Civil Stewardship: Duties Vs. Rights – With David Barton: What happens when we abandon God’s standards of government? Can rights and duty ever be separated? What is the duty that goes with free speech? What is the “law” of liberty? What should we learn from the French Revolution? What character qualities permeated the Founding Era and where did they come from? Tune in to hear David Barton answer these questions and more in this special excerpt from the Building on the American Heritage Series! 

Air Date: 11/10/2021

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and politics, WallBuilders Live with David Barton and Rick Green. Today’s program is Civil Stewardships: Duties Versus Rights. You’re going to learn a lot today as we go to the set with David Barton and the building on the American Heritage Series.

CIVIL STEWARDSHIPS: DUTIES VERSUS RIGHTS

Well, David, we all love our freedom, we love enjoying the blessings of liberty. But with those blessings, there also comes a burden or a responsibility to do something about it, kind of oh, playing your role to make sure that that freedom’s not only on something I enjoy, but you get to enjoy it and our next generation gets to enjoy it as well.

David:

Our Founding Fathers who gave us these rights, or at least secure them to us, there were rights given by God, and Founding Fathers secure them, they said to every right, there’s a commensurate duty. So if we have a right to free speech which we do, we also have the duty to be honest in what we say and be truthful in the act. We get right to free speech, but there’s a duty that goes with it. We enjoy liberty. We got a duty to be involved in government to choose the right kind of leaders, to find out the right things about leaders when we go to vote, so we can cast informed vote.

Rick:

So if you have the freedom to vote, if you have the freedom to choose your leaders, that means you got a duty to be informed when you do it.

Licentiousness

David:

That’s exactly right. So with every single right that’s out there, there’s a duty; and if you don’t take the duty side of it, you cannot preserve the rights: it will deteriorate into really anarchy. And what happens is it becomes licentiousness kind of a thing. I have the right to do whatever I want. No, you don’t.

There’s a great passage in the Bible where twice we’re told that we have the law of liberty, those two things seem actually law and liberty, that’s freedom from law, isn’t it? No. It is law that provides you liberty. When you have the standards and the rule of law, but you have freedom in so many ways, and it’s the same way with duty and rights.

We have rights, those rights are given us by God and that’s really what made America different from other places. And that’s why we had so much more self-government because we govern ourselves. If we have a right to be a self-governing nation, we have a duty to be self-governing citizens.

Rick:

So in other words, it’s not then just like you said, licentiousness, it’s not just a freedom to do whatever feels good, sort of this libertarian view that says, just get government out of my life, I can make all my own decisions, and do whatever feels good to me. There are parameters. There’s boundaries there.

David:

Absolutely. And we’re told in the Bible about government, government’s instituted and created by God. We’re told in 1 Timothy, that God has given laws is to regulate the bad guys. And by the way, a lot of the laws that help a society are moral laws. That’s why in the common law, which we’ve had for hundreds of years, the common law lists all these moral behaviors. I mean, if you take the logic that if it’s done in private, just between me and whoever, if it’s consenting kind of stuff, then it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. Really?

Libertarian View

Well, I think embezzlement can be done in private. There’s no crime that is limited just to you individually: it affects everyone else. So the libertarian viewpoint, now, there’s some basis for saying a libertarian view of government is that government should be limited. But you can’t exist without government. So you have a right to have government, but you have a duty to have a restrained limited government, not a tyrannical government, not an overbearing government.

So every right still has a duty that goes with it, and those two things cannot be separated. And when you separate them, you turn from freedom to anarchy, whether it’s individual anarchy or anything else. And that’s really what we’ve seen in the rise of in America we now have all these anarchist groups that show up to protest whenever there’s economic conferences. We’ve seen the rise of things that we haven’t seen in America in a long time. And part of that is we abandon the moral standard.

