BEYOND BELIEF! This was the bold headline of our newspaper the day after 9/11. Shortly thereafter, from Ground Zero, we were assured that the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers can never destroy the foundation of America. But what is the foundation of America?
Revelation 18:11; 17: “No man buyeth their merchandise any more . . . for in one hour so great riches is come to nought.” On and since September 29, 2008, on Wall Street, many trillions of dollars in paper wealth have come to nought. Thus the Bible prediction of sudden catastrophic meltdown is understandable today in ways that the Biblical writer (two thousand years before Wall Street), could only have known by inspiration from God. From lofty heights of pride, wealth, glory, and power into chaos and destruction—the bell could be tolling for us.
We have luxurious structures of steel, granite, and glass, housing our greatest corporations and financial institutions. Yet today, the grandeur of these structures belies the policy changes within that now threaten our economic base of survival. This was not an act of terrorism, but the inevitable result of implementing policies laced with fraud and greed.
Behind every natural tragedy, there is a cause. There is a reason when a train jumps the tracks or an airplane falls from the sky.
The same applies to the internal workings of politics, energy policy, and in the housing and financial markets. Sustainable institutions are governed by tried and true principles in management and operating policies. These stay the course of ethics and integrity, making minor corrections as needed, just as a capable pilot maintains his flight patterns— with minor adjustments of a few degrees. Any flight pattern of desperate or contradictory maneuvers is clear evidence of a flight in peril.
So it is with a feverish housing market, the unprecedented rise and fall in oil prices, government stimulus checks, the unsustainable salaries of top executives and sports figures, and the enormous wealth gained in speculation; these all attest to an economy out of control, too long driven by love of money. When money is the saviour, money will not save people.
We have gone quite mad. We throw borrowed money after bad money in the financial markets. We run ahead of science, pursuing energy policy and global warming concerns with ill-conceived notions in blind fervency. We embrace false balance sheets and rigged computer models. We despise fossil fuels, but embrace alternatives that are not developed, or that pose a greater threat to the environment. We plunder thousands of acres of the best cropland for fuel, putting both food price and food supply on the line (not good for poor and hungry people around the globe). We do a belated repentance of dependence on foreign oil. Yet we have known since the embargo of 1973 that the advantage clearly goes to those who pump more oil, not to those who cut production, as we have done.
We do well to be self-critical in relation to consumerism. But by what logic can we expect our nation to turn back the global thermostat even while the major populations of the world industrialize— unencumbered by clean air standards? We are poised to radically cut carbon emissions (regardless of cost or negative consequences), on the assumption that human-caused contributions of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming. This ignores the possibility that warmer trends may increase carbon dioxide levels, rather than the other way around. It also overlooks the cyclical differences in solar trends (cosmic rays and sunspot activity or lack thereof) as the controlling factor in pronounced warming and cooling trends that go back over known history.
Indeed some scientists now predict a decade of cooling based on this point.
THE SOLUTION IS NOT WHERE WE MAY THINK!
If we would survive at all, or survive as anything better than a crime-ridden, poverty-stricken nation of warring factions, we must face the underlying cause: We have departed from the Biblical world-view undergirded with the knowledge of the God who created all things. The faulty replacement is a materialistic mental map that puts the economy above all things, places science at risk, and that governs, makes decisions, and does business as if God no longer existed.
But we will answer for our deeds in the terrifying presence of Almighty God. This God created the universe and its natural laws with no help from any other gods or religions. In Him we live and move and have our being. His commandments qualify the laws and constraints by which men may be justly governed. Without this law of God, there is no possible consensus on laws for men. That is why moral constraints crumble, while sparking hotter debates and wider divisions across our culture.
The new dogma turns traitor on the old. This is America in reverse, as criminal acts take on legal protection. In this frozen denial-of-God atmosphere, conscience is darkened and cultural stability is doomed. As a result, we cannot even frame the right questions anymore. People who ask sobering questions based on absolute morality are shunted into the despised corner of the bigots—the politically incorrect.
The liberal left, with its jealous monopoly on public education, put God on furlough a long time ago. Equating a boy with a dog, as an evolutionary accident, has indeed made its impact in the markets and financial structures. The brightest boy in class makes the easy decision to cheat his way through exams. He grows into manhood and becomes a powerful figure in a large corporation or on Wall Street.
He is a law unto himself. He lives his life in a vortex of greed. The effect on others, and even the corporate health of his company, doesn’t register on his radar. The result on the economy is mind-boggling. It is beyond the pale of financial gurus and governments solutions. Yet, at the same time, it really is simple. It is the foundational problem of fraud and greed that doesn’t get fixed.
In our society, the boys meet the girls. They make the easy decision that bypasses marriage. This behavior is reinforced through reproductive clinics and abortion mills (like no-down-payment mortgages for unqualified buyers). It has changed the social landscape. It has procured monstrous programs of welfare as a replacement of absentee fathers and breadwinners. The children are deprived from birth of half their parentage. But these substitute programs only assure that the sure foundation of marriage doesn’t get rebuilt.
The Christian right differs from the liberal left, but mostly in rhetoric. They believe that the USA somehow has favored-nation status with God. Thus many of them seriously believe that the nation can be taken back for God by political means. I will be bold enough to say it will not happen in a thousand years. Why? The kingdom of God advances only through the power of the Gospel in the cross of Jesus Christ for the redemption of sinners. This turns lives and morals toward righteousness. Favored status belongs only to those who do the will of the Father in Heaven (Matthew 7:21). Yet the Christian right often embraces an empty faith that brings reproach into their personal lives and chosen political fields. They, too, get caught in spin and corruption and scandal. They divorce as readily, and their children are about as worldly and immoral as the liberal left. What standing will they have in the day when Jesus Christ shall judge according to the Gospel?
Had our society not forsaken the underlying dynamic of righteousness, we wouldn’t be asking questions about what constitutes marriage. We would be taking our orders of fidelity and commitment to marriage from the God who made us male and female, endowed us ith reproductive capacity, and entrusted to us the sobering responsibility of procreation. No alternatives are needed to live well, responsibly, and securely. Small wonder God has posted the great Biblical sign over marriage: NO TAMPERING.
The hallmark of civilized culture (as in our national history) is uncompromising regard for human life. We have traded this prized gift of life from God for the degrading and bizarre notion of a “woman’s right to choose.” But what standing has murder under state sanction with the High Court of God?
Thus, we present this as a valid apologetic against the corrupting cultural shift that has taken place. It has happened inside Bible-defying denominations, colleges, the courts and legislatures, and in economic and corporate institutions. That is why we face the vengeance of the God of neglected Christian teachings.
Finally, this is neither threat, nor phobia, nor coercive measure against anyone. It is a claim that all valid ideas have their basis in the wisdom of God as revealed in Scripture, and that the average person can know and embrace the truth of God’s Word, the Bible. Welcome to the voluntary response of a renewed conscience toward the truth, and the invitation to choose life. God’s invitation stands: “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).
–by Lester Troyer