Posted by
Paul Derengowski on Tuesday, December 22, 2009 12:00:00 AM
A concerned
friend, after reading one of my blog entries involving the subversion
of America by militant Islam, asked me a very important question: What
can we do? Instead of tackling the question by way of a short
response, I thought it was important enough to do a completely separate
blog entry, and see if there is a solution to the mess we're in as a
country.
First of all,
from a biblical perspective, the question "What can we do?" is similar
to one that King David asked when he saw wickedness abounding in his
day. He asked, "If the foundations are destroyed, what can the
righteous do?" (Ps. 11:3). Two things are worth noting from his
question. First, the practice of righteousness requires a solid
foundation. Second, only the righteous can do anything to restore
order to an otherwise chaotic situation. Nevertheless, lets take these
one at a time and expound upon them.
The practice of
doing what is right requires a solid foundation. Doing what is right
implies moral and ethical decision-making. Not only must the moral and
ethical foundation be beyond mere human opinion, it must be reliable
and stable under all conditions. It must be trustworthy and
authoritative. At one time America had such a foundation. It was
called the Bible, for that is what she was built upon. Although there
was no national church or religion, nor was there ever the intent to
build one, still those who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights
were indebted to the Bible's principles as the only way to ensure life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
That foundation,
though, with the advent of Enlightenment and Postmodern thought, has
since deteriorated, at least in the hearts many now claiming to be both
Christians and Americans. What we're seeing today in the forms of
corrupt government, financial irresponsibility, political correctness,
religious and cultural diversity, dumbed-down education (at all
levels), an overindulging preoccupation with entertainment, and on, and
on, and on, are the outgrowths of those advents and deterioration.
Many of us are dying from within, and we either don't know it, nor we
don't care. That foundational attitude must change if things are going
to get any better.
Second, only the
righteous can do what is necessary to right a nation. But, who are the
righteous? They are those whom God has redeemed and justified by His
grace. They uphold the biblical foundation as the only objective
standard by which a nation can survive when the enemies of liberty come
knocking at its door. Our Founding Fathers understood this, which is
why so many of them were avowed Christians. Of course, there are going
to be the naysayers, mockers, and critics who will object to such an
assertion. They want to rewrite history and secularize it to the point
where God is excluded from the conversation. Our Founding Fathers are
re-visioned as atheists and agnostics as worst, and irreverent deists
at best, all of which is pure non-sense. Perhaps the best way to
silence such critics is to simply ask them what their objective
standard is to today's problems, and then sit back and listen to the
crickets chirp. For despite all their arrogant bravado and
revisionism, when push comes to shove, the critics of Christian America
and its founders end up being nothing more than the contributors to the
problems, and not the solution makers.
Does this mean
that non-Christians and non-Christian religious ideologies cannot
contribute to the righteousness of righting a nation? They may
contribute, but for true righteousness to reign, their contributions
must garner biblical support, otherwise before long, that nation will
be experiencing the very thing America is seeing today: corruption and
confusion run amok. Is that pointing a finger at certain groups and
ideas as the root causes of today's American meltdown? Yes.
Christians for not doing what is right are as responsible for America's
problems as those non-Christians who argued for a better path, the
latter of which was rife with self-serving, self-centered subjectivism
that only led to self-destruction, and ultimately the destruction of
America.
Therefore, what
can we do? As far as President Obama is concerned, there is nothing
that Christians can do except to pray for him. Although that may sound
trite, it is (1) biblical, and (2) the only thing that can be done,
since the foundations for doing what is right are tenuous at best. In
fact, America has gone so long in engaging in anti-intellectual thought
when it comes to its Christian identity, with many Christians and
organizations all but isolating themselves from the rest of society,
and another lot so caught up in emotively-inspired practices and
self-help seminars, that it may be decades in the making before America
is ready to claim that she is a Christian nation again. We're that far
gone at this time.
Oh, it's not that
we're not seeing some righteous indignation on the part of "Christians"
taking place at these so-called "Tea Parties" and the like, but I would
venture to guess that that they, like so many knee-jerk reactions are
more about stirring the emotions, than about substantive thought about
one's spiritual convictions. It is the same emotional mentality which
led to the placing of Obama in the Whitehouse in the first place. And
now many of those same people think that by having another emotional
rally they're going to stop the tide from washing them away? I don't
think so. Just look at what Congress is doing with the health care
legislation.
Does that sound
bleak? hopeless? dire? Absolutely. But, it is reality. Until the
biblical foundations are restored, there is nothing the righteous can
do. It is going to take work. It is going to take thought. It is
going to take sweat, just like when a foundation is being poured for a
new house. Nevertheless, it must be done to erect a lasting
structure. Without it the nation is attempting to build a society upon
shifting sand. And when the storms come and the tides rise, that
society is destroyed, due to its lack of something solid to stand upon.
Finally, if the
righteous are the only ones with a solution for the reconstructing of
the foundation to answer the problems facing the country, yet they
continue to fail to do anything substantive to build that foundation
and correct those problems, then one may rest assure that the
unrighteous will eventually lead the nation to its destruction. What
we're now seeing is the culmination of years of touchy-feely
subjectivism that has been part of "Christian" America. The worst is
yet to come, if the righteous don't get with the program and build.