{"id":38,"date":"2004-06-20T00:57:53","date_gmt":"2004-06-20T00:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ubuntucat.wordpress.com\/2004\/06\/20\/the-pledge-under-god\/"},"modified":"2004-06-20T00:57:53","modified_gmt":"2004-06-20T00:57:53","slug":"the-pledge-under-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/the-pledge-under-god\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pledge Under God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay.  I&#8217;m confused.  Why is there all of a sudden a &#8220;new&#8221; controversy over the phrase <i>under God<\/i> being in the Pledge?  Wasn&#8217;t this a news story about a year or two ago?  Then, it just disappeared.  Now, it&#8217;s resurfaced again for no apparent reason.  Anyone know?  Well, I just think the whole thing&#8217;s stupid.  I can see both sides of the issue.  First of all, from the standpoint of someone against taking it out, who cares?  Does it matter if we say &#8220;under God&#8221;?  Most of the people saying it don&#8217;t believe it, really.  A lot people don&#8217;t believe <i>any<\/i> part of the pledge, let alone the &#8220;under God&#8221; part.  In elementary school, we&#8217;re forced to say a lot of things we don&#8217;t believe.  What&#8217;s the big hub-bub about &#8220;under God&#8221;?  Is it really worth all the trouble? On the other hand, I don&#8217;t see any reason to oppose taking it out.   Is it worth the trouble opposing it?  What does the phrase &#8220;under God&#8221; being in the Pledge really do for us Christians?  It doesn&#8217;t make the people who say it become Christians, appreciate Jesus more, or become more open to accepting Christ into their lives.  If anything, it makes them more bitter and <i>less<\/i> receptive to the Gospel.  <\/p>\n<p>I am a devout Christian, and I&#8217;ll say it: I believe in the separation of church and state.  Yes, I know the phrase &#8220;the separation of church and state&#8221; isn&#8217;t in the Constitution.  I still believe in the idea.  Let&#8217;s take the &#8220;In God We Trust&#8221; away from the coin.  Let&#8217;s take out from the courts &#8220;Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?&#8221;  If I&#8217;m ever on a witness stand, I&#8217;ll grab the Bible out of the bailiff&#8217;s hand, flip open to Matthew 5:33-37, and highlight the part that says, &#8220;Simply let your &#8216;Yes&#8217; be &#8216;Yes,&#8217; and your &#8216;No,&#8217; &#8216;No&#8217;; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.&#8221;  Why do they have you swear on a document that condemns swearing?  And this is the type of swearing Jesus was talking about&mdash;he wasn&#8217;t talking about cussing.  Bottom line: God should not be in the governmental system (godly individuals might be, but God shouldn&#8217;t be there institutionally&#8230;  only nominally), but if he stays in, it&#8217;s not worth raising a big fuss over.  Geez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay. I&#8217;m confused. Why is there all of a sudden a &#8220;new&#8221; controversy over the phrase under God being in the Pledge? Wasn&#8217;t this a news story about a year or two ago? Then, it just disappeared. Now, it&#8217;s resurfaced again for no apparent reason. Anyone know? Well, I just think the whole thing&#8217;s stupid.&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/the-pledge-under-god\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Pledge Under God<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psychocats.net\/ubuntucat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}