Can the Foundations of America be Restored? Only through a Revival of the Young

In our desperate search for what went wrong with western civilization, digging through layer after layer, social structures breaking down, norms shifting, confusion abounding, unrest spreading, and suicide flourishing, we search and long and cry out, "What has gone wrong!?"

We think to ourselves, well, it must be education. Or crime? Maybe it's medication or mental health? Could it be a philosophical issue, the effects of post-modernism and moral relativism? Perhaps it's the news media, always spreading negativity and fear and misinformation? Then again it could be racism, sexism, or lack of compassion, or inequality? 

But at the bottom base, the core truth is something we don't like to hear: We really do need God in our society. Without God, the moral law giver, objective truth, moral obligations and duties, prohibitions that exist within the person himself, not simply on paper in society, all of it collapses. 

Christianity is the underpinning of western civilization, and as we jettison it for entertainment, nihilism, pleasure, and post-modernism, we unsurprisingly see a society tipping into chaos, if you tell a man or woman that their life has no greater meaning, they are simply star dust, and whatever they desire to do they may do, without consequences, without any thought of moral accountability or divine justice after death, well, then they do drugs, have sex, and commit suicide. And society collapses. But most people don't want to face that fact. 

Maybe because we dislike the idea of God. But if we can get past that, we might just find the bottom foundation of what went wrong, and right it, before time runs out.

The question is then: Can the foundation be restored? Theoretically, if it could be restored, then every layer above the foundation would eventually slide back into place. 

I've wrestled with this over the last few years, trying to understand what that could look like. Because it really goes down to how people see the world. It goes down to worldview. 

We're increasingly divided as a society between an essential philosophy of life, one side tends to believe in God, the other increasingly believes in science and progress. 

One side is focused on deconstructing norms and reshaping society. The other is set on past/historic models of societal structures. So it becomes increasingly difficult to find common ground, when our underlying perspectives on the universe are so different. But I've got to believe that it won't necessarily come through debating perspectives, though free and open debate is certainly a key asset for society. 

I think it will most likely come through introducing people to Jesus Christ at an angle and from a perspective they haven't seen Him from before.

We've set our battle lines between the ruling philosophies, which I understand why, because one side thinks the other is trying to redefine the entire society based around the progress agenda of deconstructing. And that scares them. Conversely the other side thinks that the religious side is wanting to drag us back in time to a place where bigotry and racism and oppressive gender roles were more normative. And the power belonged to only one select group. And that scares them. So we fight back and forth in the cultural conflicts to either redefine society or hold to past traditions.

And I wrestle and wonder, can the foundation be restored? Only in Jesus Christ. And in Jesus Christ explained in a way that makes sense to a new generation. That may be our only hope.

Then our only hope is revival, because in a real revival the foundations are restored. Society returns to God, and in so doing, the fundamental foundation of society, the family, the individual is restored to foundational connection with their Creator. Restoring the foundation then has to occur on an individual basis, and then inculcated into the structures of society, the elite institutions, but it would have to start with people, young people in particular, a revolutionary revival at academic institutions. That perhaps then could bring about a restoration to the foundational structures that western civilization was built upon, namely God, in the Christian sense, the God of the Bible. 

There are still Soldiers in the Army of God: Encouragement for God's Weary Soldiers

Soldiers gather on the outskirts of a city. There are about two hundred of them gathered there, though other groups of faithful fighters are gathered in other places, some out in the woods encamped around fires, others in facilities deep within the cities. 

These soldiers are beat up, bruised, weapons still hot from combat. They've been fighting a long time. They've been fighting for years. War takes it's toll on soldiers. They are tired, exhausted, and low in morale. 

These are soldiers of the spiritual war for the souls of humanity taking place across the western world today. And I'm one of them. Gathered with my band of heroes, out in the sticks fighting a long, taxing war. 

We aren't winning, in fact our nation is ablaze with destruction. But still we fight on. We don't give up. But some of us, myself included, have become very tired. We've sorrowful from the battle. Our hands are shaking from the trauma of it. We want rest. We want the battle to end. We want things to be different.

These wants are not bad things. But the war will continue. We all have to understand that, and wrestle with that, and then keep going. We have to refocus in this battle. We have to find a new footing for this battle. Because our current attitude of bitterness, of grief, of lostness, of brokenness is not a solid footing to stand on.

It's not uncommon for a soldier to feel this way. We're gathered around fires, thuds in the distance, storm clouds brewing in the mountains. 

I was weary from the battle, bruised, and bitter, many troops who had battled with me had departed, though others joined with me, I felt exhausted, cold, and empty, and I longed for peace. But I realized that God was saying to me, "I'm with you in the battle." But God was also saying to me, you haven't kept your mind and heart on me. I had begun to disregard prayer. I had begun to lose some of my faith. I had allowed my heart to get a bit hard on the edges. I said to myself, what's the use?

I had taken big tag boards and written names, of people in the area where I served and prayed for them night and day for years, and I looked at the boards and realized most of them, if not nearly all of them, were not with the Lord, very little had changed in their lives. And I was discouraged. I was losing heart.

Ten years of battle I thought to myself and what has been gained? Not nearly what I'd hoped. Not nearly what I'd dreamed. But there had been victories, many victories in fact. But also defeats. Defeats are part of war. It's all part of what happens on Earth. Particularly in America many people don't want God. They feel like they have everything they need. They don't want to listen. That's hard on us, fighting day and night for them to turn to Christ. It's devastating to see them reject Jesus. However, when we get down, and depressed, and sullen, we start to focus on the negative, and not the positive. So we need a change of mind, from the Holy Spirit, and I'm praying in Jesus Christ name, that this will happen now for you. 

First, we need to adjust our entire mindset on this battlefield. We need to focus on Jesus Christ our glorious, victorious savior full of perfect love and grace and truth, and find refreshment for our souls. That's the first thing we've got to do, get our eyes off our problems, off our hearts, and onto the perfect Jesus Christ, the true King of the Earth, the Lord of all, and rejoice in his current total victory. We may see defeats, but our victory is so very secure. Others may reject it, we have not. And so our victory is secure. Other have their sacred choice to make. We can't help it if they make the wrong one, that's their sacred choice.  But we must keep our eyes on Jesus. I don't mean that as simple encouragement. I mean, as a matter of survival itself, you must, must, must keep your eyes on Jesus. Your salvation depends on it. So do it. He is victorious. Keep your eyes on that complete victor King Jesus, or you will lose heart and give up.

Psalm 123:1 "A Song of Ascents. To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!"

Hebrews 12:2 "Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

Two, understand, believe, and know that God's angelic armies fight alongside of us. We may look around and see only a tattered army of men and women. But, we are surrounded on all sides by soldiers who have been fighting much longer than us. They are elite soldiers, with powerful weapons, and constant direct access to our chief General the Lord Jesus Christ. These are angel armies, warring angels that stand beside us in combat and fight beside us in our desperate battles against the forces of darkness in the high places. They are with us. God commands them. They give all glory to Him.

