being. "A starving man knows no God but bread, " Ghandi said, express-
ing what is essentially a Christian truth. Jesus indicated that one of
the most blessed spiritual acts was to "give a drink of cool water to a
thirsty man" in his name. If society is so constructed as to allow the
exploitation of a man so that he and his family are in want, if he
has no opportunity for an education to develop his mind and his
talents, if he has no opportunity to avail himself of the medical care
needed for his health, then he cannot become the man that God
intended him to be.
We should consider how much of his time Jesus spent not in teaching
but in healing and ministering to the rather mundane needs of the
people. This, of course, is not meant to imply that there is no
concern of spiritual things, nor that the knowledge of God is not of the
highest priority in the life of man. But we should recognize that these
other things which affect people are, in a very real sense, holy work.
In our free and democratic society, the people have assigned to govern-
ment the responsibility to maintain order and to encourage the develop-
ment of these things. So, politics, government—and, yes, politicians—
ought to be of great concern to Christians.
America is a God-fearing nation—a nation which was conceived,
born and has matured in a Christian atmosphere. It, as a nation, has
professed its belief in God many times and in many ways. It requires
no more than a casual glance at our history to understand this. A
great many of the people who came from Europe to settle the new
world did so for religious reasons, fleeing from persecution because of
their religious beliefs and seeking a new land in which they would be
able to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience. The
young men who shaped the government of the United States were
talented, influential Christian men—men who connected their spiritual
beliefs to political action. For them there were no barriers to separate
science, philosophy, art and religion. It was in Philadelphia in 1787, that
they set forth their views on the art of government and the art of living.
History records that during the Constitutional Convention in Philadel-
phia, Benjamin Franklin, the oldest delegate in attendance, realizing
that because of petty bickering and jealousy very little was being ac-
complished, and fearing a breakdown in the debate was imminent,
arose and said:
"Our different sentiments on almost every question is, I think,
a melancholy proof of the imperfection of human understanding. I
have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing
proofs I see in this truth—that God governs the affairs of men, and if
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