{"id":13776,"date":"2011-10-28T02:00:05","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13776"},"modified":"2011-10-28T02:16:42","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T07:16:42","slug":"richard-land-god-calls-christians-into-public-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/28\/richard-land-god-calls-christians-into-public-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Land: God Calls Christians into Public Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Addressing Regent University&#8217;s Robertson School of Government, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics &amp; Religious Liberty Commission Richard Land told students <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpnews.net\/bpnews.asp?id=36403\">God calls some into public service<\/a> &#8212; with the express intent of influencing the culture.\u00a0 Referencing Romans 13, Land said<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>God &#8220;does call some of us to be involved in government, because you cannot write laws that will protect you from bad application by evil people&#8230;We need for godly men and women to be willing to be open to the prospect that God&#8217;s will for your life may be to go into public service, to serve <!--more-->as a godly civil servant, to serve as a godly legislator, to serve as a godly person in public office, to be salt and light.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The concept of being salt and light is one of the important factors in Christians serving in a variety of roles, including those some might consider hostile to the Christian faith.<\/p>\n<p>Though there are many challenges within the military, for example &#8212; including family separations, the moral challenges of combat, a sometimes crass or worldly culture &#8212; Christian cannot simply abandon it.\u00a0 In fact, Land said God&#8217;s command to be salt and light prohibited &#8220;withdrawal&#8221; from society, as some would suggest in the face of such challenges.<\/p>\n<p>Many leaders in the faith, and leaders <em>of <\/em>faith, have made similar calls to &#8220;engage&#8221; the culture.\u00a0 Mike Huckabee did so <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/10\/huckabee-engage-the-fighter-pilot-culture\/\">just last year<\/a>, and R.G. LeTourneau did when his life example was <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/01\/r-g-letourneau-mover-of-men-and-mountains\/\">&#8220;serving&#8221; God in a &#8220;non-sacred&#8221;<\/a> profession.<\/p>\n<p>Christian service doesn&#8217;t just mean being an usher on Sunday morning.\u00a0 Christians can &#8212; and should &#8212; serve in their daily lives, wherever that may place them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Addressing Regent University&#8217;s Robertson School of Government, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics &amp; Religious Liberty Commission Richard Land told students God calls some into public service &#8212; with the express intent of influencing the culture.\u00a0 Referencing Romans 13, Land said God &#8220;does call some of us to be involved in government, because you cannot write laws that will protect [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[70,5285,944,267,2,17,2343,10,171,431,2344],"class_list":["post-13776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-living","tag-evangelism","tag-fighter-pilot","tag-letourneau","tag-mike-huckabee","tag-military","tag-religious-expression","tag-regent-university","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-richard-land","tag-southern-baptist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}