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When Government Replaces God and Family
It is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. It knows best what we need and what must be done. We must trust in its absolute power, knowledge, and presence in all areas of our lives. For this overseer is the source of justice, truth, wisdom, wrath, and mercy.

So it appears big government has become for the American people.

We used to think of “God, family, and country,” but the significance of the first two has been effectively diminished in this society where self-reliance is the exception rather than the rule. Most Americans would scoff at the assertion they have made the government into a god, but a look at their dependency on the federal government and loyalty to it prove otherwise.

Americans are a people whose subservience to their “leaders” results in nothing less than a form of worship. Standing ready to receive their adulation are scores of political “saviors” promising much while blatantly abusing the power of the office entrusted them. Nationalism has become like a religion whose followers swear by the state, even to the point of condemning fellow citizens as traitors if they resist, reject, or condemn the aims and actions of the government. ...

...Reverence, a profound respect, is maintained for government even when people are unhappy with what it does. Many believe one must never express disrespect for the government, its politicians (especially its president), or its sacrosanct symbols, such as the flag. Toward God, if one is a believer, such reverence comes naturally as we acknowledge our own fallibilities and shortcomings in understanding the mystery of life. A deep revulsion occurs when another desecrates the symbols and icons of our faith.

But to give such reverence to government, simply a group of fallible human beings, is to bestow a higher value on “them,” resulting inevitably in the manipulation of one’s deepest emotions. This explains the extreme uncontrollable reactions many have toward other citizens who express their displeasure with government policy through such public demonstrations as burning or otherwise desecrating the flag. To irrationally react with such extreme emotionalism over the desecration of a national symbol (behaving as if the nation itself were being attacked) is a sure sign of misplaced veneration.

Self-sacrifice and the surrendering of one’s will, or permitting one’s choices and behavior to be governed by a teaching believed to be divinely inspired, is a major decision. Some make it; others reject it. But all agree it’s an enormous decision, since everything in one’s life is predicated on it. But why have millions subordinated their own thoughts to the mindset and actions of this government with such fervor? “My country right or wrong” is so pervasive. Regardless of the revelations that the government funds terrorists and evil dictators, uses torture, engages in regime changes worldwide, is responsible for the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of innocents, and all manner of other despicable and horrendous acts of imperialism, the people’s greatest anger is often expressed against those who criticize and identify the government’s perpetrations of evil and immorality. ...