Psalm 34:7 "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them."

Three, hope is the secret weapon of the soldier on the battlefield. Hope is the weapon of our mind to defeat any discouraging thought. Use this powerful weapon, by training your mind to counter any pessimistic thought with the truth of the scriptures, which is solid and real. 

When you think to yourself "I can't go on" stop yourself in your mind and say, "that isn't true. The sword says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. The sword says in Christ I'm more than a conqueror through Him who loves us. God has not given me a spirit of timidity but of love and power and sober mind. Counter the negative thoughts immediately in your mind with the truth of God's word. God's word is not pessimistic. It acknowledges difficulty, it acknowledges grief and pain, but it also shows there is a Living Hope to cling to in those times. 

Isaiah 40:31 "But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."

Romans 15:4 "For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."

Four, find refreshment in the place of intimate prayer with God. In any time of prayer in your life, you must get alone with God and begin to praise Him, thank Him, rejoice in Him, delight in Him, and make your requests known to Him. But you need to go beyond there, and press deeper into prayer, and as you pray, longer and longer, you'll notice at some point in the prayer you'll breakthrough and begin to sense God's presence around you. Then delight in God in those moments, time will begin to pass more quickly, because you won't want to leave that sacred place. You're with God. This time when you're in God's presence is healing, and you'll find refreshment. But it takes diligently seeking His Face. At those times you'll also receive divine revelation, and guidance, so you may know His will and follow it.

Psalm 34:17-20 "When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken."

Five, like Esther, you were made for this moment in history. Consider this wonderful reality of space and time and history. Think about it! You were made for this moment in history to fight this battle. As Galadriel said to Frodo, "If you don't find a way, no one will." You were crafted to be able to handle this fight in Christ and win the victory. 

See it from this perspective: This is a war that will always be remembered, and you have the incredible honor of fighting on the frontlines in this war on the side of the Light. Few can say the same. Many end up unwittingly serving the forces of evil. Consider it a great honor to serve your Master in this desperate battle. He sees your victories, and is close to you in your defeats. 

"If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” -Esther 4:14

Six, the life of the Christian is much suffering. I don't mean to be blunt, but that is a big part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And the secret to learning endurance in suffering is something very odd and paradoxical that the apostle Paul talked about, he said, "I rejoice in my sufferings." He wasn't just making a cute statement to tell us how clever he was. He was talking about something very practical. When you suffer for Jesus, turn it around on the enemy and say I'm glad for this, I rejoice in this, because this is keeping me from apostasy, this is keeping me close to Jesus, this is training me toward godliness. Respond to suffering with rejoicing. I know it sounds crazy, it's actually biblical. 

2 Timothy 2:3 "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus."

Romans 5:3-5 "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

Seventh, remember that Jesus Christ will return to give relief and victory to his dedicated soldiers. Jesus Christ will come again. I think it will be much sooner than we realize. I honestly expect it to happen within my lifetime. That's how close I think we are. So we should see that the return of Jesus Christ is very real and very close, and rejoice with hope. The return of Jesus Christ means the total victory of the cross will go from a faithful hope to a present reality, that transforms us into His likeness at last! Then, no more sin nature, no more law of death, no more suffering, it ends then when Jesus returns. 

Revelation 19:11-15 "Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war. His eyes were like flames of fire, and on his head were many crowns. A name was written on him that no one understood except himself. He wore a robe dipped in blood, and his title was the Word of God. The armies of heaven, dressed in the finest of pure white linen, followed him on white horses. From his mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations."

Until that day brothers and sisters, keep the faith and never give up hope! Yes, you're tired right now, you're exhausted from the battle, you're tired of losing battle after battle in the west. But take heart. Take a deep breath, and apply these principles to your heart and life. For me friends, I had to ask for someone to pray for me, I was at a theatre play of Pilgrim in Grand Rapids, and one of the actors afterward prayed for me, that God would soften and heal and renew my heart. I had allowed my heart to become somewhat callous and hardened. If that's you on this battlefield and you're demoralized, then cry out to God, ask your church family to pray over you, and God will hear from heaven and renew your heart and mind to softness and hope and a new outlook. Take some time, rest and pray, and then get back onto the frontlines of the salvation war, because we aren't done yet! 

Until then, veritas Domini manet in aeternum.

1st John 4:4 But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.

Sources: 

1. Topical Bible Soldiers https://www.openbible.info/topics/soldiers
2. How To Respond To The Shaking Of All Things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZANf57k9y0M
   
3. Soldiers https://www.boldexistence.com.au/soldiers/
4. Treasuring the Fear of the Lord https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFD33anh5xU
5. 2 Timothy 2 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Timothy+2&version=NIRV
   
6. Nasa 2023 Prophetic Word https://www.rignation.org/ 

What is the truth about Christian Nationalism?

As the United States in the 1950s began to codify a uniquely Judaeo-Christian interdenominational pluralistic religious mindset through various expressions of prayer and public valuation of religious content and structure, increasingly a counter-push began to form, and had its day in the 1960s, as secular forces began to rally around sexual liberation, drug culture, consciousness expansion, and anti-government violence (Soper & Fetzer, 2018). So, the struggle began, around the question of what America was in respect to religious expression and government activity. Was the United States a country that ought to build a wall of separation from religion, was the United States a nation that would mandate hostility toward religion? Or was the United States instead a fundamentally Christian nation? Did Christianity deserve a pre-eminence in public life and a pre-eminence in government policy and activity? Or could there be a happy balance, could there be an American civil-religious nationalism, in which government did not enforce one particular religion, but also did not outlaw or separate religion from public life? Was there a way religion could be valued by government without being mandated by government? The United States was fundamentally formed on civil religious nationalism, the idea of no particular religion as the state religion, while the state also allowed for free expression of religion, and a general unity around religiousness in general.

Yet today in the United States we see two hotly contested viewpoints of the future of the nation, pushing in two very different directions. Increasingly we see Christians gathering around the republican party to promote a pro-Christian agenda, and increasingly we see secular progressive non-religious forces gathering around the democratic party, promoting a pro-secular agenda. This polarization tends to push in the directions of a pseudo-religious nationalism, often referred to as “Christian nationalism.” This polarization also tends to push in the direction of secular nationalism, a perspective in which religion is minimized, shunned, or even persecuted in a sovereign nation. Think of something similar to the French revolution, a radically secular revolution that was hostile toward religion.

What are the differences then, between civil religious nationalism and pseudo-religious nationalism? And what are the differences between civil religious nationalism and secular nationalism? It is a difficult path to walk for the United States, expressing itself as a successful civil religious nation. The tendency is for nations to swing to either a one religion dominated structure or a secular state driven structure. In a one religion structure, such as in Poland or Greece today, one religion is dominate and affirmed by government, with assigned rituals, prayers, religious festivals, and laws inspired by the religion (Soper & Fetzer, 2018, p. 12). It’s interesting that both Greece and Poland tend to be fairly stable expressions of a one religion dominated government system (Soper & Fetzer, 2018, p. 12). Other nations where one religion is dominate in government could include nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Brunei, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Sudan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Qatar, where the dominate religion is Islam, and the governments of such nations actively enforce tenants of sharia law (Mathur, 2021).

