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We have come to an impasse in the negotiations to raise the debt ceiling because of several conceptual errors in our public discourse. These errors were most glaring in the remarks recently delivered by Speaker of the House John Boehner in his response to President Obama. The largest conceptual error is the idea that the government of a constitutional representative democracy is different from the people. Boehner said, "You know I've always believed the bigger the government, the smaller the people."

What does this mean? The government is composed of the people, and if people are paying attention and voting according to their own interests, the government ought to work toward the happiness of the people. The problem is that too many Americans have bought into this conceptual error that the government is some kind of leviathan, a monster that exists to take away their liberties. This is nonsense. A correction of another conceptual error in Boehner's presentation makes my point.

Life is hard. It is full of pain, disappointments, and challenges of every kind. When hard times come our way, we often ask, Why me? And the answer comes: Why not you? We sometimes think that God has forsaken us, and sometimes God is silent. It is difficult to remember the Biblical wisdom that explains why believers, children of God, the beloved of God go through difficult times.

God only knows what alternative universe the United States Congress occupies. On May 31, the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass a bill to raise the debt limit of the United States.
There are times in our faith walk when we pray prayers out of simple obedience.
The gospel according to the movie True Grit (2010) is as follows: "You must pay for everything in this world one way or another.
In a blog posted on God's Politics on September 14, 2010, I wrote that I rejoiced that Pastor Terry Jones had
Some people in the world are large. They occupy a large space, cast a large shadow, reach for large and lofty goals.
It had been a busy semester and the Tuesday before Thanksgiving I arrived back home from an exhausting American Academy of Religion meeting.
I rejoice that Pastor Terry Jones and his church have decided never to burn Qurans.

Glenn Beck is wrong on so much: wrong on social justice and liberation theology. His logic is often flawed. He is much too prone to use Nazism as an inappropriate analogy for what happens in contemporary America. He is one of the most divisive voices speaking in the United States today.

[Editor's Note: In anticipation of the anniversary of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, God's Politics will feature a series of posts on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.

My father is 82 years old, and for most of his life he was an avid gardener and fisherman. He lost interest in the garden after my mother died. This year I told Dad that I wanted a garden.
There are times when there are no words. There are times when it seems that there is no hope for humankind, that our blindness to the things that make for peace is willful.
We learned the story in Sunday school:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), article 25 paragraph 1 says: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, i

Another amazing grassroots effort in the Middle East is Combatants for Peace, a group of former Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers who have united to reject violence and tell their stories to each other as a way of finding peace.