Every time there is a crisis or tragedy,
there is the usual call for our government to do something. Consider this
Facebook post:
Guns in our country are a little too sacred. There needs to be something
done, hope our leaders can figure it out.
By “our leaders,” he meant “The White
House, The Senate, The House of Representatives.”
My
response:
What have they fixed? This
is not a government problem. What law — there are thousands of them already on
the books — would have stopped any of these murderers? There are millions of
people with guns who have never shot anyone.
I then
offered this response:
How would “our leaders” have
fixed this?: “A suspect is in custody after killing at least four people and
injuring two others apparently targeted at random in a deadly stabbing and
robbery spree across two cities in Orange County Wednesday, authorities said.”
No guns were used.
These things can’t be fixed by civil
governments. There’s a moral crisis akin to the Mind Flayer, also known as
the Shadow Monster, in Stranger Things. You can’t beat this
moral evil with superpowers from a pre-teen girl.
Today’s
operating worldview is pure secularism. There is no room for God and moral
transformationalism. In fact, it’s impossible since we are told that we are the
product of a long-ago evolved chemical soup that reached the heights of
evolutionary ascendency — survival of the fittest — through violence. There is
no this-world moral remedy where matter is all that matters.
We’ve
been made to give up the superstition of a transcendental deity. This doesn’t mean that deities are
passe. There’s always going to be a deity. In our day, it’s the State. We’re
not fully there yet, but we’re close.
What
does this look like in real life? My wife and I watched the German foreign
language film The Life of Others (2006). It’s a depiction of
what life was like in East Germany in 1984, five years before the fall of the
Berlin Wall when the GDR was ruled by a cadre of secret police. Life looked
normal on the outside, but every word and action was under constant scrutiny.
You could be sent to prison or lose your livelihood by defying the State in
word or deed. The State defined what defying meant. The film is worth
watching but with some caution. It’s rated R because of language and a couple
of sexual encounters. Have your FF on your remote ready.
James
White of Alpha and Omega Ministries has a helpful commentary on where we are:
There
is almost more light to be found in what is NOT being said about the recent
shootings than in what IS being said. Listen to the conversation: nothing
about God, our being creatures, God’s will, God’s law, purpose in life, eternal
punishment, the basis of responsibility, the value of human life as
defined by its transcendent value as created by God, nor the
appropriateness of punishment upon evil in this life. A few people slipped and
referred to the shooters as “evil,” but mostly it was “sick” or “ill” or
“disturbed.”
And the
only source of answers? Government of course. Yes, a few folks talked about the
fatherlessness issue (common grace still exists!), but that is about the only
ray of light in an otherwise sickening mass of darkness. It’s just astonishing
how fast this decline has taken place.
The
fact is these young men have grown up in a purposeless world where they have no
value — just walking bags of fizzing chemicals amongst other walking bags of
fizzing chemicals. No future, no judgment, “no hell below us, above us
only sky.” The restraint that once existed upon man’s evil (the common
acknowledgment of God’s existence, the day of judgment, at least some vague
idea of right and wrong) has been removed, purposefully and gleefully, by the
leftist elitists who crank out the curricula for the public indoctrination
centers.
No person with the slightest
functioning knowledge of biblical anthropology should be surprised that not
only do mass shootings take place (rarely, despite the media spin), but that
every weekend hundreds die in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and in other major
cities across the leftist-ruled metropolitan centers producing a far higher
total than any single mass shooting incident (but since those shootings are
directly related to the left’s policies that produce government-dependency,
drug culture, etc., they are ignored by the narrative-controlled media
sources). There is nothing surprising here at all: when a nation revels
in its rebellion and sin, what else should you expect? “The wicked strut about when what is
vile is honored amongst men” (Psalm 12:8).
What are pastors teaching today?
Christian television is mostly pious mush. Enthusiasm is the attraction
of the day. It’s a sugar-rush effect for the moment. Almost nothing is said
about the day-to-day issues that are affecting people’s lives. The Bible is a
big book and it has something to say about everything either directly or indirectly.
Pastors are afraid to address contemporary issues for fear that people might
leave. Many pastors don’t believe it’s spiritual to apply the Bible beyond
individual piety.
This
was not always the case. The Puritan educational system trained church and
civil leaders. The emphasis was to prepare men intellectually so that future
generations would not be left with “an illiterate ministry” since the pulpit
was the means by which the colonies received their news and instruction. The
training that went on in these earliest colonial schools affected the entire
colony. The minister became the spiritual leader as well as the town’s news
reporter, political pundit, and futurist.
Unlike modern mass media, the
sermon stood alone in local New England contexts as the only regular (at least
weekly) medium of public communication. As a channel of information, it
combined religious, educational, and journalistic functions, and supplied all
the key terms necessary to understand existence in this world and the next. As
the only event in public assembly that regularly brought the entire community
together, it also represented the central ritual of social order and control.1
Many of these preachers became
instructors in the early colleges. “Although each of the three earliest
colleges, Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale, was chartered by the established
church in its colony, each also held a direct relationship to the state and
served as the center for training civic as well as clerical leaders for its
region.”2
Since civil government was a major
concern in the colonies, courses in ethics, politics, and history were also
required. Many of the constitutional framers of the eighteenth century were
steeped in basic Bible doctrines. These biblical concepts found their way into
our political system (e.g., decentralized political power, checks and balances,
a republican form of government, abhorrence of an absolute democracy,
jurisdictional separation between church and state, the protection of private
property, the gold standard, keeping of the Lord’s Day, protection of Christian
worship, etc.). These principles are most evident in the state constitutions
and the Articles of Confederation.
How many ministers today could preach
on these and similar topics? I suspect, not many.
1.
Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and
Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1986), 3. [↩]
2.
William C. Ringenberg, The Christian College: A
History of Protestant Higher Education in America (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1984), 42. [↩]