In the United States the conversation has been around the concept of Christian nationalism, or what one might call a Christian supremacy, or as I’ve stated it, pseudo-religious nationalism. In this ideology we see that conservative politics takes center stage, as if lugging some form of Christianity along with it but perverting it along the way to make it subservient to political goals. Paul D. Miller (2021) defines Christian nationalism this way, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a “Christian nation”—not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future. Scholars like Samuel Huntington have made a similar argument: that America is defined by its “Anglo-Protestant” past and that we will lose our identity and our freedom if we do not preserve our cultural inheritance. Christian nationalists do not reject the First Amendment and do not advocate for theocracy, but they do believe that Christianity should enjoy a privileged position in the public square. The term “Christian nationalism,” is relatively new, and its advocates generally do not use it of themselves, but it accurately describes American nationalists who believe American identity is inextricable from Christianity” (Miller, 2021). 

The definitions given for Christian nationalism seem so vague and nebulous that they are virtually indistinguishable from dutiful Christian activity in the sphere of politics, which is something Christians ought to do as they preserve society by being “salt and light” to the societies in which they reside. But we see such definitions as those given by Miller (2021) to center on the fact that pseudo-religious nationalism is defined by violence, extremism, and one-religion supremacy in government and culture.

The best response to this danger of pseudo-religious nationalism, is to make sure that we always maintain God’s great gift of free will. We must always make sure we preserve the freedom of self determination for each person. Every single human ever born has the sacred right to either embrace God or reject God. Government and society must never enforce a decision on the people of any nation.

Ye we know that there will one day be a world government controlled by one, the Lord and creator of the universe Jesus Christ. But that time is not yet. And any attempt by Christians to create a theocracy on the Earth tends to end in power abuse, corruption, and violence. So, we must always guard against pseudo-religious nationalism, in which political operators and extremists attempt to exert undue control over a nation.

Yet I honestly find myself deeply conflicted with this concept of Christian nationalism. Because many of the tenants of Christian nationalism, according to the official website, seem fundamentally sound. Some of these tenants include the idea of affirming, as the Supreme Court did in 1892, that the United States is a Christian nation. To affirm this fact as a historical truth seems like a net positive. To value life in the womb, reasonable borders around a nation, to encourage Christian expression in the public square, to affirm male and female as God’s design, to affirm the value of the nuclear family, and to affirm self-defense and capitalism as successful models for society all seem to me to be good things for Christians to do (About Christian Nationalism, 2017). Of course, we must always guard against extreme expressions of these perspectives that would encourage violence or violent overthrow of government as a solution to these issues. So, the challenge for us as Christians today is to continue to affirm civil religious nationalism, which is expressed in religious liberty, while guarding against a one religion nationalism that might lead back toward the type of religious persecution that our ancestors fled to America to escape from in Europe.

Secular nationalism by contrast is quite different, one might think of a nation like France where the “separation of church and state” is taken to an extreme. For example, when The Salvation Army does work in most sovereign nations it does not need to divorce itself from it’s religious Christian context to receive government funds to provide services to those in need. However, in France for example, the Salvation Army had to split services between Christian and secular, to meet government requirements for separation of church and state. Another example of a secular nation would be China, in which the government of the nation is hostile toward religion and in particular persecutes Christians and Uyghur Muslims (Abbas, 2022). 

There is a broad spectrum of various expressions of secular nationalism, but in general there is some level of religion-state separation (Soper & Fetzer, 2018, p. 17). According to Soper & Fetzer (2018), “This model can manifest itself in a benign separation that preserves religious liberty but keeps the state at arm’s length from religion, or as an assertive separation where the state seeks to diminish or to control the political role and power of key religious groups” (p. 17). 

India and Uruguay are examples of different types of secular nationalism as well (Soper & Fetzer, 2018, p. 17). One interesting consideration of secular nationalism is that one could also say that it is not really irreligious, because in these models the state often takes on a role of being religiously reverenced, as the solution to problems, and the guide for virtue (Soper & Fetzer, 2018, p. 17). Often to depart from religion in once sense simply means it return to it in another (Soper & Fetzer 2018, p. 16).

So, in contrast with pseudo-religious nationalism in one sense and secular nationalism in another, is the current successful model of the United States which is civil-religious nationalism. In the model of civil religious nationalism, we see a government which does not mandate a particular religion, but instead tolerates and affirms various different religions as legitimate. In the United States at one time this civil religious model was seen in a protestant dominate society in which various denominations tolerated and supported one another, and over time that protestant religious pluralism also affirmed and tolerated Catholicism and Judaism, and even today tolerates certain non-extreme forms of the Islamic religion. In this model government is not controlled by a particular religion or religions but affirms and encourages religious practice in general. Various things like a National Day of Prayer, or encouragements to pray by government leaders, religious holidays, and “In God We Trust” written on money all express an encouragement of a general religiousness in society, without naming one particular religion. In this model government laws are sometimes influenced or indirectly influenced by the various expressions of religious virtue in the society. In general, in a civil religious nation, all religions are seen as valid, all persons are seen as equal under the law, religious expression is encouraged in the public square, not silenced, but the government avoids mandating any particular religion as required for practice in public life.

In the United States today, due to increasing political polarization, news media polarization, social media activity on the rise, and access to many new forms of information, we see certain present-day threats to civil-religious nationalism. I’d like to discuss four main threats along the political spectrum that are of concern for the preservation of civil-religious nationalism, they are: Violent secular activists, religious extremism, attacks on religious liberty, and the cultural climate of the USA.

First of all, we have to discuss the dual threats of left- and right-wing extremism. Both of these movements reared their ugly heads in the 2020. Racial riots occurred centered around the death of George Floyd and police violence as an issue of concern. In 2021 the Capital riot centered around the hotly contested 2020 presidential election, which showed some irregularities and statistical anomalies. 

Let us compare and contrast these events. At the capital riot 140 police officers were assaulted or injured, at the summer riots 2,037 police officers were assaulted or injured (RealClearInvestigations, 2021). The estimated damage from the capital riot was approximately $2.7 million (RealClearInvestigations, 2021). The estimated damage from the Floyd riots was somewhere between $1-2 billion dollars (RealClearInvestigations, 2021). Rioters at the capital identified with groups such as the proud boys, three percenters, and oath keepers. At the race riots the groups involved included antifa, BLM, and other radical groups. Both riots involved attacks on state and federal government facilities. Given these statistics, we ought to consider both of these anti-government, violent activities as threats to civil-religious nationalism. One group aimed to invade the capital building to attempt to stop a vote on legitimating the 2020 presidential election, the other sought to seek racial retribution by tearing down statues, taking control of parts of cities, and tearing down government facilities as well as police structures. Both of these groups pose a threat to civil religious nationalism because their ideologies have become so extreme, they resort to violence.