We have a duty to uphold what God has told us what to do whether it’s 10 Commandments or anything else. But when we abandoned that standard, we really force ourselves to have more government. I love the way that Robert Winthrop described this back in the 1840s. And Robert Winthrop was a Speaker of the House. He’s actually great historian. He’s the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He is the guy that gave the speech when they laid the cornerstone at the Washington Monument.

And he talked about how that every society must be governed in some way or the other. And he talked about you can be governed either by the Bible, or by the bayonet. You can force people to do what’s right, and you can choose to do what’s right. If you cannot regulate yourself, government will regulate you. So if you want liberty, you have to be restrained.

The French Revolution

Rick:

Is that why the difference really between how the French went with the French Revolution and the Americans with the American Revolution because they really did do the kind of total libertarian idea of everybody just do whatever feels good? That’s really where they went. Where with us, there was a biblical foundation that said, yes, you have freedom, but it’s not to do anything you want. You’ve got to govern yourself, as you said, on those biblical values.

David:

Well, you take the French example, well, the French did have a very licentiousness view. And theirs was a secular view of liberty as well. You look at their motto, it doesn’t involve God, it doesn’t involve individual rights. It’s they’ve got fraternity and all these other things, but there’s no God anywhere in there. We had gotten in ours from the center, that was our paradigm.

And it was significant that we’ve got a Constitution in America, but the French Revolution is going on. French Revolution, they had three revolutions. They had one in 1789, they had one in 1793, 1796, then end up having 15 total since we’ve had our first.

But Washington as President of the United States, and he’s watched France go through three revolutions and we’re stable over here. I mean, we’ve come out of instability, we’ve now been stable. He gives us his third and fourth annual dresses talking about the unprecedented stability and prosperity in America, and here’s France, turmoil after turmoil, turnover after turnover.

And he and his farewell address which we used to stand in school for generations, gave the warning and distinction of do not let that French mentality come here. The French say you can be moral through education, that we can just teach you what’s right and wrong, and you’ll be great.

Morality CANNOT Be Maintained Without Religion

Over here, we know that morality comes only through religion. And what Washington said, he said, “Let us with caution, be really careful. Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” In other words, French were saying, hey, you can be moral without religion, he said, you’d be really, really careful. That’s a dangerous philosophy.

He said “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined educational minds and peculiar structure, whatever you think the power of education is to change the minds of kids”, he said, “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality will prevail in exclusion religious principle.”

Rick:

So he’s saying, if you go that direction, if you leave the religious principle out, you’re not going to get the morality just from teaching?

David:

You will not get it. And if you don’t get the morality, you will never have national stability. You only have a stable nation when you have a moral nation. And morality only comes from not education, it comes from religion. And that’s why Washington’s very explicit. John Adams, two years later, same thing, John Adams is now in what’s called the quasi war with France.

1798, we’re in the middle is quasi war with France. And he is speaking to the military of the state of Massachusetts. And in talking to them, he basically sums it up says, Listen, guys, you’re great, you beat the British, you’re really good. But you’re not strong enough for what it would take to make people do what’s right.

He said, “We have no government capable of restraining human passions are not controlled by religion and morality. If you can’t control yourself by religion and morality, you guys in the military aren’t tough enough to make everybody do what’s right. You can never beat people in doing what’s right if they won’t choose to do it themselves.

Duty To Be God-Fearing

And so that was the way we understood it. And that was our duty. If we want to live in a free nation, we have a duty to be more, we have a duty to be God-fearing. That’s why we acknowledged God in the Declaration four times. We acknowledge our rights, individual rights, but they come from God. And if you lose that progression from God to us to my responsibility to be moral, both for my society and for God, then you lose all your freedom.

Rick:

Well, what do you do about that a lot of people today would say, hey, I love freedom, I’m all for freedom and liberty and those things, but I don’t want God in the equation, I can be a patriot without having God in the equation?

