The Root Cause

Someone recently told me everything was political. I disagreed because I took a walk that evening and saw the sunset over the hills and enjoyed a crisp September evening and there wasn't a thing political about it. Oh, but that's where I was wrong. Because, as I was informed, if we don't tackle climate change, then there won't be a sunset in the future and the fact that I couldn't see it was proof of my privilege. I was blind and need to be given eyes to see, apparently. Everything this fellow thought about was filtered through a political ideology. It's a sad way to live your life. Imagine ordering your life by a political ideology dreamed up by power hungry individuals. I made a trip once and used my GPS to guide me. When it said I arrived, I was in the middle of a Country Road, neither taking me home, nor to the place where I belonged. Either the GPS was busted or the address I was given was off, or maybe user error. But I trusted a lie and ended up in the middle of nowhere. What happens when we believe a lie about a diagnosis to a problem? I knew someone who had terrible wrist pain. They tried medicine, ointments, wrist braces, but nothing worked. Come to find out, the problem wasn't the wrist, but they had elbow tendonitis. The pain in the wrist started with a problem in the elbow. All the treatments to the wrist were never getting to the root cause and the more they tried the worse things got.

We live in a country where a good portion of children are raised by government schools and taught government morals. Parents are more concerned if their boy can shoot foul shots or field a grounder than their souls. Little girls are dressed up like harlots and told that's empowering. No amount of money or good teachers can counterbalance disregarding Exodus 20:12. Children are raised to be selfish and full of themselves. It's never little Johnny's fault. He got bad grades because his teacher didn't like him (Proverbs 23:9). He didn't make the team because the coach had a grudge against him (Proverbs 16:2). He can't get a job because the employers are against him (Proverbs 10:4). Why, the whole world is against him (Proverbs 12:15). What else can he do, but riot (Proverbs 17:19 ). It's the system – it's the nation that's at fault and rigged against him (Proverbs 14:34). It can't be Johnny's fault, he's not to blame (Proverbs 17:15).

We are applying the wrong medicine to the wrong problem and no presidential election will ever fix this. Parents raise their children in a lie, to believe a lie and then wonder why they end up adrift. Don't talk to me about politics and tell me your answers for the ills of this nation if you don't have your kids in church. You don't know enough about the problem to provide an answer. 

“When the youths of a nation grow up with the idea that it unmanly to honor their parents, or to venerate old age, or to respect authority, I say of this nation that, whatever be the richness of her natural products, or the spread of her commerce, or the wealth of her revenue, or the bravery of her citizens, or the learning of her scholars, or the genius of her statesmen, or the grandeur of her history, her foundation stones are already unsettled and heaving and that it only needs the slightest jar, and all that shall remain to tell of her prosperity and liberty and richness and glory will be the magnificent terribleness of her ruins. Believe me, the surest guarantee which the patriot has that the people of the next generation will be a prosperous, virtuous, law-abiding people, consist in the fidelity with which in this generation parents enforce and children obey the commandment “Honor thy father and thy mother." - GD Boardman

Or, if we were wise, we could look at the problem and work backwards. We have a nation of riotous, unfaithful, slothful, unthankful, and unholy citizens. How did we get here? If our society is rotten to the core, should parents work hard to make sure they fit in to and conform society? 

Maybe it's not just the 5th commandment. Maybe it's because Americans have spent the last 40 years of Sunday's glued to TV sets watching men play football instead of worshiping Christ. Maybe, its because we said church was important to our kids, but found every excuse not to go and then are shocked when they don't think it's important either. Maybe we condemned fornication at church and then laughed at it on television, or we condemn those "Hollywood elites" and all their filth and spend so much of our time and money consuming their goods and drinking their poison. 

2 Chronicles 7:14  If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.**

** I know it's popular to scoff at men who quote 2 Chronicles 7:14. Indeed, this was a promise to Israel and not America, but let me ask you this - what would the United States look like, if God's people humbled themselves, prayed, sought his face, and turned from their wicked ways? What would the consequences of such revival be? The evangelical elites would do well to keep their mouth shut when God's people call for self-examination and repentance.