Social Commentary

If we compare the culture of America today with that of years past – say prior to the 1960s – it becomes apparent that the culture has declined significantly in the spiritual, moral, ethical, and educational spheres of our national life. As a nation, we may not have forgotten God, although many people have, but we have in many ways denied His sovereignty over all aspects of the nation’s life, culture, and society. Our culture is marked with complacency – complacency in matters of faith, morals, ethics, sanctity of life, marriage, and family.

Secularism, which in essence is idolatry, is the modern religion and truth, and even the Truth of Holy Scripture is not accepted as such if it does not conform to the ideological precepts and agenda of secularism. Those who stand firm in the Truth of Holy Scripture, calling the nation back to its Christian roots, are castigated, insulted, and called bigots, homophobes, and radical fundamentalists by the secular-progressives and their followers. The situation described by the prophet Isaiah in his day has much application for today: “For our offenses are many in your sight, and our sins testify against us. Our offenses are ever with us, and we acknowledge our iniquities – rebellion and treachery against the Lord, turning our backs on our God, fomenting oppression and revolt, uttering lies our hearts have conceived…So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey” (Isaiah 59: 12,13,14,15).

Egoism, narcissism, materialism, self-indulgence, and self-satisfaction have today to an alarming degree taken priority over patriotism, humanitarianism, morality, self-control, and self-sacrifice. This does not describe contemporary society as a whole, since I believe the great majority of citizens still hold fast to the beliefs, traditions, and Judeo-Christian principles that made our nation the greatest on earth. Unfortunately however, it does describe a large segment of the society that has fallen victim to a godless, hedonistic, and materialistic secular-progressive ideology. As someone once said: “Too often, error makes more noise than truth.”

This attitude and ideology is not new. John Adams wrote of the subtlety and danger of such an ideology in his diary as follows: “We see every day that our imaginations are so strong and our reason so weak, the charms of wealth and power are so enchanting, and the belief of future punishments so faint that men find ways to persuade themselves to believe any absurdity, to submit to any prostitution, rather than forego their wishes and desires. Their reason becomes at last an eloquent advocate on the side of their passions, and they bring themselves to believe that black is white, that vice is virtue, that folly is wisdom, and eternity a moment…I dread the consequences.” Our nation is suffering the consequences of the foolishness of the past five decades or more which has culminated in the absurdity, folly, and intellectual idiocy of relativism and political correctness.

Our Founding Fathers never hesitated to invoke the name of God or seek His blessings, forgiveness, and protection in their public statements. Many of our early judges, and even more recent ones, did not hesitate to invoke Scripture in their judgments and opinions. Yet today, the majority of our politicians and judges either neglect mentioning God, or they simply give Him a passing reference, and rarely do they use Scripture to give moral justification to government policies or court decisions. Is it because they think it will violate the separation of church and state? If so, they should know better. The phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution. It was contained in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and its context was to protect the church from the state, not the state from the church. It is grossly misinterpreted today and used in ways Jefferson could not have foreseen and which he would vehemently object to. Perhaps our leaders rarely invoke the name of God because they are afraid of offending this or that special interest group or political faction they are dependent on for support. In any case, by not doing so, they fail in an important aspect of leadership demonstrated by their predecessors, including the Founders – that being to remind the citizens of this great nation of their Christian roots and heritage.

Another feature of our culture today is a breakdown of the family structure of crisis proportions, resulting in an unprecedented number of children who have not received the protection, encouragement, loving counsel, and yes, loving discipline of a devoted father and mother, children who have not had the Godly parental role models which Scripture, Christ Himself, the Apostles, our Founding Fathers and so many of their successors, as well as numerous research studies, the wisdom of the ages, and plain old common sense testify to as necessary and vital to the health and welfare of the individual, the family, the community, the society, and the nation.

The United States Supreme Court has emphasized in many opinions in the past the importance of the family as the bedrock of society. And they made it clear that they were referring to the traditional family. To cite just one case, the Supreme Court, in the 1885 case of Murphy v. Ramsey, stated in its opinion: “Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth…than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony, the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.” I wonder what the justices of that Supreme Court, as well as many other Supreme Courts in the past, would say about today’s no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, and the efforts to sanction same-sex marriage.

Secular liberalism and its political correctness has led to a serious decline of parental authority, and with it, to the weakening of that stable and noble foundation of civilization – the family. It replaces a value system based on religion, rationality, reason, and the moral law with a value system based on emotion, feelings, and secular ideology. George Washington’s statement bears repeating: “Without religion, morality has no roots.” Without the deep roots of a moral code established by a transcendent authority (God), society becomes like a rudderless ship drifting this way and that way. The result is that, over time, wise discernment withers, confusion reigns, and culture is infected with a creeping degradation and deterioration, exactly what we are experiencing today.

Our Constitution was written by men who used the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ as the spiritual and moral foundation for that Constitution and the nation itself. Liberalism today, far different from the genuine liberalism of the past, has weakened and continues to weaken and chip away at that foundation, resulting in a weakening of the critical moral fabric of the nation. It is time, past time, for our leaders and all of us to confront and combat this danger, honor our Christian heritage, and work to reverse the cultural decline and decay before it is too late. If this happens, we can expect God to abundantly bless our nation in the future just as He has in the past.

393 Responses to “Social Commentary”

Leave a Reply