The decisive question today is where God and government stand in our lives. The movement over the years has been steadily in the direction of less God and more government. Secularism and government is so pervasive now that we are on the cusp of changing forever what America is about.

Beliefs matter, and ideas have consequences. The fundamental assumptions you hold will dictate every action in every area of your life. When a person is in a position of great power or influence, these fundamental assumptions project power across a huge swath of humanity and history.

Our particular challenges of poverty have really been about bringing what we know works — freedom, tradition and personal responsibility — to the uniquely challenged minority communities in America. This was already starting to happen before liberals took over the poverty issue with President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in 1965.

That scholars from these two institutions — one on the left and one on the right — agree that the state of the American family is of critical importance to the economic well-being of Americans is news. It drives home a point I have been making for years — that so-called values issues, often called “social issues,” are indeed economic issues.

When you look at the typical understanding of Social justice, it is essentially the redistribution of wealth and has as its goal a so called equality of outcomes. I would understand that to mean everyone has exactly the same income, the same possessions, no one has more than any other in any way.

Democratic Party politicians no longer feel any need to even pay lip service to the idea that America has anything to do with a free people. Their unabashed rendition of the American dream is increasing percentages of the American population dependent on getting money recycled to them from the government — money taken from other citizens or from ever-increasing government debt.

Demonstrating yet again that Democrats haven’t had a new idea since Woodrow Wilson, Sen. Bernie Sanders is trotting out the class envy card. But at least he’s an honest socialist, unlike Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Hillary, Pelosi, and most of the rest of Team Redistibute Your Earnings.

Bernie Sanders spoke to Liberty University a few weeks back, presenting himself and his convictions boldly and honestly, and in response, a Liberty alumnus and evangelical pastor “Tim” gave a rather impassioned speech about how his conservative Christian beliefs were now obliging him to vote for Bernie, because Bernie cares for the poor, the needy, and the weak.

Avowed socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders isn’t the first person to say it, but he’s one of the latest and most prominent to claim that conservatives (i.e. Republicans-as if they were the same anymore) are “dividing” the nation.

Welfare in a society: caring for and ministering to the poor. We have abundant Scriptures exhorting us to this work. But let us note carefully to whom this exhortation is made and ask ourselves is it made to civil, church or family government? Ministry to the poor is important but the vital question is, who is responsible and who has authority?