America In Crisis
It
was one of those great moments in American sports. Maybe some of you remember a baseball player,
the center fielder for the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs were playing the Dodgers on April 25 in 1976. During the fourth inning William Thomas and
his son ran out onto the field and attempted to set fire to the American
flag. They doused it with lighter fluid
and their first match was blown out by the wind. That gave center fielder Rick Monday
just enough time to sprint over and swipe the flag away and carry it to safety. It was a touching moment.
I
will always remember what followed as a very proud moment for America. The scoreboard lights congratulated Rick
Monday: “Rick Monday…you made a great
play.” It was truly a 'goose-bump'
moment. A whole stadium filled with
patriotic Americans began to sing 'God Bless America'.
Americans
have proven throughout their history that times of difficulty bring unity, not
division.
·
On tax day, April
15th, 2013, Americans rallied to support the families of the
innocent who were wounded or killed at the Boston marathon. We all shared the pain.
·
I was only a
second grader when my father picked me up at school and as we traveled home he
told me of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was a devastating moment but Americans
came together in our moment of tragedy.
·
I will never
forget traveling south on 185 toward Baker High School in 1990 and watching our
troops from Fort Benning head north in a convoy of busses that stretched for
miles. The residents of Columbus lined
every bridge from Macon Road to Fort Benning and waved yellow ribbons and
cheered as we sent our young soldiers off to war. On that day I was so proud to be an American.
·
In 2001 I was
teaching at Duluth High School in Atlanta and a teacher came to my room and
suggested I turn on the television. The
terrorists had struck the twin towers in New York City. The flow of food, water, medical supplies,
prayer and sympathy into the streets of New York from all across this nation
made me proud to be an American.
·
In 2005,
hurricane Katrina affected 15 million as it decimated the city of New
Orleans. Youth groups from across
America traveled to the area to assist in the clean up and show their support
for fellow Americans in trouble and I was proud to be an American.
·
Americans came
together after school shootings in Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook. There is something very, very special about
Americans.
Now
Americans are facing a different kind of crisis. It is covert.
It is subtle. It is slowly
creeping upon us like a fog in the night.
Many Americans are unaware of the danger our country faces.
Let
me preface the rest of what I want to say with this: I love America.
·
I love the Bill
of Rights. There is no other document in
history that so adequately defines the limits of government.
·
I love the Statue
of Liberty. She has always stood with open
arms to welcome the oppressed to our shores.
·
I love the
Constitution because it ensures justice to the accused. It gives us a right to an attorney, a right
to protect ourselves, a right to prohibit the government from invading the
private space of our homes and offices.
I
love America. I love living in the
greatest land on earth. I love being a
citizen of this great country.
That
being said it is with great sadness that I recognize that the America is in
deep trouble. Maybe George Carlin
captured it well when he wrote:
“The
paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter
tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.
We
spend more, but have less. We buy more,
but enjoy less.
We
have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.
We
have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more
experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We
have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.
We
talk too much, love too seldom and hate too often.
We’ve
learned how to make a living, but not a life.
We’ve added years to life not life to years!
We’ve
done larger things, but not better things.
We’ve
cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We
drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive
too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little,
watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.”
There
is a verse in the Bible that summarizes America’s dilemma: “The wicked shall
be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” – Psalm 9:17
Ronald
Reagan said this: “If we ever forget
that we are 'One Nation Under God,' then we will be a nation gone under.” - Ronald
Reagan
There
are multiple diseases eating away at the soul of America. We ignore the advice of the Great Physician
to our own peril. There are dark clouds
gathering on the horizon, not just because we have forgotten God, but because
we are in open defiance to God.
"…The Lord spoke to Job out of the
storm." The problem is not that
God has not spoke, the problem is that we are not listening.
1.
We are diseased financially.
America
is financially bankrupt. We have placed
all our trust in the almighty dollar and we’ve forgotten the slogan we wrote
there: “In God we Trust”.
The
federal government borrows forty cents for every dollar it spends.
Our government has managed to rack up
$15 trillion in debt. A figure so large
it has no meaning whatsoever to most Americans. The National Debt is four times
the size of the American economy. We are increasing American Debt at a rate of
$4 billion per day.
I
would suggest to you that what we are doing is immoral and unjust. We are stealing away the money of our
children and grandchildren and this act of cowardice will not go unanswered.
We
now live in a nation where takers outnumber givers. It was Patrick Henry who said: “Give me liberty or give me death!” It wasn’t long until we were just saying,
“Give me liberty”. Now we only say “Give
me”.
3.
We are diseased morally.
“Righteousness
exalts a nation; but sin is a reproach (a disgrace) to any people.” – Proverbs
14:34 The terrorist will never destroy
America but sin very well may.