But I would like to make this important point, given the data, we ought to consider at this moment in history left wing groups as a greater danger to civil religious nationalism than anything being done on the right. Secular left-wing groups pose a clear and present danger through rampant violence which greatly exceeds the limited affects of the capital riot. It is also interesting to note that the capital riot was universally condemned by both sides along the political aisle, while the summer racial riots were encouraged and supported by many politicians, and blanketly supported by dozens of corporations which flooded funds and showered support on radical activist groups. Even now, the summer riots in media coverage are carefully swept under the rug, while in early 2022 two years after the capital riot, Jan 6th hearings were held that were blanket covered in prime time by key networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and Fox News (Stelter, 2022). So, we see that secular activists like antifa, BLM, and other secular activist groups find generous support from public, business, social, and political spheres, and thus must be viewed as the prime and central threat to civil religious nationalism. When considering Christian nationalism, statistics seem to indicate that most Americans and even most Evangelical Americans do not hold Christian nationalist viewpoints (Jaradat, 2021). According to polls run by Pew Research Center (2021) to gage the impact of Christian Nationalism, “One of the biggest surprises in the survey came from the data on white evangelical Christians. Although this faith group is commonly associated with Christian nationalism and did show the highest levels of support for church-state integration, Pew found most white evangelicals believe the government should be secular. Just one-third of members of this group want officials to “stop enforcing separation of church and state” (34%) or declare the U.S. to be a Christian nation (35%).” But we should still consider insurrectionist forces in the country as a real threat, as well as the various expressions of the alt-right which were involved in the Charlotte, North Carolina riot, as well as conspiracy theorist groups like Q-Anon. These threats, predominantly from the secular left, but also from the conservative right find increasingly large megaphones for discussion and gathering on social media and internet websites, and other forms of online community.

Next, we consider attacks levied against religious liberty in contemporary society. According to The Christian Post, citing a 2017 report from The First Liberty Institute, attacks on religious liberty in the United States rose by 133% from 2012 to 2017 (Smith, 2017). Threats to religious liberty include events like mass shooting attacks on Christian churches (Denison, 2017), LGBTQ activists harassing Christian bakery owners (Justice, 2021) the case of a Houston mayor demanding pastors in the area turn over sermons for inspection (Starnes, 2015), the Obama administration’s legal actions against the Little Sisters of the Poor (Frohnen, 2015), and hundreds of other examples. Recently, the Equality Act has been proposed, but not successfully passed in the US Senate and House. This bill, many believe, would cause further damage to religious liberty in the United States, subordinating religious freedom to the demands of LGBTQ ideology (LoCoco, 2021). There seems to be a precipitous increase in religious liberty attacks in the United States, and we should keep a careful eye on these attacks, though they rarely appear in popular television news or secular newspapers, they are becoming more and more frequent in the United States. These attacks on religious liberty are a clear and present threat, well documented by various organizations, that show a danger of secular nationalism pushing religion and Christianity out of the public square gradually over time. And it’s important to note that Christianity remains the number one most persecuted religion in the world today (Bandow, 2022). These threats to religious freedom are not only local to the USA, but also present across the world.

Lastly, we consider the cultural climate of the United States. One of the chief threats to civil religious nationalism is the cultural climate of the United States at this point in history. We see an increasingly polarized culture in which we have two sides vying for power. And within that nexus of reality, we see disturbing trends like riots and violence. But we can’t ignore the secondary threats that exist as well, though not violent, they show trends toward that direction. We should consider well the concerns of cancel culture on social media, political correctness in public discourse, increasingly vicious news media hits on members of the opposing party/worldview, and the woke critical race theory-based agenda being promoted in Hollywood, the corporate world, public education, and social media.

The phenomenon of cancel culture has been brought to the forefront in the mob mentality of doxing ideological opponents on social media platforms like Twitter and Tik-Tok. It has happened hundreds of times, with the tweet history of various celebrities and politicians across the spectrum being scrutinized. Tweets are found that seem to proport racism or prejudice or illiberal viewpoints, and the person is harassed and mobbed, until they make a public apology (Mooney & Sherman, 2020). This sort of mob mentality that seeks to ruin the lives of those who disagree with them is certainly a danger to civil religious nationalism, should it seek to target religions or were religions to begin to practice cancelling those they disagree with.

Political correctness goes along with cancel culture in that a sort of central list of concepts and ideas is considered OK to talk about or have opinions on, but other topics and opinions are not acceptable, and people who bring up such opinions are viciously verbally assaulted and driven from public life. Often these attacks come in the news media from either side, one host on CNN lambasting one person for saying one thing, and another host on Fox News lambasting another person for saying something else. It goes back and forth in news media. This, like cancel culture, is a danger for the stability of civil religious nationalism where free thought, free ideas, and open practice of religion are central. Thankfully, we are seeing some limits imposed to these verbal lashings in the news media. For example, Nick Sandmann successfully sued The Washington Post for libel when they mocked Nick’s appearance in news coverage during a political protest. Nicole Eramo successfully sued Rolling Stone for libel over their coverage of her actions in regard to a sexual assault case. Also, Beef Products Inc successfully sued ABC News over their “Pink Slime” story about their products (Lucas, 2019).

Then we have also seen a slew of attacks upon the civil religious structure of the USA by a group of commentators and academics commonly considered “woke” claiming the USA is a fundamentally racist country, and the only solution to these ills is to tear down the structures of the nation and start over. These views are espoused by cultural commentators like Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Austin Channing Brown among others. We see these viewpoints increasingly making their way through culture and society, through the secular university system, and even into K-12 public education and the corporate business world. So the question must be asked: Can civil religious nationalism survive the new woke narrative about the country? Can civil religious nationalism survive concepts like the idea that the United States is fundamentally racist? Can civil religious nationalism survive the idea that all white people are racist? Can a civil religious nationalism survive the divisions inherent in telling all other races that they are being systematically oppressed by white people? These are the questions we may need to wrestle with in coming decades.

To conclude let us reflect on the best ways to preserve civil religious nationalism in the future. In the past civil religious nationalism survived and prospered in the United States because there was a fundamental unity found in a general religiousness of the population. In the present times, we see the various threats we have discussed rearing their ugly heads toward what little unity remains in the country. For civil religious nationalism to survive the future, secularists and the religious community will have to come together once again to affirm some level of shared vision for the future of the nation. If one side believes that the United States must be fundamentally transformed into something new, and the other side believes the United States must be fundamentally restored to its original traditional values, there can be little middle ground in those positions. But, with prayer, reconciliation, love, encouragement, hope, and finding a shared vision for the future, perhaps a new course can be plotted, of religious pluralism, robust civil liberties, responsible government, and a new cultural mindset of a shared vision of American religious and secular prosperity. Given the current climate, the American people will be hard pressed to find a way forward that merges religious liberty and secular progress into a common set of values, and a future vision congruous with both sides.


