I suggested in the last issue that in America, confusion and shame has come upon Christianity with a misguided notion of a special permanent relationship between God and America. Over the last thirty years, we have seen professed “evangelical Christian” presidents preside over ever lower legal and moral standards. It also appears that moral and ethical failure, sin, and deception appear to ensnare “Christian” politicians at about the same rate as their non-Christian counterparts. While we can be sure that God has not changed, we cannot claim the same for the so-called Christian west. In my growing-up years, a divorced/remarried man would have had little chance of winning the presidency. Yet by 1980, such a man was the favored candidate of the “moral” majority, swept into office by the “conservative right.” Many have already lost sight of the permanence of marriage as the foundation of the culture. When this is gone, every other value is negotiable.

With due respect to men who acknowledged many great Biblical principles when they founded the nation, I question just what it is the evangelicals mean when they talk about the need of “taking back the country.” Do they want the return of Sunday “blue laws” that close stores and businesses for the Lord’s Day? Is it temperance laws and the laws against public profanity and indecent exposure (immodest dress)? Is it the old days when divorce meant an actual court battle? Is it to
roll back Roe vs. Wade? Or perhaps we could break new ground with legislation banning TV time for schoolchildren?

If this is what we want, we don’t need the government to do it. Christians can take Sunday to remind ourselves that God made the world and everything in it, that He is holy, and that ultimately His Word prevails. We are also perfectly free not to go shopping, dine out, or even to visit the newly opened Creation Museum on Sunday. And since Christians will answer to God for profanity and violence, we can shut down the device(s) that endlessly spue this awful stuff on us and our children (thus agreeing with God concerning the things He hates).

It gets even better from here. We who are married can refuse to become fools. How? By keeping the vows made at the first marriage altar. We can give our children the security of knowing that Father and Mother will never divorce. “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:9). Pastors will perform a vital role by refusing to perform marriages for those with a former partner still living. Who do we think we are, to open the gates that Jesus Himself firmly closed? “If, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress” (Romans 7:3).

We also can move to protect church youth groups. “But fornication, . . . let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints ” (Ephesians 5:3). This clearly calls for a controlled atmosphere of modesty and decency, with a code of conduct conducive to keeping youthful lusts in check. We cannot reveal the body in ways that should be concealed. (If I’m reaching concerned mothers in the readership, there are online sources that specialize in modest clothing.) We cannot break down for entertainment or pleasure the sacredness of sexuality. We need to rebuild healthy reserve between young men and young women. Many have taken vows of chastity, only to break them later. However sincere, young people who run among wild horses are bound to get trampled.

I share these things because the verdict is already in. These are recent statistics as given by a psychologist:

• The average young person watches 4½ hours of TV daily. There is no way parental teaching can compete against the moral filth and violence portrayed as normal.
• American teens are the most violent in the world. In the U.S., 50% of all felonies are committed by males 15-21 years of age.
• 80% of high school seniors have been drunk.
• 50% of seniors have tried drugs.
• The number of sexually active 15-year-old girls has doubled since 1990.
• 10% of 15- to 19-year-old girls become pregnant every year. U.S. teen pregnancies and abortions are among the highest in the world.

The present moral climate results in two things: Young girls learn that they are throwaway commodities of pleasure with neither the value nor the holding power for the lifetime commitment of a responsible man. Young men fall into the self-centered pursuit of instant gratification at the expense of real manhood, marriage, and fatherhood (in that order). Young men who are good husband material are becoming an endangered species.

Is the young generation happy with this order of things? Consider this: The suicide rate has doubled since 1970. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among teens (after car crashes). It is seriously considered by 1/3 of teens.

Our young people have been duped. According to a recent poll reported by the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the biggest factors of happiness for people aged 13-24 are good relationships (family and friends), and faith. And on the negative side: booze, drugs, and sex.

Young men were once taught trades in preparation for courtship and marriage. The girls learned their own set of responsibilities. They could cook a meal, keep the house, and plant a garden. Both sexes knew that life and love and marriage and children were a challenge. They took it on, were equal to the task, and were fulfilled in doing it. The church culture supported this system. Today the culture undermines this system.

I think it is us elders (even church elders), who are responsible for the confusion. Many chose to make temporary the marriage God made permanent. God did it for good reasons. Those reasons are Tony and Tammy and Marsha and Kristina and Chad and Craig and Will and James and Jered. Yes, these are real young people with their real names who have fallen through the cracks. These are just a few of many I have known personally. Their real numbers run in the millions. They are the reason I am passionate about this subject. The church may not be directly responsible for many of these. But the breakup of marriage and family surely is. And to whom should people be able to look, if not to those who claim to know God?

It is not the government we need to take back. It begins with my commitment, my integrity, and my fidelity. How else will we answer to God for the loss of a generation?

We end up paying double if we despise the law of God. We pay a fearsome price as the very foundation of the culture comes apart.

Unless we turn, we pay yet again when we face judgment before an angry God. “Come, and let us return unto the lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up” (Hosea 6:1).

-by Lester Troyer