“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3)
When I was in first grade, the Ten Commandments were removed from public schools. We used to begin school and assemblies with prayer, but that practice also ceased over time. I remember my parents and the parents of my friends were concerned about what the changes in support of separation of church and state would mean to our country.
During this same time period, I remember going to the drive-in theater (quite the rage back then) and reading on the movie screen an appeal from the owners to “attend a church of your choice this Sunday.” That admonition has gone the way of the drive-in theater and the Ten Commandments posted on school walls.
Movies, television, and radio used to not have offensive language, but no longer. Ah, the joys of cable television where my children can innocently see graphic titles to movies we don’t subscribe to, where even the Family Channel offers entertainment that is not fit for my family to watch. I am even apprehensive about commercials on the Super Bowl, let alone its half-time entertainment.
There was a time in America when modesty was considered a virtue. Take a walk in the mall and look at the shop windows. Sex sells, apparently. I grew up hearing that women wanted to be given credit for their minds. There’s a ship that seems to have sailed. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
If you think I am waltzing down memory lane to the “good old days” you are correct in one sense, but wrong in another. Yes, I believe we were less tolerant of ungodly behavior fifty years ago, but I know we were still sinning with abandon back then in the good old days. Civil rights abuses provide one testament of that. John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe provide another. My father gambled and drank too much and created times of sadness and brokenness in our family. My friends all had similar complaints.
I grew up in that mess, the tumult and change of the sixties and seventies, and it affected me. As a young adult I desired a life style of freedom, hedonism, and self-centeredness; I cared not for anyone else. Relative goodness, thank goodness, made us feel all was fine and right with the world. We were all on a progressive path to enlightenment.
Billy Graham intruded on my good humor. He called a spade a spade. A seed was planted that still took years to bud, but it did. I heard a preacher the other day say something that was right-on with respect to me: God’s saving grace did not make it impossible for me to sin any longer—but it did make it impossible to sin and enjoy it.
It’s a free country. God granted that right to America. But He is not blind about what we have become and how we continue to drift as a nation. I am shocked by what I see and hear going on around me. Moral relativism will say I am entitled to stay at home if I find the world around me so offensive that I cannot bear to be part of it, but I am not entitled to condemn ungodly behavior because such a thing only exists in my mind.
But let me ask you, do you feel at home here? Do you find the laissez-faire attitude of American culture beneficial? Are we truly on the road to enlightenment? Or do you wonder why the future portrayed by novelists and screenwriters in books and films is a world of violence and uncertainty, a world that is more slimy, more devoid of humanity, more stark in its feeling of hopelessness, more exploitative of others, more divided with the evil “haves” and the less evil “have-nots” rather than one that has evolved to a sense of greater purpose, civility, and nobility?
We do have a national day of prayer; we also have groundhog day, law day, loyalty day, national nurses day, pioneer day, senior citizens day—a whole lot of other days too, but then, we are a big country with a lot of people to keep happy and celebrate.
I found no peace in my life before I came to Christ. Nothing that the world offered and that I often tasted gave me any peace. Happiness found was never lasting; laughter was present, but it was hollow and often at the expense of others. My purpose was to be more, to have more, to rise above on my own merits, and to be able to compare myself favorably against others. I was lost and wrong; I was blind, but now I see. Christ saved me. Christ alone heals the broken hearted. Christ alone offers peace and purpose.
I look at the world around me and am saddened by our continual fall from grace. But I am not disheartened because I am merely a pilgrim here.
I believe it would be good for you to attend a church of your choice this weekend. God cares for you. The God who delivered water out of a rock in the desert to a thirsty nation can give you living water that will sustain you, give you purpose, and give you peace.
The truly amazing thing is He still wants to.