David:

You can’t be. George Washington specifically dealt with that in 1796 address. Now you may think you can, but it doesn’t prove out that way historically. 1796 in his address, he looked at the prosperity America had, and Washington was present in what was called the Age of Revolution. So he not only had the French Revolution, he had the Russian Revolution, the Greek Revolution, the Italian revolution…

Rick:

So he’s witnessing this first hand. I mean, he’s seeing this happen…

David:

The whole world is in turmoil. And he’s over here and saying of all the habits and dispositions that lead to political prosperity, of everything that makes our politics prosper, he said religion, and morality are indispensable supports. Religion and morality is what makes us different. He said, “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labour and [inaudible 0815]

A True Patriot

Rick:

So he’s saying you cannot be a patriot?

David:

He said, I won’t even let you call yourself a patriot if you try to separate religion from morality. That’s what he’s saying. John Witherspoon, President of Princeton, Founding Father, signer of the Declaration train so many other Founding Fathers, James Madison, said that he is the best friend to America who’s most sincere in promoting pure and undefiled religion. He said, whoever is the enemy of God, I hesitate not to call him an enemy to his country.

The Founding Fathers said there’s no way you can be called patriotic if you’re going to be anti-God or secular: you have to at least be God-fearing. Now, it doesn’t mean you have to be a Christian, it doesn’t mean you have to go to church. But you got to accept God’s moral law and God’s standards. You have to be God-fearing, which is why we acknowledge God on our currency.

So we’ve understood that all along. And if we want those freedoms, we just cannot be a secular nation. If we enjoy our freedoms, we have duties we have performed, and part of those duties were being moral and religious.

Rick:

Alright, let’s go to the audience for question on this issue of duty.

Guest 1:

Why does it seem that so many more Americans were willing to sacrifice in earlier generations?

Rick:

Well, that’s true. You think about the Founders’ lives, fortune, sacred honor. You think about the World War II generation, those served in Korea, Vietnam, right on down the line, it does seem like prior generations gave more.

Sheep

David:

At the risk of sounding simplistic it’s because we were a lot more biblical in those times. We really have some strong Bible teachings on the concept of duty and sacrifice, above all cost, keeping your word no matter what it costs. And we’ve moved into, in some ways, a really shallow, really lazy form of Christianity where, oh, duty, I’m not under law anymore. I’m free, I’m under grace. And we’ve separated duty out.

Now, I want to read a little passage from Luke 17 and verse 5, the Apostle said the Lord increase our faith, at least in this we want to do what you do, increase our faith. And Jesus, his answer is really pretty remarkable. He says, well, if you’ve got faith as a mustard seed, you can do this stuff. But here’s the rest of the story.

And so he starts in verse 7, he says, and which of you having a servant plowing or tending sheep, I mean, what was the question? I thought the question was increased our faith? And now he’s taking them to an agricultural setting of plowing and tending sheep.

Now, I got to stop right there from there because having grown up farming and ranching and being a cowboy myself, plowing and tending sheep is pretty significant stuff. We still raise sheep. Right now to this day, we raise sheep.

And anyone who thinks it’s a compliment that we’re called sheep in the Bible hey don’t know anything about sheep. That is the most ignorant animal that’s ever existed, the most stubborn animal…

Rick:

So that’s not easy day at the office, go take your sheep?

This is sun up to sun down.

David:

That’s not easy day at the office. If I want them to go into this pen, they’re going to go into this pen. I actually have to use sheep psychology. I’m going to try to get them wrong pen, so they’re going to the right pen, they’re rebellious. Everything is wrong about sheep. So what he says is a whole lot about the shepherd, but not a lot about the sheep, when it says that he’s the Great Shepherd, that’s significant.

If you can put up with sheep 12-14 hours a day in a farming or ranching life as we said, you can you work from can’t see to can’t see, you know, from time black comes up, time it goes down, if you have to trail those sheep around all day, and they’re wanting to go off on their own, you got to get them back, that is exhausting work.

It’s psychologically exhausting. It’s physically exhausting. And if you got to fight off the bears or the lions, or whatever it’s coming after them, it’s dangerous work. So it’s not easy.

