small, our country needs a functional government to keep us stable and accountable.  But soon, we may see our government shut down. It will still exist, but nothing will be accomplished, nothing at all. Think of it like a lock out, sort of like what we saw with the NFL, NBA, and NHL recently. The leagues still existed, but in a inactive state of limbo, just waiting for a resolution. That's not a good position for our federal government to be in. If you're thinking that our government doesn't do much anyway, and that this could help the two parties reach an agreement, you're forgetting something. There is no players union, no federal arbitration to help the two sides reach a collective agreement. It's all on the lawmakers themselves, which once again is not the position we want our government to be in.
     So how do we avoid a shutdown? We pass a budget. Sounds pretty simple right? It has been until recently. While there have been threats of a shutdown before, this is different. This time, the Republican House has tried to attack the Affordable Care Act by adding a amendment to the budget bill that removes the funding for the new health care initiative. That just wouldn't pass in the Senate, so the Democratic Senate rewrote the amendment, reinstated the funding, and sent it back to the House. So now it's up to the House to decide whether to push the issue into a shutdown, or to pass a budget and live to fight another day, so to speak. What should they do? Should they give in? Or stand their ground and fight until the bitter end? They need to pass the budget. And here's why... I understand that the Affordable Care Act, however noble it's cause, has some issues with the way it is to be funded. But this is not the way to go about changing it. Instead of grandstanding and using the threat of a shutdown to take the administration hostage, the House needs to sign the budget and then try to change the Affordable Care Act through a different piece of legislation. If the American people want a change in the bill, it will be changed sooner or later, but we need the government to stay in motion in order to see a change of any kind. So sign the bill and then tackle the issue of changing the health care law.
     Now how do we look at this through a Christian paradigm? For one, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, so we need to abide by it for now. Even though we might not agree with all of it's provisions, it is the law. Yes, it has provisions that make immoral choices easier to make, but it is not requiring we personally go against any moral laws, and so we should abide by it's mandates. Until we are instructed by our government to directly violate a moral law or standard, according to Romans 13, we should obey those that God has placed in authority over us. Second, also from Romans 13, we need to understand the importance of government. No matter how misguided you believe our government to be, we would be living in a much scarier country without it. Our government needs to be stable, working to ensure the safety and well-being of all it's citizens.
     So here we find the treasure on the map, the big X that shows us we found what we've been looking for. We need this bill to be passed. We need a functioning government. We need a budget. Let's get involved. Call your representative. By all means, tell him to fight the Affordable Care Act if you feel it should be repealed, but tell him we need a working government. Tell him to sign the budget.