I thought it might be well if we would think for a few minutes about the idea of America: what does it mean for us as Christians? What does God have in mind for our country, and What should we do as Christians in the society where we find ourselves?
In his book, “Liberty and Tyranny”, author Mark Levin reminds us that the Declaration of Independence appeals to ‘the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” Further, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
He reminds us that the founders of our country were not merely men of the Enlightenment, but also highly educated, well-informed men who ‘excelled at reason and subscribed to science, but worshiped neither'. They were men who knew the Bible well, and who actually believed that the Creator God was the source of our existence and our ability to reason.
Despite denominational differences, the founders were men who were thoroughly steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This means that they understood that human beings are Created – by a good and loving Creator – in HIS image, that is: that we have the capacity to make real choices for good or for evil, that we have the ability to reason and come to rational conclusions and that although God created us perfectly, we are Fallen – and thus the Image of God within us is radically marred in every facet of our existence. We are, as Martin Luther would have said, in Bondage to sin. We have no ability to make ourselves right with God on our own. We don’t even have the ability to muster up faith if He doesn’t help us through His Holy Spirit.
We are fallen people in need of a Savior, not Good people in need of assistance. No matter what kind of political solutions that people come up with to improve human interactions or relations, there is no such thing as perfecting human beings. We can either be fallen people who try to do things our way, or we can be fallen people who try to do things God’s way and ask for His help in doing them. Being perfect is not one of the choices available to us. No political system can perfect the essential nature of man.
That’s the bad news. The Good News is that when people are REDEEMED, when they come under the power and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, they have the capacity to Govern Themselves.
This was a huge idea in the 18th Century. People didn’t need Kings to rule over them as Tyrants. They could be free UNDER GOD to order their own affairs and thus create a Good and even EXCEPTIONAL Society – a City Set on a Hill as it has been said many times.
This City set on a hill could be an example to all other societies and peoples. It could show the world what it meant to order one’s whole culture according the principles of the Gospel – but without compulsion! Without forcing people to do what is right, but because they had voluntarily set themselves under the Gospel and would be guided ‘through the night with the light from above’ as Irving Berlin so eloquently put it.
Now this does not mean that people are angels – that they will never sin, never go against the righteous law placed within their hearts. Our understanding of the fallen-ness of man means that people will tend to fail in every way they possibly can. So laws and institutions are set up for dealing with man’s failures. Sinfulness is a constant. You can count on it. By way of corollary, we can also say that no political system that overlooks this stark reality can prosper.
To put it another way, we can never go back to the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were driven out because of their rebellion against God, he placed an angel and a flaming sword to guard the entrance so that they could never try to go back! Anybody who ignores this will quickly find themselves disappointed.
Totalitarian regimes such as Communism, Socialism and Fascism ultimately fail because they place too much emphasis on building a perfect society on earth. They are, if you will, heresies of the Christian faith. They try to establish the Peaceable Kingdom without God as Father, Christ as Savior, and the Holy Spirit as Guide.
As a result– a small elite group of super-powerful people impose their utopian vision on everyone else. Their regimes have to resort to police action to enforce their aims on unwilling people. Simultaneously, this same elite group ignores the principles they are supposed to be espousing and becomes corrupt,‘feathering their own nests’.
Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 speech accepting the Republican nomination for president declared that ‘those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for Divine Will, ...this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.”
So – as Christians, we believe that God is our Creator, that he has created us in his own image and endowed us with certain unalienable rights. These rights, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, are ours by birth into the human family – even though we are all fallen from the perfection of God. Even though we conspire to take advantage of others or deprive them of their basic rights because we are sinful.
The State that acknowledges this and tries to order its laws and customs to this basic reality will prosper.
As we have said before, any regime that denies God or ignores Him as the Giver of our rights, will by nature end up coercing people into doing what the All-powerful God-State demands, thus depriving people of their basic rights.
Today, we are living in a culture that increasingly demands absolute freedom any outside constraint. People today have confused Liberty – the freedom to act independently UNDER GOD, with License – the unfettered freedom to do whatever one wishes to do – provided of course that it doesn’t ‘hurt anybody else’. And this last piece of nonsense passes for a moral principle because people think that their own personal, private actions do not affect the body politic.