Says suppose one of you is tending sheep all day, or by the way, suppose one of you is plowing, and I’ve done my share plowing, but always on a tractor. I’ve never had to plow with a wooden plow following behind oxen, or behind mules or anything else, you do that all day long, you’re worn out because you physically have to hold that plow. It’s not the animal doing all. But you’re having to do a lot of keeping a balance…

Rick:

And like you said, it’s all day. This is not 9-5. This is sun up, sun down.

Servant-Minded

David:

So the question is, Lord, increase our faith. And so he says, which one of you having a servant plowing or tending shape will say to him when he’s coming from the field, come and wash to sit down to eat? In other words, hey, servant, you’ve been working hard all day long, it’s been grueling work. I know you’re worn out. I

know you’re frustrated. I know you’re tired. I know it’s been tough. I want you to sit down and get something to eat. Is that what happened when you have this? He says, no. He says, will he not rather say to him pay, prepare my supper, gird yourself for me, and serve me; and after I’ve eaten and drunk, then maybe you can eat and drink.

So you’ve been doing all day long work, you’re now after dark, you come in, you’re out, and your master says, hey, you’re not done yet. You got a second job going on here. You need to come take care of me. You wait on me, you feed me, you take care of what I want, and then maybe if there’s any time left over, you can take care of yourself. So that’s the next step.

Then he says does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? So he’s been in field all day, he’s now waiting his master all night, and did the guy even tell him thank you for being in the field all day, or thank you for taking care of me? He said, no, he didn’t think him. He says, did he think that servant because he did the things that were commanded him?

I think no. He says, so likewise, when you’ve done all the things which you’re commanded, you should say, we’re unprofitable servants, we’ve done that which is our duty to do.

The answer is if you want to increase your faith, if you want to be spiritually mature, you got to learn to work really hard, sometimes twice. Have nobody thank you or appreciate what you do and you still keep doing it and you say, hey, it was my duty.

How Previous Generations Thought

Rick:

That’s tough teaching there, David. I mean, I got to admit, you know, I’ll go out there, and I’ll work hard and maybe I’m helping my dad or somebody in the field, and I’m kind of thinking about well, they’re really going to be happy I’m doing this. I want that praise. That’s just our natural inclination; and do your duty, not looking for that praise, but just because it’s your duty.

David:

And you do all these things, and don’t get thanked. And it’s really hard to keep your marriage off the rocks and do all the thing and get the kids, and raise the kids and keep the income and take care of the family, and nobody says thank you. Well, I’m quitting. No, you still do your duty. Even if nobody appreciates it, even nobody tells you, you still go out there and work your tail and you work really, really hard.

Now, that’s the kind of biblical teaching that we instilled in previous generations. That’s why the word duty was a big thing in previous generations. If you read the Founding Fathers writings, you will find the word duty all over the place. Now military still teaches the concept of duty, but they’re probably about the only institution left in America that doe. We don’t teach it in the family. You can’t get involved in adultery. You have a duty to be faithful. Oh, we don’t teach that.

Rick:

Well, they must have also been really teaching that within the church and the family because we didn’t have a military yet. And when they were called upon, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, hey, people came out of the woodwork and say I’ll be part of it, had a sense of duty.

David:

They had a sense of duty. And see, this is the other thing significant in the political realm, we used to call them public servants, we now call them public officials. And that’s a terrible thing. We don’t want officials. We want servants, public servants.

THE AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have here at WallBuilders called The American Story. For years, people have been asking us to do a history book, and we finally done it. We start with Christopher Columbus and go roughly through Abraham Lincoln. And one of the things that so often we hear today are about the imperfections of America, or how so many people in America that used to be celebrated or honored really aren’t good or honorable people.

One of the things we acknowledge quickly in the book is that the entire world is full of people who are sinful and need a savior, because the Bible even tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And yet what we see through history, and certainly is evident in America is how a perfect God uses imperfect people and does great things through them. The story of America is not the story of perfect people. But you see time and time again how God got involved in the process and use these imperfect people to do great things that impacted the entire world from America. To find out more, go to wallbuilders.com and check out The American Story.

