The Spiritual State of the Union
Christians Are Engaging
But there are signs of hope—flowers peeking up though the bleak spiritual landscape. For example, in the United States government, we were told that there were five recognizable evangelical born-again Christians in the House of Representatives in 1990. By 2013, there was estimated to be well over 100 and rising.
The tea party caucus in Congress is even more evangelical than the rest of the House. Seventy-five percent are evangelical or mainline Southern Protestants. More than twice as many express their faith publicly as non-tea-party representatives. Rep. Ted Cruz is a shining example of a tea party evangelical with moral courage.
Movies and television. Hollywood is a vacuous wasteland of immorality. Sunday’s Grammy’s is a prime example.
Virtually all the outspoken stars and starlets of pop culture are liberal. Conservative musicians, actors and directors are either very few or are deep undercover to protect their careers. There’s no need to enumerate all the crazy and wicked things they produce and the garbage they pump into our living rooms.
But there are also bright spots. The conservative Fox News channel consistently outperforms its liberal competition. The recent miniseries The Bible drew 27 million viewers, a record for the History Channel. Viewership of Duck Dynasty, with its overt Christian family values that ends each episode with a prayer, has the highest ratings in cable TV history. Even the “gay-stopo” could not force the patriarch of the Robertson family, Phil Robertson, off the air when he made clear his biblical opposition to homosexuality.
More and more Christians are entering into making independent movies that are getting good responses. ABC News recently reported that Hollywood is turning to the Bible in search of hits. Box office results consistently show the most profitable films are generally those that support Christian values.
Education. We can all agree that public schooling is on the wrong track. The Intelligencer reported this month that international testing has United States students performing poorly. In 2012, students from 65 countries participated in an assessment. The U.S. rankings in science, math and reading have slumped from 2009. The U.S. was 36th in math, 28th in science and 24th in reading. One of the rising stars included Vietnam, which came in at eighth in science.
The brightest spot in American education comes from home schoolers, who are largely Christians. More than 25 years of testing has shown that the average home schooler continues to be more than 30 percentage points higher than their public school counterparts.
Christian private schools, especially those in the classical education movement, are reforming the way we teach children. Other schools will have to reform or die.
Jesus warned that anything not built on His Word will fail. Public education is imploding because it is at war with Christ.
Evolution. For the last two generations, students from kindergarten through graduate school have been constantly inculcated with the atheistic, humanistic, materialistic view of evolution. This is a poisonous fountain from which flows humanism in all its anti-Christian forms—communism; fascism, relativism. But the evidence from science against evolution is mounting.
Darwin’s theory that life started from simple forms and evolved into more complex forms is being refuted almost daily. The more we know, the more we see that even the simplest forms of life are irreducibly complex and filled with millions of bits of complex genetic code. Did you know the human body has approximately 60 billion bits of intricate genetic information, at least until recently? It might be as high as 120 billion bits.
Time magazine recently reported a research team at the University of Washington has discovered a second code hidden within our DNA written on top of the other. The first code describes how proteins are made; the second language instructs the cell on how genes are to be controlled. Do you think further research will find there to be more or less complexity?
Stephen Hawking, one of the famous “new atheists,” concludes, “The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications.”
It’s a good thing the religion of evolution has been protected by the courts. If it had to stand on its own merit, it collapses like a house of cards. It has done incalculable harm, but its days are numbered as a serious scientific theory.
Encroaching Islam. Fourteen hundred years ago, Muhammed declared jihad on the world. Now we are watching his followers wage it against us, and thousands of Americans have been killed in the process.
Our politically correct elite will not even admit that we are fighting Islamic jihad. Both political parties take Saudi petrol dollars and extend an olive branch to the Muslim Brotherhood who have established mosques in all our cities. They boldly tell us jihad is their desire and dying for Allah is their dream. Our problem is we think we can reason with them.
If we are nice to them, they will be nice to us? Right. Infidel, you are a fool. The only reason they use terrorism and have not waged open violent jihad is because they can’t. At the rate they are growing, they will.
How can we know? Fourteen hundred years of history tells us they always have.
Fortunately, there are Christian soldiers who are wise to Islam and their tactics, like our good brother Alan West. We have defeated Islam in the past; should the Lord tarry, we will have to do it again. Christians, you should have lots of sons, buy them guns, and teach them the biblical doctrines of self-defense and just war along with the manly art of war.
The Christian’s Hope
We could consider many other particular problems in the United States, for they are legion. But in the end, they all boil down to just one: the ancient problem of sin and unbelief.
The good news is God has provided the solution for both! We have the only real solution: the gospel of Jesus Christ and submission to His Word.
There are three patriotic things we can need to do to end the secularization of America:
First, pray! Pray for God to send a Third Great Awakening to America that will transform America back to a God-fearing nation and end abortion.
Second, act. This year, make it your goal to lead someone to Jesus Christ. They will be saved from their sin and hell, and by the Holy Spirit’s work, they will grow in grace and righteousness and support a biblical worldview.
Third, make it your goal to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ and to think God’s thoughts after Him as you take every thought captive and obedient to Christ. Then join in advancing the crown rights of Jesus Christ and His dominion as the King of kings and Lord of lords.
Proverbs 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (NKJV).
Our hope is the patience and long-suffering of God. If God would spare wicked Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men, pray God spares America for the sake of millions that have not bowed their knee to the Baals of this world. In the meantime, the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground for justice. May God have mercy on America.
The Rev. Gary Cass is president and CEO of DefendChristians.org.
