WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT OUR CONSTITUTION?

Posted on by michellethurman2344

When I was in school we had to study the constitution and pass the constitution test in order to graduate from the eighth grade. In high school, government and American history were required subjects for graduation. As a constitutional republic, it is the responsibility of every citizen to know how our government operates and to know how to take our place in that process. That seems to have been lost as so many Americans today seem to accept whatever ‘government‘ tells them to do. They don’t know that we are the government (GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE) nor do they know or understand their rights according to our constitution; or how our government came to be or why. They know nothing about the hardships and oppression that our European forefathers endured before coming to this land, or after they landed. And they definitely do not know how God led the discovery and settling of this land.

There have been many wrongs done in the settling of this continent and in the developing of this nation, but none done exclusively for the sake of conquest or tyranny by the settlers. The French and Indian War fought from 1756 to 1763 was a war between the French and English who enlisted various Indian tribes as allies. It was a power struggle between two European powers seeking to gain control of the New World. It was never about settlers pushing the natives off their land. Some colonists came seeking land, gold, power, wealth; but a great many more came seeking freedom.

The pilgrims came seeking freedom from religious persecution and the price of that freedom was heavy indeed. When the Mayflower landed there were 102 pilgrims and around 30 crewmen from the little ship. Less than half of them survived that first winter; but even so, they refused to return to the persecution of their fellow puritans back in England. Imagine if you will, a mother and wife standing by the graves of her children and her husband. She is alone except for her fellow travelers and there are less than 50 of them standing in the middle of a vast wilderness; no cities, no farms, no roads and no other Europeans for hundreds of miles. Yet, she determines to remain and work toward the future they all thought they would live to see. Husbands, fathers, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers, stood in the little graveyard feeling the weight of their grief but refusing to turn back! That’s the kind of commitment and determination that this nation was built on. They didn’t run back to the relative comfort of a country with a king to help protect and provide for them. Instead, they chose to face the future on their own; willing to accept the consequences of their failure or success.

That’s what we did when our forefathers declared our independence from England. They launched us as a nation onto the outcome of our own endeavors in governing ourselves; developing our liberty to the degree that ALL our citizens would benefit from that liberty, standing up against all aggressors and protecting ourselves against nations and powers greater than our own. We had no one but God to turn to and He has been with us from the beginning. Do we as a nation always do what is right? Do we as individuals? The answer to both questions is a resounding NO! But that’s why Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross, died and then rose from the dead; so we could have forgiveness and God’s grace to carry us past our failures.

God gave us this land and He gave it to us on the basis of freedom for all. Even if you aren’t a Christian, even if you decide you don’t believe in God at all, in this land where He led our founding forefathers and the early colonists to establish freedom, freedom is freely offered to all. And, in order for us to live in that freedom, we need to know and understand the principles that that freedom is built upon. That is, the Constitution of the United States of American and the Declaration of Independence. And we need to know the principles from God’s Word, the Bible, that those principles are established on.

“WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.” –from the Declaration of Independence

And from the poem written by Emma Lazarus and written on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty in New York’s harbor:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”[11]

We are the land of the free; not the land of the governed. It seems that many of our citizens don’t want that freedom, but are looking to government to take care of them. That’s not freedom. Like the pilgrims, freedom means you rise and fall by the labor of your own hand, your own heart, your own voice. We need to reclaim that; to become once again that constitutional republic of peoples who tell the government how and how far. This is what God intended to this nation to be; “a light to the world”; a beacon of hope and a place from which the gospel of Jesus Christ can be freely given to a world hungry for the Love of our Savior.

Published by michellethurman2344

I was born in California, but both my parents were born in different areas of rural Oklahoma. My father grew up on a small cattle ranch and my mother grew up in the hills of eastern Oklahoma near the Ozark Mts. Both were born in the 1920's when Oklahoma was still more a part of the 1800's than the twentieth century so I like to say I was born of parents who were the last generation born during the old west. Their old west roots had a huge impact on my childhood. I spent the first three years of my life on my Granny's chicken farm. She was my father's grandmother and she owned 60 acres of alfalfa which she rented out and lived on three acres of barnyard where she raised chickens. There was some electricity, but no indoor plumbing outside of a faucet in the kitchen. The toilet was down the boardwalk in a small shed...in other words...an outhouse. The shower was a room under the water tank in the pumphouse. Granny's little three room house was the only painted building on the property. Everything else was raw, unpainted wood including the two room house my parents lived in. And I loved living on that little farm where I pretty much had free run of the barnyard and sometimes even wandered into the fields surrounding it. The town where I was born is along the Colorado River in the middle of the California desert and across the river from the Arizona desert and while we did live there for the first 12 years of my life, we moved a lot due to my father's employment. He was a big equipment operator and we moved to where the work took him, but usually only six months of the year then we moved back to our hometown. We moved to Northern California in 1958 and I have lived here ever since. I am a mother, a grandmother, have one great-grandchild and recently retired. I am divorced and now live with my youngest sister. My sisters and I like to cruise and take road trips. I am enjoying my life.

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