Few could legitimately argue that the USA has little to no religious influence in its founding. Whether you read the ‘Mayflower Compact’, the ‘original, unmodified charters’ of Yale, Harvard or Princeton or the plethora of insightful writings of not a few founding leaders, you cannot escape the fact that our history is replete with acknowledgements of the Divine sovereignty over our Republic. We can and should remind each other that at one time ‘THEOLOGY’ played a predominant role in American life. And, so, we were blessed.
Yet, as is so often the case, ‘IDEOLOGY’ soon replaced theology. Churches in the Northeast, as soon as 1649, adopted a ‘Half-way Covenant’ in which church members were no longer required to demonstrate genuine salvation as a prerequisite for church membership. Churches became secularized and the early colleges and universities, originally chartered to produce missionary workers, followed suit by turning away from God, becoming, themselves, bastions of godlessness. Temporal values replaced truth and the expedient displaced the eternal. Abandoning the pursuit of holiness, integrity, honesty and humility, many chose to declare their own ideas as truth. Refusing to use the Bible as the measurement of truth, human ideas were dubbed ‘progressive’ and ‘enlightened’ thought. Instead of becoming wise, America become foolish in her cultural thinking as we worshiped at the alter of ‘self’.
Soon, another exchange took place. ‘IRRATIONALITY’ replaced ideology . While worshiping self, many leaders and ‘progressive’ thinkers, intoxicated by their own concept of self-importance, began to pretend that their thoughts could in some way produce reality. This condition led some leaders to say that because they were elected, we all could work together and ‘ocean levels would lower and the planet would heal’. Such lofty ‘rhetoric’ is fanciful at best and deluded at worst. Only God can speak and what is spoken occurs. No mere mortal has, can or ever will be able to produce such omnipotent results.
In the end, we are left to endure a relentless barrage of claims that are so absurd that only the most devoted partisan could accept them. How else could you explain the acceptance of the claims, ‘What difference does it make now that we have 4 dead Americans’ including a US Ambassador or ‘There has never before been such a peaceful time in our history’ than now.
How did we get here? In a way, it’s quite simple…
People decided that it was no longer ‘…worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God…’! Romans 1:28. Imagine that!