CIVIL STEWARDSHIPS: DUTIES VERSUS RIGHTS

David:

This is probably shocking for a lot of folks. But the way we used to choose political officials was in the time the Founding Fathers, we went into a ballot box with a blank piece of paper, and we would say, for Senator, I want Rick Green for Senator, I write that down. For…

Rick:

So there weren’t names on the list, you went in and said, these are the people I think should?

David:

These are people I want. And then they would get all the ballots, count them all up and said, oh, look, Rick Green got more requests than anybody else, they want you to be our mayor. And they go, Rick, the people said they want you to be mayor. Will you be mayor? They would not allow you to say no because of what we taught.

And Benjamin Rush is a great example, the signer of the Declaration. He pointed out from Romans 14:7, that no man lives and dies unto himself. If you’ve said, no, it’s because you’re being selfish. You’re saying my life is mine; my life belongs to what I want to do. If they have called you to serve them, you can’t say no, I’m not there to serve you.

And that was characteristic of so many Founding Fathers: they didn’t want to be in public life, but the people call them to it.

Rick:

They weren’t putting themselves out there. They weren’t saying, hey, hey, I’ll be your leader.

Duty Calls

David:

As a matter of fact, Sam Adams, and Noah Webster and so many others says, if a person puts himself forth for office, they’re instantly disqualified. If you try to put yourself in office, we don’t want you.

Rick:

That may be why sometimes we hear where’s Washington, where’s Adams, where the great leaders that we had of yesterday?

David:

You got to go find them and shove them forth.

Rick:

And think of his humility, Washington, how many times he stepped down when he could have been king if he wanted to.

David:

That’s right. And how many times did he resign? You know, he kept resigning, and people kept sending him back, said he need you.

Rick:

But when they called, he said it’s my duty, I’ll go and do it.

Patrick Henry

David:

Well, Patrick Henry is a great example. Patrick Henry, great Founding Father, governor of Virginia was elected governor four times, and every time blank ballot kind of thing, and the people said, we want Patrick Henry. And after the fourth time, Henry said, everybody listened really, really good.

I don’t want to be governor again. I got 19 kids, I got 81 grandkids. I want to be home in orange, Virginia. I want to be with the kid because he loved to play the fiddle with the kid. And I want to be home. Don’t do this again. And they elected him for a fifth time office and he went back.

I mean, it was the kind of thing where if they call you, you can’t be selfish. And so that cause, if your country calls you, I’m going to World War II. And it’s a tough thing. If I’m calling the Civil War, I’m going to bet. I have to sacrifice that and be a servant. And that’s why previous generations were so different from this generation, is we had a concept of duty, and we taught a concept that if you’re not doing your duty is because you’re selfish.

Rick:

Alright, David, let’s get another question from the audience.

Guest 2:

A lot of schools today still encourage certain character traits, but are the same character traits we have always taught in America?

Rick:

Well, duty would be one of those character traits, right?

Integrity

David:

Duty is one of the character traits. And in a lot of ways, the character traits have remained fairly constant. If you look at character curriculums that are out there today, they may have only seven or eight character traits in them, and they may have as many 70. So there’s a lot of different character traits that are really necessary for full development character as well as society.

But what I find intriguing is in the founding era, they actually prioritize some of those traits. A good example is Founding Father, Benjamin Ross, founder of the Declaration, considered one of the three most notable Founding Fathers, this is what John Adams called him. And so, Benjamin Rush was a great educator, called the father of public schools under the Constitution. He started five universities, three still today, etc. And curriculum that he would write he talked about…

Rick

You said that like that’s easy, five universities, these guys were busy. Sorry, that’s a lot of work.

David:

Yeah, which is pretty amazing. And the fact that three of them survived 200 and some odd years later is amazing. But he was really skilled in so many areas. I mean, he was in medicine, he was in chemistry, he was in so many things. But in talking about character traits, he said that he believed that there was one character trait that came to the top.