References

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Bandow, D. (2022, March 7). Christianity Is the World’s Most Persecuted Religion, Confirms New Report. Cato.org. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.cato.org/commentary/christianity-worlds-most-persecuted-religion-confirms-new-report

Berger, J. M. (2018). Extremism. The MIT Press.

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Frohnen, B. (2015, September 18). Obama vs. Little Sisters of the poor. Crisis Magazine. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/obama-vs-little-sisters-of-the-poor

Jaradat, M. (2021, October 29). What the latest data tells us about Christian nationalism. Deseret News. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.deseret.com/faith/2021/10/28/22750589/what-the-latest-data-tells-us-about-christian-nationalism-pew-research-center-andrew-whitehead

Justice, T. (2021, March 23). LGBT activists haul Jack Phillips into Court again over Trans cake. The Federalist. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/23/lgbt-activists-haul-jack-phillips-into-court-again-this-time-over-transgender-and-satan-cakes/

LoCoco, A. (2021, April 16). The Equality Act is a threat to religious liberty. Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://will-law.org/the-equality-act-is-a-threat-to-religious-liberty/

Lucas, F. (2019, February 22). 3 recent libel suit outcomes. The Daily Signal. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/21/3-recent-libel-suit-outcomes/

Mathur, A. (2021, August 20). What is the Sharia law and why the Taliban enforcing it has everyone worried. India Today. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/what-is-the-sharia-law-and-why-taliban-version-worries-1843196-2021-08-20#:~:text=Only%20a%20few%20countries%20at,be%20carried%20out%20in%20public.

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How to Overcome the Matrix: What is the Matrix? How do we Escape the Matrix?

Do you want to know what it is? The matrix? It seems like you do. Something brought you here. Something within you that longs for something more. 

So what exactly is the matrix? The matrix is the grid of thoughts, ideas, beliefs, customs, philosophies, and unspoken codes that manipulate us into following a road that leads nowhere.

The goal of the system around us is to successfully lead us to our own enslavement.  

It functions from birth to condition us toward a certain secular modernist mindset. It functions in the entertainment realm. It functions in the public school system. It functions in the norms shared and developed by our friends and neighbors. It guides us k-12 toward a certain set of beliefs about the world around us. The process continues into college and/or the business world. It solidifies in the drive to attain wealth, status, power, possessions, and influence in society.  

Yet we can all sense that something fundamental is missing in our lives. There is a fundamental emptiness in each of us that can't quite be contained.  It can't quite be filled by any experience or substance. It can be temporarily drowned out. But it is never quite satisfied. It is a gaping maw within each of us that can't be filled. It is a bottomless pit that is never filled.

This bottomless pit urges many, many of us to ask the question: "What is the matrix?" 

It urges us after the busy day of work and play to ponder and walk into empty places trying to understand what the emptiness within us means. 

This is the beginning of the journey in which we escape the matrix. I call it the process of the night train. We begin to walk into empty places, leaving behind the busy world, at least mentally, and we begin to sonder into another world.  We walk into emptiness. Why? I'm not exactly sure. Maybe because emptiness is quiet. And beautiful. 

We can spend weeks, months, and even years in the emptiness, pondering, yearning, and dreaming.  But eventually something magnificent happens.  In the night, a train appears, and we board the train, and it takes us away.

Of course I don't mean a literal train appears, and takes us away. Instead, it is a metaphorical train. This is the moment when in the emptiness, the truth finds us. And the truth will find us.  Of course there are other ways to come to know the truth and escape the matrix.  Many, many routes lead out of the matrix.  But for me, I went by way of the night train.  I'm sure some of you have done so as well.

The night train is what some might call prevenient grace. It's the guiding force that leads us toward the truth.  And in a very real way it "takes us." We would otherwise wander in emptiness forever and never come to any knowledge of the truth. Without the train we would be lost.  And we don't really deserve the train either.

And boarding the train I don't think we even know what it is. But we can feel what it is.  It's something very sacred.  So we board the train and we realize we have a ticket in our pocket with great surprise. We've been invited. The darkness and emptiness was the train station. But if you never wander, you'll never find the train.  But as I said, there are other routes out of the matrix. This is just the one I experienced.

The train takes us away into the night, chugging along through dark valleys, and mysterious meadows, through mountains and across rivers, through the night. Eventually the train brings us to our destination. An underground cavern.  And we climb into the underground cavern and in the cavern we find the truth.

The truth is in some ways like a pair of glasses we put on. Like that movie "They Live" we begin to understand what the matrix is. We see that entertainment conditions us. We see the propaganda of the public school system. We see the extremism of the university system. We see the corruption of the political and business realms. We begin to see the spiritual battle that is being waged all around us. 

You've been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that the material universe is all that exists. This is false. There is a spiritual realm that exists all around us, and in this spiritual realm is where the battle for our souls is fought. 

That is the real, fundamental truth of reality: You have a choice to make.  The choice is hidden from you by the system, as much as possible. The goal of the system is to build a false reality around you that is so complete and seamless that you make the wrong choice without even realizing there is another option.

You have a choice to make. That is the key function of this universe. Your choice, and what preceeds from your choice. And it's repeated each day, until you die. Choice, choice, choice... free will. And how you will use it as a free agent.

You are being graded based on your decisions. Which means the fundamental reality of the universe is moral and ethical in nature.

The choice is wide-ranging, expressing itself in infinite ways. But each choice can be broken down to two choices. There are two basic choices we can make. Choice 1, rebellion. This is the state the system around you guides you toward. Through ignorance, through deception, an argument, philosophy, through ideology, through the appeal of pleasure, whatever the scheme is, it's all designed to deceive or manipulate you into embracing rebellion. Rebellion against God. Rebellion against the moral nature of the universe. Rebellion to that which is actual. Rebellion through redefining reality to suite our own desires.

The second choice, the more difficult choice is loving the truth. Faithful trust in the moral imperative of the universe. Embracing reality as it truly is. Obedience to the truth. Faith in the truth. Allowing the intelligent designer of the universe to reshape you into a new being, declared morally perfect, guided toward moral perfection, remade to be what humanity was originally meant to be, perfect, beautiful, creative agents in a flawless, sublime universe.

We have our lives to make the choice. And the default mode of each human is toward rebellion. That is the natural reaction of our minds, our emotions, and all that we are. We prefer rebellion, in various forms. It even seems heroic to us. It seems right to us. 

But we only have our lives to make the choice. Eventually time runs out. And the choice we make in this life, whether it's rebellion or the truth, is stamped for eternity, beyond the veil of this life. 

If rebellion is chosen, hell is the result. Destruction is the result. Quarantine, away from paradise, for eternity. Why? I don't know. That's above my pay grade. It's real though. 100% real. 

If the truth is chosen, paradise is the result. Rapture is the result. Joy is the result. Perfection is the result.  And this paradise seems to be without end, just as much as the other option is without end. Apparently each human soul is fundamentally eternal in nature, it can't simply be discarded or destroyed at the completion of life on this present Earth. 

That is the choice before every human right now at this moment in history. And we all make the choice every day. We either choose truth or we choose lies. We either slide closer to God, or slide further from God.  Each day it repeats. And we make our choices. 

