Skip to main content

Indiana's RFRA: Who knew Pharaoh Ruled Here?

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Indiana’s RFRA that passed last week. The main subject of controversy is being beat to death and I think most people have made up their minds so I won't try to convince you one way or the other except to say that for myself after reading the bill’s synopsis and listening to the people who have actually read the bill it doesn't sound like it legalizes discrimination. Instead it attempts to protect small business owners from being forced into participating in something they find objectionable on the grounds of their faith.

That being said, I’m not a lawyer or politician and I won’t speak from the perspective of an expert. I’ll say this, I don’t believe that there are more than a small handful of people in the entire state, let alone the elected government, that would actually like to see discrimination legalized so I don’t believe that there is a statehouse full of these evil little people who would advocate treating anyone in a discriminatory way.

What I see as the real problem with Indiana's RFRA is this, pulled from the bill's official digest, "Prohibits a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, unless the governmental entity can demonstrate that the burden: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest." Think about that for a minute. What this is saying is that at some point the government's interest might conflict with God's and when that happens the government has a way to win. So my real problem with this bill is that the government is still placing itself above God. 

Reading the Book of Exodus we find a Pharaoh who thought that he had a compelling reason to deny the Israelites the freedom to go a “3 day’s journey into the wilderness” to exercise their faith and we know how that turned out for the Egyptians.

If we believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; If we believe in the Living God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt; If we believe in the God who came to us in the flesh in Jesus Christ, then we can accept nothing less than the freedom to fully exercise our faith, anything less is merely our government acting with the same hardness of heart that plagued Pharaoh. In other words, the real problem with RFRA is that the bill reaffirms that, Indiana and America, like Pharaoh of the Book of Exodus, places itself above God. A compelling reason…… indeed.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carmel Marathon 2020 Weeks 2 & 3

Training for the Carmel Marathon on April 4th, 2020 in Carmel Indiana Goal: 2:51 Week 2 Runs: 8 Weekly Milage: 72 Cumulative Milage: 139 Workouts / Long Run: 17 with 8 at Marathon Pace Performance Management Chart for the week showing my running fitness progression from the beginning of the cycle through the current week. The main focus this week was just building my milage a little from last week, about 5 more miles, while being ready for my first MP workout. I am pretty focused right now and I struggled some last week with wanting to do more that the plan called for. I really wanted to add in a threshold workout. Marathon training is about discipline and long term thinking though. I could have added in some threshold miles and it probably would have been ok but doing the plan the way the plan is written will get me where I want to go and will keep me feeling on track and help me from wavering in the other direction as well. I'm doing the plan, period. I ran my fi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Running Goals or Running Goal; What is it That I Want?

The other day I got all caught up in setting running goals for myself for the rest of the year. After the goals were set, I found myself starting to worry about how I was going to reach them. Wondering if there would be time to sufficiently prepare for them all. My goals were to run a 5k in under 20 minutes, to run a half marathon in 1:25 minutes and qualify for and run in the Boston marathon in 2014. At first, I thought that setting and meeting these goals would make me a more serious runner. In fact, I thought that to be the "serious" runner I want to be that I needed these goals. However, while I was running the other morning I realized that first of all, I was thinking about how to shift my training to meet my 5k goal. Then I began thinking about the right approach to a 1:25 half while training to qualify for Boston in a full marathon a month later. That is when I realized that the ancillary goals were starting to consume my focus and quite possibly i...
4 comments
Read more

2015 Valpo Half Marathon Race Report

This was my big tune-up race for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I always run a half-marathon at this point in the build up to the Monumental to get a final big fitness boost, a reality check on where I am at fitness-wise and, if all goes well, probably the most important aspect is the confidence boost that I get. I got one heck of a confidence boost yesterday, 10/25/2015, at the Valpohalf Half-marathon in Valparaiso IN. Valparaiso is about 2 hours from home which is kind of right there on the line of driving on race morning or staying in a hotel the night before. This time we decided to get up and drive. Valparaiso is on central time which puts it an hour behind us. Meaning the 8:30 AM start was really a 9:30 AM start for me.  Making the decision to drive that much easier. I have been dealing with some issues on the top of my right foot, which is probably extensor tendinitis, for the last couple of weeks. I saw my soft-tissue guy last Friday. He worked on it some and got...
4 comments
Read more