Our nation is afflicted by many maladies: Rampant violence, social strife, political corruption, unethical business practices, immorality at levels no one could have imagined just a couple of generations ago. Almost everyone has an opinion on how to “fix” these problems, often suggesting that more and stricter laws will do the trick.
Laws are necessary, of course. We as individuals and as a society need guardrails to help us recognize what is and isn’t acceptable behavior and practice. However, we have more than enough evidence to show that laws alone have never eliminated wrongdoing.
Consider the operation of motor vehicles: We have many laws against driving under the influence of chemical substances, yet people still drive intoxicated. We have laws against texting while driving, but every day we can see folks behind the wheel, heads lowered as they read or send text messages. Speed limit signs are posted everywhere, but that doesn’t impede motorists who reason those restrictions don’t apply to them.
As so-called experts hop on their own “bully pulpits,” offering supposed solutions to everything that’s wrong in our world, I can’t help but wonder whether we’re all searching for answers and solutions in the wrong places. It’s like going to a doctor with an illness, and the physician prescribing acetaminophen or putting a bandage on where you’re feeling pain but paying no attention to the underlying cause. Treating symptoms does little good when the disease causing the problem is ignored.
At no time in human history have people been perfect; we’re far from it and always will be. As Romans 3:10 declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one.” Isaiah 64:6 expresses it even more strongly: “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” Imagine trying to clean a kitchen table with a dirty cloth a mechanic has been using all day to do oil changes.
And yet, the evil in humankind – the Bible calls it sin – seems to be escalating in horrifying ways. When I was attending public school in the 1950s and early ‘60s, the biggest problems teachers had to deal with were things like running in the hallways, chewing gum, throwing spitballs and occasional playground fights. We never feared someone coming into our school with the intent to kill. Students might have been disrespectful at times, but they didn’t threaten their teachers with bodily harm. Indecent sexual behavior and proliferation of drugs in classrooms were unheard of.
What changed? There’s great risk in attempting to oversimplify very complex societal issues. However, could it be that the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that Bible reading or prayer in public schools was unconstitutional became a catalyst?
During my school days, every day started with reciting the Lord’s Prayer, reading a short passage from the Bible (usually the Psalms), and repeating the Pledge of Allegiance, which included the words, “one nation under God.” These did not convert every student to Christianity, but neither did they leave anyone emotionally or psychologically scarred for life. In effect, school began with a reminder of the God who deserves our attention.
Then came the school prayer decision, which signified more than the simple removal of “religious” practices. In effect, it was a declaration at the highest level of government that our nation did not need God, that we could do quite well without His presence and interference. Decisions have consequences.
Consider some of the societal shifts that have followed: the sexual revolution of the ‘60s; the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision; the breakdown of the traditional family across the USA; the aforementioned explosion of violence in many terrible forms. If we were to “connect the dots,” could there be a correlation to the conclusion that God deserves no place in the public square?
The New Living Translation of Proverbs 29:18 declares, “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild.” The King James Bible’s translation says it more emphatically: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Today, people are perishing everywhere: School shootings; gun violence every day in our inner cities; domestic violence; an epidemic of drug abuse deaths; thousands of traffic fatalities, many attributable to impaired and reckless driving.
This isn’t to suggest that to solve our nation’s ills we need to get “religious.” Not at all. However, a genuine, life-changing relationship with God is the ultimate solution.
The ancient people of Israel had laws upon laws, as we discover in reading books like Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. But those did not keep them from becoming a nation riddled with sin. The underlying issue was the evil in their hearts. God asks in the book of Jeremiah:
“What injustice did your fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?... Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostacies will reprove you; know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God, and the dread of Me is not in you” (Jeremiah 2:5,19).
In the writings of another prophet we read, “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7). Six decades ago, we could say the “wisdom” of our government leaders found it necessary to “sow the wind.” Do grim headlines and one terrible news report after another serve as evidence that we’re “reaping the whirlwind”?
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