Where We Are and Where We Need to Go, Part 1

Today America rejoiced. The celebration of my countrymen permeated every avenue of communication with a frigid reality. On this day, January 20, 2009, the man who received a resounding endorsement from Hamas, who was named “the most liberal Senator of 2007” by the National Journal, and who promised to make his first act as President the passing of a radical bill that would wipe out state abortion restrictions (Freedom of Choice Act), was worshiped as he was sworn in as the forty-forth President of these United States. Yes, America celebrated, literally weeping in her ecstasy. I too wept. However, grief ushered forth my tears, not the opium of false hope. I wept and clawed at the anxiety searing my soul.

He is elected; it is done. It cannot be changed. We should be praying for our new president, as we should all our leaders, but this does not mean we turn a blind eye to his priorities and principles. The election of Obama says a lot about this country. It is now clear we live in a country whose people care more about “making history” than about doing what is good and right to build a stronger nation. We live in a country where the color of a man’s skin elevated him into the most powerful position in the world. We live in a country where the black evangelical church used worship services to praise God for their new idol, abandoned Scripture, and failed to embrace the conviction of their own martyr (MLK) that a man should be judged by content and character, not color. We live in a country where God’s people sit at home mourning the direction of this world, yet fail to stand up and fight. We live in a country where laws forbidding cruelty to animals are abundant, while laws forbidding cruelty to unborn babies are constantly opposed. We live in a country where almost 2 million people will brave harsh elements to “make history,” while only 125,000 will show up to fight for life. We live in a country where people mock the outgoing President as he exits with words of praise for his successor, even though he kept them safe for seven years. We live in a country where we claim the color of a man should not be an issue, yet heap effusive praise on a man whose color is at the very heart of the issue. We live in a country where tax breaks are more important to its citizens than the sacredness of human life. We live in a country that condemns voting on a single issue, but that votes the single issue of the economy. We live in a country where more stock is put in financial security than the security for those in a womb. We live in a country where the Church says the government has failed the poor, when it is really the Church’s responsibility and the Church who has failed. We live in an immoral, postmodern country. What are we going to do about it?

Until this point the Christian lawyers, theologians, educators, and the evangelical establishment as a whole have not “been in there blowing the trumpet loud and clear.” On January 22, the March for Life is one tremendous way to help blow the trumpet.

Just think: Today as America raised her voice in celebration there were 4,000 new voices joining the already 50,000,000 silenced voices in the grave.

In the Words of Schaeffer

The following is an excerpt from A Christian Manifesto, which should be on the top of everyone’s reading list.

We must understand that the question of the dignity of human life is not something on the periphery of Judeo-Christian thinking, but almost in the center of it (though not the center because the center is the existence of God Himself). But the dignity of human life is unbreakably linked to the existence of the personal-infinite God. It is because there is a personal-infinite God who has made men and women in His own image that they have a unique dignity of life as human beings. Human life then is filled with dignity, and the state and humanistically oriented law have no right an no authority to take human life arbitrarily in the way that it is being taken.

We must see then that indeed the cry has not been given. We must see that here, on such a central issue as abortion, the true nature of the problem [is] not understood: Christians fail to see that abortion [is] really a symptom of the much larger problem and not just one bit and piece. And beyond this as the material-energy-chance humanistic world view takes over increasingly in our country, the view concerning the intrinsic value of human life will grow less and less, and the concept of compassion for which the country is in some sense known will be further gone.

A girl who has been working with the Somalian refugees has just been in our home and told us their story and shown us their pictures. One million – and especially little children – in agony, pain, and suffering! Can we help but cry? But forget it! In the United States we now kill by painful methods one and a half times that many each year by abortion. In Somalia it is war. But we kill in cold blood. The compassion our country has been known somewhat for is being undermined. And it is not only the babies who are being killed; it is humanness which the humanist world view is beating to death.

The people in the United States have lived under the Judeo-Christian consensus for so long that now we take it for granted. We seem to forget how completely unique what we have had is a result of the gospel. The gospel indeed is, “accept Christ, the Messiah, as Savior and have your guilt removed on the basis of His death.” But the good news includes many resulting blessings. We have forgotten why we have a high view of life, and why we have a positive balance between form and freedom in government, and the fact that we have such tremendous freedoms without these freedoms leading to chaos. Most of all, we have forgotten that none of these is natural in the world. They are unique, based on the fact that the consensus was the biblical consensus. And these things will be even further lost if this other total view, the materialistic view, takes over more thoroughly. We can be certain that what we so carelessly take for granted will be lost.