Friday, August 17, 2012

Unstoppable momentum toward Sodalon…

…from the “why I am not an optimist” department

Many republicans and conservatives and tea partiers are expressing breathless anticipation that our nation will be turned around by a Romney/Ryan victory in November.

Here is why I believe that is naïve and wishful thinking.

But first, to identify with my point of view, one has to have these qualities:

  • Believe that there is a living God who has established moral standards for his people
  • Believe that our nation was founded on Godly principles and cannot survive when these principles are ignored or violated by a large portion of our population.

Without belief in at least these basics, there is no point of reference for where our nation ends up.  It simply matters very little.

OK.  Here goes:

Momentum has been building for a hundred years.  First, the sources of our nation’s decline have been at work for over a century.  Our increasing prosperity has led to a decline in personal faith, in personal responsibility and productivity, an increase in expectations, and an increased reliance on the government to provide for what we fail to accomplish to meet our expectations.  Obama is correct:  In the world of way too many of us, we cannot and will not accomplish anything without the help of the government.

Academia’s growing hostility to Christianity and conservative ideals.  Next, what started out as Christian universities 100 to 150 years ago have become training grounds for liberals, socialists, communists, and atheists.  Christianity is mocked in just about every school that was founded to promote Christian ideals.  The public universities are just as bad – they cannot be much worse.  The cult of most professors welcome tolerance only of their liberal, anti-Christian ideas, and are intolerant of students who demonstrate a Christian faith.Liber  These amoralist professors are turning out likeminded students, many of whom will carry to torch of faithlessness, big government, socialism, and communism to future generations.

The hateful rejection of morality.  Our culture is showing distinct signs of hating those who advocate moral principles.  They call such advocacy “intolerance”, “bigotry”, or some sort of “-phobia”.  Moral relativity is in vogue and growing.  Tolerance is the new god – tolerate EVERYTHING!  Nothing is worthy of judging as unworthy.

Human nature (greed and self-satisfaction).  The Church has it right.  Call it original sin, or human predisposition to sin.  Or call it greed and avarice or jealousy, or self-absorption, or self-satisfaction, selfishness, or greed, or lust.  Without moral absolutes and some culturally endorsed system of promoting and enforcing those absolutes, these propensities of human nature will take over.  And right now, such culturally endorsed and enforced systems are on a steep decline, with no sign of reversing.

Entitlement tipping point.  Human nature has demanded much from our various governments.  We demand not just roads and schools, and courts, and national defense, and police and fire and water and sewer.  These are just the basics.  Now we demand that state take our children from age 2 and feed them three squares a day.  We demand the unemployed be stripped of their incentive to work by giving them over two years of unemployment insurance.   We issue food stamps without caring whether the recipients work or not or for what purpose they are used.  We provide funding for abortions and birth control to even for our kids.  We spend our tax money on NPR and PBS that promote bigger government along with other progressive causes.  Some estimate that up to 50% of population are now dependent to one degree or another on some sort of unearned dole from the federal government.  This does not include social security benefits that recipients have contributed to for 30 or 40 years of their lives – which, by the way, are in jeopardy because Congress has repeatedly redirected those earned benefits toward the myriad of incentive-destroying government programs.  We are one election away from reaching the electoral “tipping point” where welfare handout-demanding voters will triumph in every election until society turns into a human version of a parasitoid that consumes its host.

The silence of the pulpits.  I have heard many suggests that the pulpits of the churches in America are a hopeless cause – that there needs to be a “bottom up” reassertion of Biblical morality and Christian ideals from parishioners.  Most priests, pastors, and ministers have no interest in the truth and relevance of God’s word.  They are preoccupied with being “nice”, helping their flocks to feel good about themselves, being a “go along to get along” part of our putrefying culture, and increasing attendance for the primary purpose of increasing revenues and payrolls.  The promotion of moral principles is pushed to the back of the bus.  Likewise, theats from the invading and subverting intentions of Islam as described HERE are also ignored so as not to offend anyone.

There is little doubt in my mind that our nation is accelerating in an irreversible direction that will ultimately lead to a place few of us can imagine, anticipate, or survive; a combination of Sodom (personal immorality) and Babylon (government replacing God):  Sodalon.

God has demonstrated time and time again that His people often have to be brought low before they can rise up again.

If I were to pick a song that depicted our hapless direction it is this [90 Miles an Hour Down a Dead End Street]:

His “affair” is our amorality and self-absorption. The results are the same.

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