Even as a Christian myself, I must admit that many days, more than I'd like, I don't live out what I believe to the fullest extent that I could. Given how much is at stake, why would I do that?

The Christian lives in a tension. A tension between the new nature in Christ and the old fallen nature that still clings to the soul until death do us part. If we choose God, the old nature will eventually be removed completely and the new self can get on with a whole new adventure in the next life.  What that adventure looks like exactly is once again beyond my pay grade, though I wouldn't even hazard the slightest guess, I can only imagine it will be an incredible adventure beyond what we could comprehend now. If we choose death, then the fallen nature becomes our permanent reality. The new man fades away, and we embrace the fallenness for all time in a place called "hell" "hades" "outer darkness" and so on.  Some Christians will no doubt through continual sin or apostasy (recanting trust in Christ) will attend to hell for all time.  All non-believers will attend to hell. Those of other religions will also attend to hell. It's quite shocking when we fully realize the stakes that exist right now.  I'm shocked by it.  But there it is.  

The tension is why we often don't fully live out who we are in Christ.  That's one side of it.  Our fallen nature. The other side of it is the matrix.  Even as Christians, we can be continue to be deceived by the matrix. Particularly in our present day babylon, the United States, we are constantly bombarded with propaganda straight from the pit of hell. 

It is increasingly complete, from birth to death, it is everywhere, more so than ever in history I imagine.  Television, internet, news media slant, social media censorship, commercials, billboards, Hollywood, celebrity culture, public education, universities, late night talk shows, government agencies, businesses, consumerism, luxury, entertainment, pleasure, on and on the list goes.  It's a stifling all encompassing Vanity fair that calls us day and night to compromise what we believe in Christ.  It's a political agenda that urges us toward darkness. It's a constant cry to live for self-pleasure instead of for God. It's a constant drum beat of lies, half-truths, deceptions, social pressures, agendas, and scientisms that all attempt to drive away from faith in Christ.  We all know so many Christians that live compromised lives, and seem to have more in common with popular culture and talk show rhetoric than they do with the Bible and Jesus Christ. 

The matrix has always existed to a certain extent in every culture and society in the world. It has existed since the moment of the fall when the kingdom of darkness gained control of the world we live on. It's always been here to some extent.  Abram faced it outside of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses faced it when he led the people out of slavery in Egypt. Joshua faced it in his battles to take the promised land. Solomon faced it in his marriage to many foreign wives.  Daniel faced it in exile in Babylon. The Jews faced it under the oppression of the Romans. Perpetua faced it when her father insisted she give up the faith and evade the arena. The early church faced it time and again in the persecutions. Martin Luther faced it in his battle against the sale of indulgences. John Wesley faced it as he fought to rally the dead churches of his day to revival. William Booth faced it in his campaigns against the evils of darkest England.  Mother Teresa faced it in Calcutta, gathering the abandoned children to safety. Richard Wurmbrand faced it in Romania when the communists took over the church and imprisoned him. Today Christianity is the number one most persecuted religion in the world.  But no one seems to care too much.  It doesn't fit the news media's narrative of colonial imperialist oppression by Christians.  

It’s important to remember that we reside in enemy territory. There is a great tension between us and the world.

The battle we face in the west is not yet at the stage of dying for Christ. It is a battle of social pressure. It's a battle of political ideologies. It's a battle of Christians being lost to deception and worldliness. The battle is within ourselves though.  Someday soon it will be against forces outside ourselves that want us dead. Today it's a battle within.  The battle between rebellion and truth. I fight it everyday. We're all our own worst enemy. He who can conquer himself is greater than he who can conquer a city. Remember that. 

How do we escape the matrix? The escape is found in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. No one wants to hear that, but it's the truth.  It was the last option I wanted. But here we are. And I've accepted the truth.  We are our own worst enemy.  I needed Jesus to come within and change me from the inside. Because the truth is I can't do much of anything at all without Christ inside me guiding me on the right path.  That is where the night train leads. It leads to Jesus. No one said we would like where the train takes us. But I've found it's quite more beautiful than I had thought. 

I realized I had propagandized not only about everything else in the world, but about Jesus and Christianity as well. I had been plastered with false ideas about these things, no doubt to keep me away from exploring them. Such a clever enemy we face. The lies of the matrix try to paper over Christianity with lies, darkness, evil, and sin. It tries to drag Jesus down into the muck, at least from our perspective, so we see it as just another dead end. But when we toss out the old false ideas projected by the matrix, what we realize, what I came to realize was, Jesus is really the truth.  When everything else fades away, Jesus is really real. 

That is the only escape from the matrix. That's how we board the hovership and begin our battle against the darkness, and begin winning minds to Christ.  But there is a second escape to be made. We can be brainwashed as Christians, turned into cancer cells to the body of Christ, I see this all the time, progressive Christians, Christians living in sin, lukewarm Christians, they turn and attack the body, instead of fighting to win souls and defeat the darkness, they turn and attack their own, they are brainwashed cancer cell Christians, who actually fight against their own brethren in Christ, because they've been successfully propagandized by the world. The second escape is effected by the Holy Spirit. Christ has delivered us from the matrix's total control of our internal world.  The Holy Spirit delivers us from the external stimuli that would threaten to shipwreck our walk with Christ. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth about the world to us, and helps us to have our final victory over the matrix. The final victory over the matrix is when we overcome the world, when we overcome the darkness, and when we overcome ourselves.  It is the victory talked about in Revelation, the final victory over ourselves, evil, and the world.  That is the final victory over the matrix, when we look like Neo did, and we see the code, instead of the lies. We see the code itself, how people are propagandized, how people are deceived, the schemes of the forces of Satan as they manipulate the masses to do their bidding. That is the moment when we become deadly, dangerous Christians who pose a serious threat to the kingdom of darkness. That is what you must become. You must become a follower of Jesus yes, but you must overcome the world, the darkness, and yourself. Only then will you have victory over the matrix and escape the matrix forever. 

To go more in depth along these lines consider taking a look at the book: Escaping the Matrix by Larson & Boyd 

The Army of Light in Retreat: What went Wrong? Where do we go from Here?

I sense timidity, exhaustion. Why do you look so tired? Why do you look so stretched? You appear as one who lacks hope. 

Have you no hope? Have you lost it somewhere? Has hope run off and hid itself? Is it running from you, just out of reach?  

Many walk in a trance, rigid, furled brows, obsequious, dystopian, resigned. But resigned to what? To defeat? To the end?  

The end has not yet come.  We are not at the end of the story yet.  We may near the end of the 6th day, but it's not yet.  You do not have permission to resign yourself to the bunker yet faithful one.

The battle has been fierce.  The battle has raged the last 20 years and more.  The battle has raged, and many feel as though we've lost.  

 We've retreated to the broom trees, to take cover, and dig deep entrenchments, and huddle in the fox holes, mouths parched, eyes half-closed, tormented by the evil of our time.  It is a great evil.