Contrast this with Gal.5:13-15: For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we think about how our private actions will impact others!
Recently, we have been treated to the ignominious example of a Congressman from NY, who shall remain blessedly nameless. This person thought he could send lewd pictures to women – over a public form of communication, email and Facebook – and think that it was nobody else’s business. Then he had the audacity to try to lie his way out of it and tell us that it was nobody’s business but his own!
Thankfully that piece of hypocrisy came crashing down around his ears, and he is now holed up in a rehab center somewhere being disabused of his stupidity.
As Christians, we understand that no action is ever merely private. Everything we do has an impact on the whole. We live our lives ‘in conspectu Dei’ – under the gaze of God. He sees our every action, knows the thoughts of our hearts, and judges our intentions according to his absolute righteousness. He knows that our every action and thought tend towards evil because we are fallen, and for this reason, he has provided us a Savior Jesus Christ, who can free us from our moral dilemma.
It is because we are fallen and sinful that Presidents of the United States have from time to time declared Days of Repentance and fasting, knowing that the Bible admonishes us to turn from our wicked ways, to repent and to seek His face, so that our nation can be established and saved from wicked people who would seek to destroy us.
But just as Presidents have understood the need for righteousness, they also understood that no one church or sect has the corner on righteousness. As a result America is the most tolerant of places. WE understand that the State may not ESTABLISH one denomination for an entire people. Citizens should be free to worship God after the manner of their own conviction and choosing. This is an essentially Christian idea, which is not understood in non-Christian societies. It is one of those essential ideas that makes America a City set on a Hill, an exception to other cultures, and a guide for all others.
Today however, we live in a time when those in charge politically give a certain amount of lip service to the idea of AMERICA, while simultaneously trying to change it into something else - namely a society that does not acknowledge God as Creator and giver of unalienable rights.
This project is bound to fail. But before it does, it will try to squeeze us all into its mold. As Christians, we can see what’s coming down the pike- Persecution. Friends, it’s only a matter of time before an all-powerful State tries to silence our Christian witness. It’s only a matter of time before those who hate Christ will accuse those of us who love Christ of being hateful and exclusionary when we proclaim the Gospel.
It’s only a matter of time when meeting publicly to worship God will become an activity regulated by the STATE.
Why do I say that? Because it’s already happening in China and Russia, and because day by day we seem to be losing our sense of national identity as a People who have covenanted with God to free under His laws and Grace.
What is to be done? In a phrase, ‘raise your voice.’ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his book The Gulag Archipelago describes what is was like to be hauled off by the KGB in the middle of the day for being an outspoken critic of the Soviet regime. He says that he went along quietly with them because he was convinced of the rightness of his cause and that all would be eventually worked out according to the laws of the state. After being sent to prison for many years, he realized he was wrong about going quietly. Looking back, he wished that he would have spoken up, would have screamed bloody murder as he was being hauled off. He was not so naïve to think this would have saved him, but he could at least have alerted others to the monstrous crime that was being perpetrated on him – and upon them.
While we don’t have secret police hauling us off to prison for our Christian belief yet, we do have people being prevented from having Bible studies in their home because of ‘zoning laws’. We do have people trying to excise any mention of God from the public discourse in the name of ‘freedom from religion.’ We do have immoral people shoving their immorality down our throats, forcing us to accept as normal, aberrations such as ‘Gay’ marriage that have been universally condemned for 2000 years.
Friends, the time has come for us to speak up – loudly – and stand for our inalienable rights and to acknowledge the Creator God who gave us those rights. This weekend when you have your family get-togethers, don’t just grill some hamburgers and hot dogs, THANK God for the amazing privilege you have been given to live in AMERICA. Beg God to preserve us from tyranny and repent for being lackadaisical about the Freedoms we enjoy.
Thank a Veteran for fighting for our freedoms – and fight for them yourselves in whatever way you can.
Renew your commitment to your country and your God.
If you do so, you will be blessed and you will be counted among][= those who preserved the sacred trust of Liberty that our forefathers won for us and passed along to us.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
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