Matter of fact, he said that he believed that that one character trait was the best way of defining people whether they were alive or dead, and he said it was integrity. He says, I think I’ve observed that integrity takes a stronger hold of the human heart than any other virtue.

Now, he said, by Integrity, I mean, a strict coincidence between thoughts and words and actions. In other words, integrity is one what I think, what I say, and what I do are all the same. And you can have political people who will say and do the right thing, but they don’t think it. That’s not integrity. Integrity, at all levels is when I think, when I say, and I do the same thing. That integrity is very, very significant.

Psalm 15

I love the way that he tie it back to Psalms 15 verses 1 and 4. In that particular passage, Psalm 15, 1 and 4, there’s a question asked by David says, Lord, who will abide in thy holy hill? Who will dwell at thy tabernacle? God, who is going to be with you? Answer in verse 4, he that keeps his word even to his own hurt.

In other words, when you give your word, you will keep your word no matter how much it hurts you. Now that trade of integrity is what we see throughout the Founding Fathers. These 56 guys that signed the Declaration sign on the dotted line, if you will…

Rick:

That was an oath.

David:

It was an oath. They said, we give our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor to see America be an independent nation. Well, that’s okay, if you have the world’s greatest military, but they don’t. They don’t have an army. They don’t have a navy. They do not have economic resources. They are taking on the world’s most powerful military. What’s significant about the Founders? 56 Founding Fathers, you cannot find one example of any of them breaking their work, never once.

And so 7 of these guys never lived to see what they wanted us to enjoy. 17 of them lost all of their fortunes and estates keeping their word. 3 lost their wives. 3 lost their kids. Abraham Clark, New Jersey, great example. Here he is in Congress, a member of Congress, Founding Father, the British captor his two sons, the two sons were putting in the British prison New Jersey, and that’s a death camp: nobody came out of that place alive. And everybody knew that. There were three prisons the British had that were death camps.

Abraham Clark

And so here’s Abraham Clark sitting in Congress, the British get word to him said, hey, we got your two sons. Here’s the deal. If you’ll renounce your signature on the Declaration, we’ll let your two boys back because you know what’s going to happen to them? Said renounce your signature. Well, Abraham Clark thought about it that long, he said, no, I gave my work. I can’t go back on my word, not even save the life of his sons.

Rick:

David, I don’t know if I could do that. These guys understood that when they made that sacrifice, when they made that promise, it wasn’t just showing up at a rally and signing a petition and going home and forgetting about it. I mean, they knew they were going to have to follow through to make that kind of sacrifice.

David:

And by the way, that’s a character trait of God. I mean, God keeps His word no matter what. He keeps His Word if it costs the life of His Own Son. It’s normally glad that God keeps His Word, I mean, even if it costs the life of His Son. So keeping your word at all cost, whether it’s marital fidelity, whether it’s in business, whether it’s an agreement or contract, whatever it is, you give you word, you keep your word, that is the number one character trait. That’s a trait that made America strong. That’s a trait we’re going to have to have to keep America strong.

Rick:

Okay, David, time for one more question on duty.

What Can We Do?

Guest 3:

Aside from voting, how else can I be involved in the civil arena?

Rick:

Sometimes it’s challenge just to get people to vote, now we’re getting people asking, okay, I can vote, what else can I do?

David:

Well, probably the answer to that is a two-fold approach. And sometimes it’s both, but you have to understand this difference between politics and policy. Politics is the means whereby you elect someone in office; policy is the process whereby you make the laws and make the policies after that person is elected.

And a lot of times the two things do not touch. Like in Congressional guy will have two separate steps. I mean, if you’re elected to the House or the Senate, you’ll have a policy staff, and you’ll have a politics staff.

