The thing is, God logically couldn't have changed in the mere thousands of years since all these nasty events - aside from the continued violent behavior in the New Testament (mostly in the book of Revelation, which is notable because Revelation is the only NT book in which God directly communicates and intervenes with the mortal population in a significant way; in every other book, unless I'm having a major memory failure here, God primarily speaks through his "Son" and his followers), it is stated in the Bible that a thousand years is like a day to God. Not only that, but God would have existed for literally an infinite period of time beforehand. Those who believe in the "sacrifice" of Jesus having forgiven all of our sins and God becoming a god of love instead of a god of laws are essentially claiming that in a period of a couple days out of an infinite lifetime, God completely changed his character. It doesn't sound plausible.
GOD never changed, it is we (humanity) that have changed. Our circumstances have changed and the point on the timeline of GOD's plan changed too. The entire OT was a way for GOD to introduce Himself to humanity, make Himself known, and to pave the way for Christ to come. Once Christ came, died and rose from the dead, promising to one day come back, everything changed.
There were thousands of years between GOD interacting with man and Christ walking upon the earth - if the amount of change humanity has gone through in the past 500 years is any indicator, we changed a LOT between the Garden of Eden and Christ.
Also, and I think this is crucial, a parent treats their 28-year-old son much differently than they treated the same son when he was 18 and even more so than when he was 8. GOD treated early humanity like the confused, irrational children they were and he gave them boundaries and disciplined them. As humanity grew GOD changed his treatment of humanity and once Christ came, it was like we had 'grown up' and GOD decided to let us do our thing because in His eyes He had provided the ultimate redemption to humanity in the form of Christ. Apart from forcing our hand, violating our free will and living our lives for us, there was nothing more GOD could do.
The thing is, most Christians (at least those who make Christianity part of their political affiliation, which logically should be all of them, even if it somehow isn't in practice) disagree with you on this; they want the State to essentially be a puppet of the Kingdom of God. And that's terrible.
That's a very dangerous generality to make - I am a Christ follower and I don't see it that way at all. Same with my parents and most of my friends - we may be the minority in the larger group, but this is the danger of generalities and assumption.
The State should not be the puppet of the Kingdom of GOD - it never has been. You can't force people into the Kingdom, it's a choice. But absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Except that you're leaving out the commandments that aren't the cornerstone of American morality - namely, the remaining seven of them have no basis in law (and at least three are explicitly opposed to the Constitution), and aren't universally considered cornerstones of morality. (Have no other gods before God, do not worship graven images, honor your father and mother, keep the sabbath holy, do not take God's name in vain, do not kill adultery, do not covet)
That's why I only mentioned the ones that apply to freedom - I never meant to say that they were ONLY influence by the 10 commandments, but they were an influence, as was the NT, as was I'm sure a lot of other things.
Personal freedom and liberties are protected because those freedoms are valuable to the PEOPLE. God has no part in it, and in fact God is typically thought of as being opposed to said freedoms.
Of course, now that people are beginning to care less about these freedoms, we see them being eroded.
Declaration of Independence - "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."
They believed that those rights and freedoms came from the creator, which most believed to be the GOD of the Bible (not all, but as you said, they were all deists so they believed in some god). Sadly you are correct that people don't care about their freedoms - which is very sad - and since I love my freedoms I support Ron Paul because he seems like the only candidate that won't try to take them away.
Also, could you please elaborate on the above phrase I bolded? It was this one: "God has no part in it, and in fact God is typically thought of as being opposed to said freedoms." I'm fascinated to hear what you have to say about that.
But what does this have to do with the State? Are you arguing in favor of a legal system that distinguishes between Christians and non-Christians, the way Muslim states of old did?
I think I only brought this up to try and show more differences between OT and NT. Our legal system should see individuals as individuals and nothing else
The Bible nowhere implies that the Old rules were meant to be temporary, until the heretic Paul arrived on the scene. Jesus himself bluntly said that he did not come to overthrow the Law, but to uphold it. Not a letter was to be struck from the Law, or something like that.
(There was a point where Peter received a vision from God telling him to go forth and eat the unclean animals, but if I remember correctly, this was actually a metaphor telling him to go and preach to the Gentiles. At any rate, the vision would only have invalidated the dietary restrictions at most.)
Jesus made a reference that he fulfilled the law, meaning it had served its purpose to show that no man was righteous, because he fulfilled that righteousness and became the sacrifice for all. He constantly chastised the religious leaders that adhered to the old law and managed to exempt, exclude and discriminate against others.
Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, going against what the law said, and the elite questioned him about doing such a thing on the Sabbath - see Luke 6 for the story.
Actually, our founding fathers were deists and wanted to get away from religious government (particularly the Church of England). The Treaty of Tripoli explicitly stated that the United States is not a Christian nation, and religious fundamentalism only began to play a permanent, significant role in national politics during the 1970s-80s or so when the Moral Majority gained traction and successfully pushed the demon Reagan into office in 1980.
I agree with you 100% except for the whole Reagan being a demon thing - he was just a man from what I've read.
I will never argue that this is a Christian nation - but I will always argue that it was a nation founded upon Christian principles - there's a big difference between the two. Of course the founding fathers escaped from a religious government - it had become a theocracy - and they wanted to worship how they saw fit. Many of the founding fathers were Christians according to what they wrote - not all - but some were.
Besides, something having shaped our country doesn't necessarily make it good. Puritanism, slavery, liberalism, Christianity, capitalism, and immigration also shaped our nation, but not all of those things were good (pretty much everyone today agrees that slavery and Puritanism were bad, and the rest are fiercely debated to no useful end).
I agree that it isn't automatically good, but this country prospered more than any other nation and is still around and I'll always argue that PART of the reason is because of the firm and sound foundation upon which it was built - an understanding and love of freedom and liberty derived partially from their Christian beliefs.
There's nothing wrong with being influenced by someone whose believes you don't share - many influences in my life and America were not Christian - so long as it is a positive influence.
