We have a big-screen television in the conference room for video conferences between customers and the sales office staff. During the rest of its existence, it stays tuned to a well-known news network for most of the day. It’s hard to get your morning coffee and not have something displayed thereon catch your eye for a moment or two. It happens to me all the time. This morning as I brewed my K-cup of exotic, not-so-great-tasting-breakfast-blend-java, a story was reported of a woman being stomped at a political rally in Kentucky. The term I use here, stomped, can be taken as literal in this instance; the video could not be interpreted otherwise. Sadly, it was the party I usually consider as ‘the good guys’ who were in charge of the stomping. It was probably a set-up - she had on a fake wig and was the only dissenting voice in the crowd, but the beat-down wasn’t justified regardless. Sometimes you can be completely right and still be totally wrong. Where is this country headed, and what is it all boiling down to here in the good ‘ole USA?
Less than a week ago video surfaced of a U.S. Representative leading Congress from the floor of the House in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, except she conspicuously went silent when she reached the point where the words ‘under G_d’ would normally be said. The incident took place on April 17, 2002, or almost a full decade ago. I guess it took a while for either the video to surface, or for someone to garner the courage to complain about it. Sadly, I feel as though more than likely it is probably the latter. Courage can be found all over the place when an election is right around the corner and my so-called ‘good guys’ need a few more votes.
On three occasions in a little more than a month, our own President, bless him, has been caught deleting the reference to G_d while quoting a portion of the Declaration of Independence. For whatever reason, he glaringly omits the founding document’s acknowledgment of G_d as the “Creator” and therefore the source of human rights. Where the Declaration states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," the President has quoted only that all men "are endowed" with certain rights. Again, very few of the ‘good guys’ have called him out on this. Maybe they are saving it for the Presidential election in a couple of years?
On one side we have a party that is consumed with removing and deleting G_d from everything public and private. They propose an agenda of government control, abortion, suicidal economic policy, gay rights, and the destruction of the family. Yet on the other side, the second party seems satisfied to chronically allow this godless agenda to proceed until election time, at which point they begin blasting the ideology of the first party in an effort to gain my (the conservative) vote. We have a two-party system; there are no other viable alternatives when I find myself in line at the ballot box.
Politics makes my head hurt. I think I’ll ignore it and catch up on Survivor instead. Maybe more Monday Night Football is on tap. Pass the biscuits, please.
Our country is fast achieving critical mass right now. (Duh!) The crux of the matter is that we, with very few exceptions, no longer have a recognizable fear of G_d – neither as a society nor as individuals. To openly ridicule the Creator and disavow oneself from His laws is blatantly evil. To attempt to use Him for political gain is another story in itself and just as bad. To stand by and say or do nothing at all, simply ride the storm out while straddling a fence called oblivion is no solution, either. When Pilate washed his hands, by metaphorically making no decision he had in fact made a terminal one.
I sense a need for a return to the time and mind-set of Job. His answer to his detractors is recorded in chapter 13: “Shall not His excellency make you afraid? and His dread fall upon you? Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your bodies to bodies of clay. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.”
It’s time for Christians to boldly speak up, with an expressed fear of the Almighty, and let the chips fall where they may.
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