America Needs to Repent!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Why is our country in such a mess? Why are the leading presidential candidates busy throwing garbage at each other, and not talking about how they plan to solve the problems of mass killings, rioting, crime in the streets, rising numbers of deaths due to drug overdoses, falling numbers of live births due to abortion, and soaring Federal deficits because of massively growing "entitlement" programs?
It should be clear that America needs to return to the Christian principles that it was founded upon. Instead, in the last 50 years we've removed Bible reading from public schools and taken down the Ten Commandments from public places.
When the firm foundation for instruction in morals is removed, the next generations are left to follow the rule "whatever feels good, do it!" Immediate gratification of one's passions and desires can only be limited by a higher, stronger motivation based on spiritual reality.
It's time for America to repent, before our society disintegrates into warring factions that are incapable of peaceful dialog and the respectful give-and-take that has allowed our country to grow and prosper in the past. Christians: we need to call out to the living God for His mercy on our land before it's too late!
"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman guards it in vain" (Psalm 127:1). Why are these mass murders taking place? Because we have driven the Lord out of our society so He isn't watching over the city. We've replaced Him with the state as the answer to all our problems. How did this come about?
In my last essay "What Luther Got Right" we considered the ideas and effects of the Protestant Reformation. But what were the causes? What brought Luther to question the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church? Not quite a century before the Reformation, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. Before that, Bibles had to be copied by hand, a very laborious and time-consuming process: it took about two years to hand-write each page of the Bible, word-by-word. So with the advent of the printing press, the Bible and other books began to be fairly widely-circulated by the early 16th century when the Reformation took place. Historians call this period "The Age of Enlightenment" or "The Age of Reason" when people finally had the information on which to try to make reasonable, rational decisions.
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Please read "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (PDF, 34 pages) by John Locke. Published in 1689, it "is one of the most under-appreciated texts in the liberal tradition of political philosophy. When read in conjunction with his Second Treatise, it clarifies the relationship Locke envisions between individuals and the state. In the letter, Locke argues that all religious practices should be tolerated unless they are a threat to the proper functioning of the state" (The Federalist Papers).
Locke embodied the ideas of the Enlightenment and of the Protestant Reformation's "sola Scriptura" doctrine that in practice meant "sola every-believer's-interpretation-of-Scripture" because every man was supposed to be enlightened by the Holy Spirit and could correctly interpret the Scriptures by himself alone - each man became a pope unto himself, thus giving rise to the tens of thousands of Protestant denominations.
Also, browse through The Reasonableness of Christianity (PDF, 256 pages) by John Locke, published in 1695, it is "an enquiry into the foundations of Christian belief. He did so anonymously, to avoid public involvement in the fiercely partisan religious controversies of the day. In The Reasonableness of Christianity John Locke considered what it was to which all Christians must assent in faith; he argued that the answer could be found by anyone for themselves in the divine revelation of Scripture alone (sola Scriptura). He maintained that the requirements of Scripture were few and simple, and therefore offered a basis for tolerant agreement among all Christians, and the promise of peace, stability, and security through toleration." (The Federalist Papers)
Locke's views indicate a general acceptance in the 17th century of a Christian worldview based on human reason and autonomy that reflects the Western Enlightenment view of man, but belittles the importance of doctrines such as the person and nature of Christ and the Trinity, and it assumes that a rational, mental assent to the historical fact of Jesus as the Messiah is sufficient for salvation. This assumption makes "the proper functioning of the state" and individual rationality more important than spiritual truths and commitment of one's whole life to Christ. Locke's view of religious tolerance also opened the door to the philosophical relativism of later modernism and post-modernism in the West.
John Locke's ideas were central to the worldview of the Founding Fathers of the United States, and thus also for much of western democracy and political thought. You see here that already in the 17th century, people were beginning to prioritize "the proper functioning of the state" and man's autonomy and rationality over the absolute authority of God and Divine Law, which began to be called "Natural Law" - eventually leaving God entirely out of the picture. Once we concede to the argument of "tolerance" - accepting others' worldviews as equally true and valid, we've lost the battle to relativism. Game over.
Today we live in a secularized, post-Christian society. It has become fashionable to believe the absurd oxymoron - "there are absolutely no absolutes, and that's the absolute truth!" You might recall from high school algebra that in order to solve a problem with multiple unknown variables, you need to find at least one fixed value: without that, the problem can't be solved. But when we are left with no Absolute, no God, with a relativist, materialist, socialist worldview, there is no fixed point of reference on which to base our moral and spiritual values. When one rejects the Absolute, those "values" become simply variables: with no moral compass, the problems of society can't be solved.
We need to return to the one true Absolute, the Divine Authority, God, Who has revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ, the Word of God in the flesh. When God became incarnate ("in the flesh") in Christ, the Truth became knowable. It is He who said - "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by Me" (John 14:6). America - indeed, the whole world - needs to repent of its rebellion against God and accept Christ as the Absolute Truth!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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