We've retreated, despite our many prayers and staunch fights. We gather at our bastions, behind friendly lines, huddled around camp fires, quiet, bandages wrapped, eyes fixed on the flames.  The word around the fires is one of quiet reflection: "What went wrong? This was our moment. We were surging forward. We had all the momentum. How could this have happened?"

The truth is, we did lose a battle.  But it wasn't the battle out there.  That battle always belonged to the Creator. The battle that we lost was the battle within ourselves.

In The Legend (1985) Jack finds himself covered in snow, in a season of death, when they had only just been in a beautiful garden.  He met a mysterious oracle, around the camp fire and asked him, "Why is it like this now? Why is it winter?"  

We are asking ourselves the same questions.  Why is it like this now?  Why is there this great increase in wickedness? Did it have to be this way?  Was it always meant to play out like this?

No, no it wasn't.  

The truth is, that we failed.  But not in the way that we think.  We didn't fail because our defenses weren't strong enough.  We didn't fail because our fighting spirit wasn't vigorous enough. We didn't fail because our prayers weren't taut enough. I'm quite assured of that.  All this was bathed in much prayer and hard work.  

No.  We failed for one simple reason: Within ourselves, in our hearts, we were double-minded.  We failed to expunge the sin from ourselves, in the Holy Spirit. We failed to deal with the perversity in our own camp. We ignored our own sin, while fighting it outside ourselves.  And I am the chief double-minded one.  For at the conclusion of 2020 and the march into 2021, I had a great fall, a great disaster, which I walked into. I dove into sin. I played as if God wouldn't mind.

I failed.  We failed.  At the critical moment, we found ourselves double-minded.  And so we've found ourselves now smitten by the Lord.  Not abandoned. But it seems now an increase of wickedness must take place.  And it didn't have to be that way. No it didn't.  But at the critical moment, we were tripped up by temptation, sin, death, and the demonic.  It was not that we failed to fight the war around ourselves well enough.  We did fight and pray fiercely. But we hadn't embraced the cleansing of the Spirit, to make us mature and full in Christ.

Now we find ourselves in the fallenness of those choices.  But just as soon as this new turn took place, God's plan continued at just the same pace, to accomplish his work within us.  

You may have found yourself in recent weeks and months to be going through all sorts of fiery trials. I have found myself in the most intense time of testing, ever, in my life, in the past few months.  The Lord has not given up on us.  He has not walked away from us.  He has doubled down, to purify us and cleanse us of all sin, all double-mindedness, all lukewarmness in these critical hours, so that we are fully prepared for the final end times harvest...  The fourth great awakening... The billion soul harvest. 

So my word for you today is this: Embrace the cleansing process. Yes, it is very painful.  Doubly so right now.  We were double-minded at the critical juncture.  Now we face a rising tide of evil. It is a mirror's reflection for us.  It is a reminder of what we allowed in ourselves.  Yet God is walking us through the fire.  I've felt the burning of it, as the furnace burns away the dross, purifying the gold. I've felt it in my soul lately, a burning. This is our time of training, building, and cleansing.  These years will prepare us for the great call we have at the end: The final great awakening. Then comes the calling up of the church, and the rise of the anti-Christ.  

We weren't ready.  Now, God is preparing us through trials and struggles. And we will endure a great growth of evil during this time.  But we will also see a rising tide of Spirit-filled movements.  Spirit fires and dragon fires, bursting back and forth in the streets and the cities of the world.  Darkness growing, and light growing, back and forth, back and forth, it comes.  Then we will be ready. Then we will be the church, the ones prepared, refined through the fire, tested and purified, then ready, completely ready, to lead a great awakening so fabulous none could've imagined it's glory.  All for Jesus Christ, authored by Him, for Him, through Him, through us, His body on the Earth. Glory to God alone. Burn friends, burn in the process of purification, so you will burn twice as brightly in the last valley of decision for our world.  

Prejudice and Racism: Examining our Hearts & Taking Action in the World

I remember in my life before I knew Christ, I was quite a troublemaker. And I used alcohol and drugs heavily. My drug of choice, the one I used most frequently was a very powerful drug that made it very obvious from your appearance, your face, your eyes, and your voice, that you were high. I dressed in all black in those days, in fact I still dress in all black, but I would also dye my hair blue black. And you notice, when your high, and dressed the way you are, hair dyed, people look at you differently. People judge you. I recall it quite clearly. People would give you these glares, and looks of revilement, even hatred. And in fact, one of the key ways that I came to Christ, was that I met a Priest that looked at me without judgment, indeed in his eyes I saw the love of Christ.

That is the closest in my life that I’ve come to experiencing prejudice or bigotry. But people looked at me that way because there was something wrong with me, I was messed up on drugs, and they could tell. But imagine people looking at you that way, but there isn’t anything wrong with you. You aren’t high on drugs, you aren’t dressed in a strange way, you are an average person, the only difference being is that you have a different skin color than others.

That is the issue we discuss today, that of racism.

Today we’re starting a new series, in which we’re going to look at important topics and issues within the Christian faith. We’re going to consider a lot of different topics, that we want to be well armed with truth as to consider. We’ll address topics like the sabbath, spiritual gifts, human sexuality, human trafficking, baptism, and so on. But today we address the important topic of racism.

We see this topic of race and racism playing out on a national level in various ways, but today I want to bring this issue home and consider how we as individuals and members of a faith community ought to deal with this issue of racism.

Our scripture today, Revelation 7:9-17 said, “After this I looked, and there was an enormous crowd—no one could count all the people! They were from every race, tribe, nation, and language, and they stood in front of the throne and of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. 10 They called out in a loud voice: “Salvation comes from our God, who sits on the throne, and from the Lamb!” 11 All the angels stood around the throne, the elders, and the four living creatures. Then they threw themselves face downward in front of the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying, “Amen! Praise, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, and might belong to our God forever and ever! Amen!”
-Revelation 7:9-17 GNT

Here in revelation we see the end of the story, God’s picture of how humanity ought to look, all peoples, languages, and cultures standing before God, looking to God, united and ready to step into eternal life, paradise, in the new city of God.

This is the goal, the dream, the hope of for the future, that we as Christians around the world, from every country, and speaking every language ought to stand united before God, a new family, to inhabit the new city, the New Jerusalem, our eternal home. So keep this picture in your mind, this glorious image, as our goal and our future community.

But I’d like to draw your attention now from the last book of the Bible, to the very first book of the Bible, Genesis.

We saw that God created man and woman in his own image, but man fell away from God. Murder and division entered the world, when Cain murdered his brother Abel. And things got worse and worse, until the entire world was destroyed in the great flood.

One family, that of Noah, his wife, and his sons, and their families survived aboard the ark. Which makes all of us, all people, all of nations, descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Isn’t that interesting?

