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Photo courtesy of the National Religious Broadcasters association.
On September 19, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) spoke to the National Religious Broadcasters association on the importance of faith-based messaging.
See a lightly edited transcript below.
You’re going to hear a lot from people about politics and issues today, and I’m more than happy to talk about that. Who am I to warn you against being hyper-political? It’s what I do for a living. And when I was a state legislator, we used to beg people to be interested in politics. But now, it’s the only thing people want to talk about. There’s no space in our life into which politics hasn’t intruded.
The laws we pass are important. People have legitimate concerns about where the country is headed. There are laws that are making it harder for people of faith to participate in the public square. But I try to remind people around me and in my life, many of whom have become consumed by politics, of a couple things. The first thing I try to remind them of is that we cannot make politics and government our god.
Sometimes I hear people of the Christian faith say, “My God, things are so terrible!” But of all the faiths on this planet, the one that knows how the movie ends is ours. And it ends in tribulation. It ends in difficulties. That’s what was promised. Of course, in every generation, Christians are like: “I know it’s all going to happen, and I can’t wait for Jesus to come back, but not now! Not while I’m here! I just want to skip to the end!” But we have to hold true to what is ultimate.
Governments rise and fall. Nations come and go. But for 2,000 years, the one constant in the lives of people of the Christian faith has been our belief that we’re going to live in a new heaven and a new earth, and that it’s going to be as it was originally intended to be before man’s fall. That doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to the issues of our time. It doesn’t ask us to be hermits. It doesn’t ask us to isolate ourselves. It certainly calls for us to actively live out our faith. But I also don’t think we can let that lead us into anxiety.
In that, I’m reminded of the early Church. The reason why early Christianity spread is not because they conquered with an army. It isn’t because they had more money or more power. In fact, they had none. It’s because the Romans kept doing horrible things to these people, and yet they would go to their deaths singing songs, full of joy, and being kind to their oppressors. Eventually, a bunch of pagans said, “I want the joy those people have.”
They said: “We’ve tried everything. We’ve worshiped all these gods. We’ve forgotten all the gods we worshiped. We’ve sacrificed. We’ve done this, we’ve done that. I want the happiness that these Christians have. What is this secret that they have that the rest of us can’t seem to achieve, despite everything we’ve tried?” It was the power of that example, more than anything else, that allowed the Spirit to work in the world.
The second thing I try to remind people of is that America is not a government. Oftentimes, when people discuss the state of America, they’re actually discussing the state of our politics or the sake of our government. And what we forget is that America is not a government. America is a nation. And what is a nation? At its most basic level, a nation is made up of this: families living in communities.
The most important house in this country is not the White House. It is your house. It’s the first school. It’s the first government. And it’s where we acquire values. Do you realize that everything that tastes good and feels good is bad for you? Why don’t leafy greens taste like ice cream? Why is the stuff that’s good for you, you have to put stuff on it to make it palatable? I think the same is true when it comes to human nature.
Despite all the advancements and our fancy technology, human nature is the same today as it was 5,000 years ago, which is why when we read the Old Testament, those stories seem like they could’ve been written yesterday. We may dress differently, we may use different devices, we may advance scientifically, we may travel to the stars, but human nature is unchanged. That is why history repeats itself. And human nature needs to be controlled. Left to our own nature, left to do whatever we want, we would not live in a good world.
Where do you learn what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, both collectively and individually? Something has to inform you that murder is evil, because murder is legal in the animal kingdom. It happens there all the time. But humanity has decided that murder is wrong, enslaving someone is wrong, physically abusing someone is wrong, denying the right to speak freely is wrong, denying the right to worship freely is wrong. Where do these ideas come from? They don’t come from human advancements, because human nature hasn’t changed. They come from a system of values.
In this, particularly because I am a Christian, I believe our faith system is an extraordinary asset to the country. You don’t have to convert. You have the right to believe anything you want. But from a practical point of view, why would we ever want to constrain or oppress a system of belief that says: “Treat others the way you want to be treated. Love your enemy. Forgive them. Take care of the widow and the hungry.”
The concept of the widow today is lost on people. If you were a widow 2,000 years ago, you were in big trouble. There was no welfare system. There were no food stamps. There were none of these programs out there. You were on your own, by yourself, with no one to help you, unless you had children to take care of you.
To me, Christianity is a system that teaches you not just to help the widow, but to have compassion for the less fortunate, to serve those in need selflessly, not selfishly. Why do we not want that to infuse our culture and society? Even if, ultimately, you don’t believe in the inspirations for those things, why would you not want something like that to be protected and vibrant under our laws? I think any country would be stronger with that.
And it explains a lot of our history. To this day, Americans feed more people, clothe more people, house more people all over the world than almost all the other countries of the world combined. If there’s a landslide somewhere today, if there’s a flood, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, I guarantee you that some faith-based organization in America will be one of the first to respond. And then you add to that foreign aid. (Although that has become controversial lately, and we have to address our own needs as well.)
Why is that? Because there are other wealthy countries that have no tradition of giving whatsoever. To me, the answer is our faith system. When you have instilled in the values of your country to help the less fortunate, it doesn’t mean to help the less fortunate only in your county, your city, your state, or your country. It means we see someone suffering somewhere, and we feel compelled to do something about it. And I’m not talking about just rich people. I’m talking about people that give $50 a month.
Where does that come from? That comes from a system of values grounded in a faith system. It is a national imperative for our country. Not to mention the importance of family and the importance of parenting. Children are not a burden. We should never be a nation that feels that a human life is a burden instead of a blessing. When people talk about things that way, we have to think about what a reflection it is on our society and culture.
What I’m saying is, we can pass a lot of laws, and we can elect great people, but many of the problems we are confronting as a nation go well beyond the government. Government can tell you what’s legal. It cannot tell you what’s right or wrong. Government can punish and reward. It cannot teach people to do good instead of bad, or to care for one another, or to live in community. That’s why I believe the most important thing that the government can do is to rebuild our families so they can live in dignity.
There are things the government can do to help. I think it’s hard to have strong families and strong communities without dignified work. There are great things that the free enterprise system has created, more things than all the other economic systems man has tried. But we have to prioritize dignified work. Man was meant to work. Work is actually a form of worship. In fact, it’s one of the first commandments that mankind received. No matter what the job is, whether you’re a senator or anything else, your work is a way of worshiping your Creator.
But the most important thing the government can do is protect the institutions that are the fiber of the nation: the family, the community, and the faith, which instill values that make us stronger as a result. In many ways, that is the mission that you’re called to. Your mission is to bring Christians news and information in a manner that’s consistent with their values and hopefully inspires them to live up to those values. From a government perspective, our job is to ensure that your right in this country to do that remains unencumbered.
Our own founding documents say our rights come not from the government, but from our Creator. Our country was founded on the belief that our rights are not what I decide they are because the people of Florida elected me, but what God has given us. My job is to protect those rights, not to decide what they are, or to decide which ones apply and which ones do not.
The role of religious broadcasting has a very important mission. It has a spiritual component to it, but it actually has a very strong civil component to it. I think it calls people to live out their faith. At a time when so much of the news and information that people are consuming is actually speaking to the worst of humanity, bringing out the worst in them, the ability to bring out the best in them is really a critical national treasure, one that we have to protect.
I don’t know how to operationalize this in terms of the laws. Oftentimes, good outcomes depend on the law we don’t pass, or something we keep from happening, which would impinge on your ability to fulfill what I think is a critical mission for our country. That mission is to ensure that we have strong families, strong communities, and children raised with the values that allow them to be productive, but also to be good citizens, and to always work for the common good.