During his farewell
address, our first President, George Washington argued that "’self-government
is dangerous if disconnected from conservative principles.’ He feared the ‘intoxicated
modern smugness that the spirit of the budding Enlightenment threatened to
unleash on the country.’ He warned that ‘the abandonment of religion and
morality, in the name of a self-sufficient humanism, would lead to a vicious
and decadent citizenry and tyrannical government. Disorder would replace order,
with whoever is in power preying upon those without power.’"
Contrast that with the
now former president and ruling class which, by and large, went out of their
way to undermine the very moral principles that will make any country great.
Although we should not confuse a moral nation with a "Christian
Nation," we should realize that, when a society has the proper moral
compass, the results will be greater benefits and blessings. Washington's fears
find a real life example in today's America where former President Obama can
boast of a “fundamentally transformed America, where judges, bureaucrats,
and pols liberated from the constraints of religion and morality invent bogus
rights that collide with God-given ones, starting with the right to life of unborn
children." We are no longer interested in the "inalienable
rights" to which our Declaration of Independence pointed. Instead, we are
more interested in not offending anyone or speaking against evil when we see
it.
Going back to my
wife's and my conversation, although we cannot know what's in the mind of those
who decide when and for how long particular businesses are to remain open, it
cannot be a coincidence that the trend has been going in one definite
direction. When those who make such decisions become increasingly secular and
humanistic, reflecting the society in which they were bred, the importance that
people attach to religion and morality become a secondary consideration to
anything else. If your worldview is such that you believe that we are the
result of mere chance and that there is no such thing as an intelligent,
personal Creator, then you're likely to be out for all you can get while you
can. Slowly, but surely, what makes a country great becomes less and less
important as we become more and more hedonistic in our pursuits. As apostle Paul
put it “let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
It could be said that
Washington was prescient in his speech. It doesn't take a prophet, however, to
realize that as another of our country’s fathers, John Adams, put it "the
constitution is a document created for a moral and religious people; it is
wholly inadequate for any other." As we have seen, the limits that the
Constitution places on government have been turned on their heads, especially
when it comes to religion. Whereas the Constitution restricts the federal government
from meddling in the religious affairs of its citizens, we now have courts
doing that very thing by declaring just what religious activity the population
can engage in publicly.
Washington again,
“where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of
religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of
investigation in Courts of Justice?” How much can an oath of office taken with
God as witness influence an individual, if the religious and moral precepts that
underpin that oath are jettisoned in the name of tolerance or expediency? Every
day we witness judges and legislators going out of their way to deconstruct our
laws, all in the name of "equality." In the end, Washington
understood what so many today ignore, the fact that "morality cannot be
maintained without religion" and that “national morality” would suffer “in
exclusion of religious principle.”
As the church of Jesus
Christ, we cannot afford to allow ourselves to be led by the currents of change
and expediency. Although we are exhorted to be "all things to all
people" (1 Corinthians 9:19-23), we should not mistake that concept with
the idea that we can compromise our message and our stance for the truth. If we
do, we will be no more effective than those churches who today are little more
than an echo chamber for the current culture. Our influence depends on our
convictions and such convictions stand or fall on our willingness to hold fast
the word of truth.
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