But once again after the flood, Noah’s descendants began to cause trouble once again. It says in Genesis 11:1-9: “11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.-Genesis 11:1-9

It’s a fascinating saga. You see humanity united, but unfortunately united in the worst way possible, to try to build a tower to heaven, and make themselves gods. So we see sin at work once again. So God scatters humanity, into tribes, based around various new languages, and so these humans spread across the whole Earth, settling on the various continents, Africa, Europe, Asia, North America and South America. And depending on where each people traveled to, depending on the climate, and the conditions, and exposure to sunlight, various differing features and skin tones began to develop over the centuries.

And as various societies flourished and grew and developed technologies and more advanced forms of travel, various people groups began intermingling more and more, as faster and easier forms of travel developed. And thus came about this issue of racism, this sinful, foolish idea, that based on someone’s features, or the amount of melanin in their skin, that somehow this means someone is better or worse than another.

Fast forward to the present, and we still see racism play itself out in societies around the world, in various forms and in various places. It plays itself out right here in Owosso Michigan. It plays itself out in our city. So I’d like to consider three questions today. First question, How does God view this issue of racism? Second question, How do we ourselves view this issue of racism? And thirdly, what can we do to be change agents, building toward a better society?

First, how does God view racism? Several scriptures come to mind. 1 John 2:9 ESV says, “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.”

Any hatred God sees as sinful, so sinful in fact that scripture indicates this sort of hatred proves we are not walking in the light of Christ.

James 2:9 ESV But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.”

Showing partiality, that is favoring one person, or one type of person, or one race over another, is sinful. We must show no partiality, but instead treat people equally.

Many times when Jesus Christ our savior walked on the Earth, he would speak in terms of parables. And how often Jesus would use examples of people like Samaritans, a group of people the Jews hated, to prove a point about love, or truth or justice. And how often Jesus went and ate with people who were considered outcasts, like tax collectors, or prostitutes, or foreigners. Jesus was willing to love those who society deemed to be unimportant or evil.

And if you recall, when Paul was on his missionary journeys recorded in the book of Acts, there was a question, should the Gentiles also be offered salvation along with the Jews? And of course the Lord made it clear, salvation is for anyone, Jew, or Gentile, slave or free, anyone, anywhere.

So we see that God is indeed holy. God is merciful and full of love. This evil concept of racism, that treats people as inferior because of the way they look, must indeed be a sin that God hates greatly. Racism is pure evil, to the Lord.

Second question, How do we view racism? I try to think about it myself. What must it feel like to experience racism? I don’t really know, I’ve never experienced racism. But I asked some of my friends about racism, and what it feels like, and what they’ve experienced. And it’s quite telling. Imagine yourself, as a child, realizing that people look at you differently, sometimes. You even realize certain people glare at you, and they give off this attitude like they don’t accept you. Imagine being stopped more often by the police, because of how you look. Imagine having others reject you, and not want to spend time with you. What would that feel like? What would it feel like to realize, they don’t like me because of how I look. I’m not accepted because of who I am. What a horrible feeling that must be. It must feel like… I’m not welcome. I’m not accepted. I’m not part of. What a horrible feeling. I imagine it would fill me with anger.

But then again, thinking to long ago, what must it have been like, when people of care drove through Owosso Michigan, to see signs that said, “whites only within city limits after dark.” Owosso used to be a sundown town, with signs in and out of town declaring that whites only are allowed. What a disturbing thing. Glad that those signs were torn down.

If you’re a parent, driving with your kids, and you see a sign like that, how do you explain that to your children? I imagine that would fill me with rage. But then I thought to myself, maybe it would fill me with something else… determination. Desire, for justice. A dream… a dream that someday things could be different, someday if I fight, and others fight with me, things could be different. And there could be justice, and truth, instead of prejudice.

Now one might claim, well those are things of the past, they don’t exist anymore. Is that really true? Because just this last Christmas, two people of color, who bell rang for us here at Owosso Citadel, wonderful people, they were at a bar in town, and someone walked over to the jukebox and played a racist song. Certain remarks were made.

So maybe racism isn’t gone. Maybe we need to stand up, and make sure that we are challenging racism, when we see it. But before we consider what others may be doing, I want to encourage each of you to examine your own heart. It’s easy to say, oh look at what that other person is doing. But what about me? What about you?

Stop and look at yourself. Look at your own heart. And I’m going to look at mine. What’s going on in here? Many of us were raised in families where racist remarks were made. Many of us grew up hearing those kinds of slurs. Well, today you’re a Christian.

And let me ask you this, as you examine your heart right now, Do you need to repent of the sin of racism? God looks at the heart. You may try to hide your own thoughts and feelings, but maybe it sneaks out here and there. A sinful attitude like racism, prejudice, isn’t something we can remove from ourselves. It’s something where we need to go to the throne of God, and ask for God’s forgiveness, and and ask God for a new heart. A changed heart. A heart that loves all peoples, and that hates no one because they look or sound differently from us.

You may be sitting there thinking, I don’t have a problem in this area. But I challenge you, pray about it. Ask God to speak to your heart.

Change begins my friends, with you and me. And looking within. It’s easy to look at others, but let’s look within. God please change us.

In a moment we’re going to have some time to respond, and speak to God one on one, but now let’s address that 3rd question, how can we be change agents in society? Well like we’ve talked about, it starts by looking within and crying out to God to change our hearts, and sanctify us. We must confess, and repent, just like we would with any other sin.

God may remove it immediately, but it may also be a temptation you struggle with for the rest of your life. Like with alcoholics, sometimes God will instantly remove that tendency, and it will be gone forever, I’ve see that with people who just up and quit. For others, probably more so in fact, God says, go to Alcoholics Anonymous, join Celebrate Recovery, and it’s a battle for the rest of your life, to stand firm against that temptation.

So after looking within, we look outside ourselves. What if someone you know, a family member or friend makes a racist remark? I would challenge you to speak up, in love, and say, hold on a minute, you may want to rethink that. You better pray about that comment, because it’s a sinful comment you just made. We don’t want to scream at them, or go into an angry tirade. We want to be wise in how we correct others. But call it out. Don’t just let it pass.

Another question, when is the last time you got to know someone who is truly different from you? This is a great thing to do! Get to know some people who don’t look or act like you. Listen to their stories, and become friends. I remember when I went to training college in the salvation army in Chicago, I met people from big cities, small cities, who spoke different languages, people who looked differently than me, even a Vikings fan, I met. And I even learned to love Cubs fans. So you see how powerful it can be when you connect with people you wouldn’t normally connect with.

Follow up number three, make a better world. How can you stand up against racism in our society? In Owosso? In Michigan? I’m sure you’ll learn and develop unique ways to be a blessing. But don’t ever have the attitude that you are going to help a poor weak person who needs your help. No, that’s not biblical. We stand shoulder to shoulder with people of different languages and nations, as equals, shoulder to shoulder, fighting alongside one another. As friends, as brothers and sisters in Christ, and as those who family, a family who will one day live together forever, in the New Jerusalem, the new city of God, a humanity re-united, not to build a tower of babel, but to have ascended to heaven by the gift of Jesus Christ, unique, diverse, yet united forever, one family of humanity, loved forever by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.