America is great, said Alexis DeTocqueville in the early 19th century, because America is good. If she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
Bull’s eye for him.
Our esteemed colleague “Unknowable” has raised this issue lately in several comments. Just getting rid of the Democrat Party and slapping down the fake nooze media, he says, will not treat the root cause of our problems–an across-the-boards deterioration of our national character. This includes our penchant for “near-worship of celebrities.”
I think it’s important to recognize that our nation’s character has been debased on purpose by persons who are easily identifiable: the Democrat Party, the nooze and “entertainment” media (sort of a tautology), and teachers’ unions and other wicked “educators.” If we could somehow break them up and strip them of their power, they wouldn’t be able to carry on their mission to corrupt the country.
Things are done now that would have been utterly unthinkable when I was a boy. So why are they thinkable, and doable, now? Because certain people worked very hard, for a long time, to make them so. They never took “No” for an answer. No matter how many times they were defeated, they kept coming back–like the freakin’ Mummy. If one tactic didn’t work, they tried another. That’s how they finally got “gay marriage” intruded into our culture, through the Supreme Court. More specifically, through Justice Anthony Kennedy. They only had to swing one guy, and they got what they wanted. All other tactics had failed them. Even California voters turned it down. But they found the one judge who would give them what they wanted.
Yes, our national character needs re-Christianizing. We were a good country because we were a Christian country. D. James Kennedy once said that the most unserved mission field in the world was the churches in America. I’m afraid he was right.
Well, no one can say God didn’t give us enough work to keep us busy.
Yes, what the country needs are missionaries — and that means all of us, not just official representatives of churches (and synagogues). It’s not enough to get rid of evil. As you say, it will just come roaring back in a different guise. What we have to do is build the good. And it’s not enough to suppress the evildoers. What have to do is convert them. There has to be some positive to work toward, not just a negative to erase.
Yes, yes, I know. Easier said than done, who will bell the cat, and so on. But somehow God will give the grace if we ask for it. “Go out into the world and tell the Good News….” We have our marching orders. If we’re willing, I’m sure God will give us the opportunity.
You can have no idea how many times I’ve rewritten this. I guess I’m afraid God will take me at my word and say, “Okay, go do it.”
I hope this blog, and all the reader comments, are, in their own small way, doing it.
Sadly, we are awash in misinformation. The sexual revolution changed much about our civilization and it was a sell job, from day one. Mead and Kinsey supposedly showed the way, but there is reason to doubt that they were unbiased observers, but perhaps more accurately, were promoters of their own bias, searching for what confirmation they could find and discounting information that didn’t support their conclusions.
This has affected much of culture, including an entertainment industry that promotes immortality in music, movies, television and literature. If you choose to live your life to the moral standards of the Bible, you have to keep that information to yourself, or risk censure.
There’s an old saying among pilots; you can’t make a good landing, from a bad approach. That smooth landing which passengers barely feel came about because the plane was postured correctly well in advance of the actual landing. Without a sound moral approach, people will be subject to every sort of deceit, yet that is exactly what our popular culture is promoting.
I am not optimistic about the future of any human institutions, but my faith is God remains. Only through the power of the True God can we be saved.
If we could save ourselves, we wouldn’t need a Savior.
It always comes back to Christians being the salt and light for judgment begins in the house of the Lord. Romans 8:28 is referring to the church. God has promised He will always have a remnant who remain faithful to Him. Let us each endeavor to be counted in that number “when the saints come marching in.” 2 Cor 6:7 says, “through the arms of righteousness on the right and on the left.”
Praying so much for this country