90%
of America’s Christians are sending their children into secular schools. Will you hear a word of caution? If God is the source of all
wisdom and the Bible is his method of conveying his wisdom to mankind, and the
Bible is prohibited in public schools…how effective can government schools be??
Christians
who have no other choice than to send their kids to government schools must be
actively providing their children with an alternative, biblical worldview.
There
are symptoms of crisis in America when:
·
A child is
punished at school for saying grace over a meal.
·
A teacher’s job
is terminated because he used the Bible as a resource in the classroom.
Noah
Webster, the father of American Education once said that education is “useless
without the Bible.”
There
are symptoms of a moral crisis in America when:
·
Our textbooks
condemn Hitler for the bloody murder of 6 million Jews but we indoctrinate our
young women to believe that aborting their unborn is a noble and admirable
thing to do.
·
We have murdered as
many as 55 million babies over the last 40 years since our Supreme Court
twisted and warped the constitution in order to condone such an atrocity.
I
remember when an unborn child within the womb was a precious, human life. Now it is disposable material to be
eliminated at our own convenience. The
unborn baby is looked upon as an inconvenience that is intruding upon our
lifestyle rather than a miraculous event where God has planted one human life
within another.
Jesus
said, “If any of you cause one of these little ones to stumble, it would be
better for you to be cast into the sea with a millstone tied around your neck.”
– Matthew 8:6
Our
young girls are being told by a godless culture that if they don’t offer
themselves sexually they will never be loved. The music our young men listen to
badgers them to use drugs and become violent and disrespect women and the
female body.
We are suffering a moral crisis in
America:
·
Pornography now
produces more money than all the sports events in the entire nation combined.
·
30% of women, 79%
of men and 54% of pastors view porn on television or the internet. Pornography shatters marriages and destroys
the God-sanctioned institution of family.
NEA
spokesman to the United Nations, Dianne Schneider, said that the only way to
combat heterosexism is to teach sexual pleasure and tolerance to “every middle
and high school student.” She said that
those opposed to homosexuality are “stuck in a “binary box that religion and
family create.”
We
have redefined marriage to be what we want it to be rather than what God wants
it to be. We have redefined love to mean:
I accept you the way you are and you can stay the way you are.
God’s
definition of love is: I accept you as a
sinner but I demand a change in your life. To those who embrace the immorality
of the present age may we say this: “God
loves you as you are but he loves you too much to leave you as you are.”
Isaiah
5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
3.
We are diseased spiritually.
"America wants
God's blessing but not God. Our nation has systematically pushed Him out of the
national consciousness -- rejecting biblical morality, ignoring His Word, and
relying on the political and entertainment arenas for moral guidance." –
John MacArthur
Youth
are abandoning the church by droves. 46% of Americans between ages 18 to 34 say
they have no religion. Many who call themselves Christians no longer hold the
traditional Christian beliefs.
Paul
advised Timothy to avoid those who “have a form of godliness but deny the power
thereof.” – 2 Tim. 3:5
Oprah
Winfrey has done a fabulous job of convincing 52% of American Christians that
eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Jesus Christ. 57% of
American Christians believe that “many religions can lead to eternal
life.”
But Jesus said, “I am the way, and the
truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. - John
14:6
We
are living in a culture spiritually depraved.
45% of Americans say they seldom read the scriptures and yet they claim
to know truth. We are diseased spiritually because we are not reading the word,
we are not praying and we are not attending church. Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend
church.
“For
the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will
gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears
want to hear.” - 2 Tim. 4:3
Conclusion:
We
have been in moments of crisis many times before and we successfully
survived. This is what we must do:
1. We must express individual repentance. We must look into our own hearts and confess
sin, confess hatred, bigotry and pride.
“If
my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek
my face and turn from their wicked
ways…” – 2 Chronicles 7:14
2. We need pastors who are willing to redefine
what a successful church looks like. We
are not just trying to get people into church. We are trying to get souls into the
kingdom. We don’t want to build our churches
on marketing schemes. We want to build
our churches on the gospel of Jesus Christ.
3. We need to humble ourselves and fall on our
knees and ask God to restore and revive America. God was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorrah
for 10 righteous men. He wants
desperately to spare America.
Ronald
Reagan once said, “No matter where we live we have a promise that can make all
the difference. A promise from Jesus to
soothe our sorrows, heal our hearts and drive away our fears. He promised there would never be a dark night
that does not end. ‘Our sorrow may
endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.’”
Reagan
continued: “Now I realize that it is
fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should
encourage others to read the Bible that we are told that we will violate the
constitution of church and state established by the founding fathers in the 1st
Amendment. The 1st Amendment
was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values, it was
written to protect those values from government tyranny…we must be cautious
claiming that God is on our side, I think the real question that we must answer
is, are we on God’s side.”
If
the Americans will turn away from humanism and back to God then the very gates
of hell cannot prevail against her!
Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.