So on the one hand, you can get involved on the politics side, you can work on the campaign, you can vote, you can find a good God-fearing person and say, hey, they need help to get elected so we’re going to work. There were campaigns that we ran where we would actually find Christian kids, homeschool kids from Christian universities, or Christian schools, whatever. And in the last 14 days, 10 days of a campaign, we specifically looked at national races where someone would be one point after one point down, really close.

Get Your Children Involved!

And we take 100 Christian kids, and what burst them to that campaign, and they spend two weeks there, or maybe a week there, and they would work that pass out literature that make calls; they will stand on the corners with signs, whatever.

Rick:

Because that’s one that’s close enough where a big push like that gets your candidates…

David:

That’s right. Christian kids and we want five out of every six races doing that. So it was enough to push it. That’s a really big deal. If you’ve got a godly person who go on to the US Senate or the House of Representatives, I mean, get involved in a campaign.

Rick:

And that’s sometimes young people that aren’t even old enough to vote yet…

David:

That’s right. Or they don’t even have [crosstalk 24:00]. They can be 12-years-old and be sticking stamps on envelopes. Everybody can get trained for that really early.

Rick:

But sometimes we think that’s the end of it for us as citizens. If I vote or influence the election, once the election is over, now there’s nothing I can do because they’re in session. Is that true?

Recruit

David:

Not true. That’s where you go down to your local state rep or state senator, you go down to your congressional office say, hey, I’ve got an hour a week I’d love to give you guys. That’s unbelievable how they respond to that, how impressed they are, oh, man, yeah, if you take this mail or look at this, or look at these phone calls, or maybe call this guy back and tell him this, it makes… And then what it does is it creates a relationship with you and that member. And when you have a relationship, you have a louder voice than when you don’t have a relationship.

And so that’s an easy thing to do on the policy side. So you can get involved in the politics side or the policy side or you can do something like recruit someone run for office. You know, that school board’s got to change. And I know a guy go to church with it’d be really cool on the school board, he’d be the deciding vote or whatever.

Recruit someone for school board or for state rep or for mayor or city council or public utility district. You recognize in him the potential to be a great leader, you say, you got to do this. We need you. I mean, you’re exactly what we want on city council or whatever…

Rick:

Or you may be the one that they’re coming to, right? I mean, you said earlier when you were talking about how the Founding Fathers were willing to go, they were willing to sacrifice when called upon.

David:

That’s right.

Christianvoterguide.com

Rick:

So if somebody’s watching right now is the one that others are coming to you saying, hey, you’d be really good at school board or whatever, be willing to often say yes.

David:

Don’t bore it off and say oh, no. Don’t be selfish, your life doesn’t belong yourself. If you can serve your community, if you can serve constituents, and be a servant, be God-minded servant. That’s exactly what you understood. There’s a lot of ways to be involved. Sometimes it’s a matter of looking at legislation and letting people in your church know, hey, you need to call about this bill or about this issue.

Sometimes it’s creating voter guides, I know people that live in a community, and they will look at everybody on the ballot and they’ll go down and say, well, I’m going to vote for these guys and then they copy that and pass it out to every neighbor say, you may not know who’s in this election, but I’ve really studied all these guys, let me show you I’m going to vote for. And people, neighbors love when they’re elected…

And David, we should share with our viewers, Christianvoterguide.com is a great resource for people if they want to fulfill that call, want to be the one sharing it, you can go to that particular website and click on your state.

Civil Stewardship: Duties Vs. Rights – With David Barton

David:

You get a Voter’s Guide for your state, and you can pass that off to all your neighbors, which is good information. It’s like rebuilding the wall with Nehemiah, there’s a lot of places on that wall, not everyone’s the same and you don’t have to look like everybody else that does and you’re not rebuilding the same part. But find a place on the wall, get involved, and do something to rebuild the country.

Rick:

Well, thanks for joining us today, folks. That was a special episode from Building on the American Heritage Series called Civil Stewardship: Duty Versus Rights. You can get the entire building on the American Heritage Series program in a box set with all 13 programs by going to our website at wallbuildersLive.com Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders Live.