Bible

[excel]

The Bridge Christian Fellowship
The Pastor’s Pen
Steve Farnworth


As you are all too aware (due to around-the clock-news coverage), our nation suffered yet another mass-murder spree, in a school filled with our children, executed by another of our children. Words fall short of describing such senseless carnage: tragic, shocking, senseless, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, mind-numbing, etc.

Yet, within minutes of the final shot, while victims are still bleeding, students are yet evacuating, and first responders are still arriving, political pundits were already off-loading their worn, hyped, cynical, and, quite honestly, grating rhetoric on the rest of us. Perhaps they should heed the advice of the wisest man who ever lived: “Even fools are thought wise when they keep silent; with their mouths shut, they seem intelligent” (Proverbs 17:28).

I believe that the better part of wisdom is in stepping back from the emotions, examining our culture, and then asking, “What has changed in our culture that has precipitated such horror and carnage as we witnessed yet again this week? As I have contemplated this question over the past few days, I was reminded of something our second president, John Adams, once said while addressing a group of soldiers. “…in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world; because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

John Adams was a student of the scriptures, and he understood the implications found in the words of Solomon: “Godliness makes a nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people”
Proverbs 14:34 (NLT). Our founding fathers gave us a nation of laws by which to abide and prosper; these laws were and are founded upon the eternal word of God; these laws were intended to be applied with a healthy “fear of the Lord.”

So, what are the cultural changes we have experienced since I started first grade in late summer of 1960?
1. God has been expelled from our schools and public places. My second-grade teacher began every school day with a scripture reading, prayer, and the pledge of allegiance. She did this with no fear of law suits, threats, or job security. What about today? The Bible and prayer are a threat to diversity and tolerance, and are therefore not allowed. I read this past week that a teacher has been charged with child abuse for not allowing a grade school child to sit during the pledge of allegiance.
2. Church attendance has plummeted in my life-time. As a child, I attended church at least three times per week, as did a majority of the children with whom I grew up. All seventeen churches in that town of 3,200 were filled with active members. What about today? I read, in an on-line magazine just this week, that young, church going families “attend church an average of 1.6 times per month (out of a possible 4.3 weekends/month). In addition, only 20% of their members attend at least 3 times a month. And just 4 percent are “full attenders” – in the pews at least 48 weeks a year.” Less than 30% of Americans ever attend church.
3. The sanctity of life has been trampled under-foot. A nation cannot declare war on the unborn, slaughtering the innocent in what the Creator designed to be the child’s safest place on earth (his/her mother’s womb), and then respond in shock when our children declare war on other children. Add to this our culture’s fixation on euthanasia, suicide, and gory, violent, and immoral movies and video games, depicting graphic scenes of murder, torture, rape, and mutilation. And we have the audacity to ask, “How could something like this happen?”
4. The home has been systematically destroyed. As a child, I remember that it was the exception when us four children and our parents did not sit down and enjoy our dinner together. We would eat, share our day’s activities, and laugh together; our two-parent, married home, unscathed by divorce, was typical. Today that same home is anything but typical. Divorce, non-committal relationships, addictions, crazy schedules, and financial bondage have ravaged the home front here in America.
5. Isolation has replaced community as the norm. Cell phones, texting, Facebook, tweeting, and other forms of social media have replaced good old fashioned, face-to- face sharing and listening. The result, our culture is losing its ability to communicate with any kind of understanding. “It is NOT good for man to be alone,” says God.

I could continue, but I think you get the point. The culture of today is far removed from the culture in which I was raised. Things have dramatically changed, and not for the better. What can we do to end the violence which has become the norm? I find no hope for our culture without us Christ-followers humbly bowing in repentant prayer before our God. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). May God hear our cry for our land.