I’m thinking about sowing and reaping this morning, and how much the consequences of yesterday’s transgressions is visited on today’s innocents. Our need for the Savior’s ‘advocacy’ is screaming in stark relief today as we think about the way forward, and the long neglected call to righteousness is begging for delivery.

A couple of generations ago (more or less), the American culture almost en masse decided to shelve the ‘idealism’ of absolute truth and defined standards in favor of individualized morality. The cultural safety net, born of and grounded in Christian principles, was systematically dismantled in favor of a new moral relativism – a ‘live and let live’ permissiveness that has birthed today’s insecurity.  The devaluation of the ‘nuclear family’ has given rise to generations with no appreciation for the true meaning of covenant and comprised largely of emotional survivors of their parents self obsessions. To them, truth must be contextualized and nuanced by circumstance rather than accepted after critical reflection. Every single thing must be measured in light of the idol of personal opinion, and nothing that doesn’t ‘make sense’ is valid. Is it any wonder the millennials so resemble the generation that came ‘after’ that knew not God (Judges 2:10)?

There is no cry from Ramah (Matthew 2:18; Jeremiah 31:15) today as the innocents of our generation pass through the fire unto the Molech of women’s rights (2 Kings 23:10) in the barbarism of abortion – it’s explained away as an issue of liberty as opposed to the abomination it is. This alone is sufficient evidence of the need for a revival of truth and righteousness in our land. This kind of thinking is a contagion on every issue it infects.  We have innocent generations of children born in this country whose parents were offered the hope of a porous border, unenforced law, and the mixed message of unqualified aid. Had we had the strength of character to enforce our laws, and to intentionally open ourselves to increased and merciful legal immigration, many of these innocent children would not be trembling in fear for their parents and families just because a single man won an election. Now we as a people are left with the unenviable task of untangling a Gordian knot – that of fairly resolving issues like these (and many others) that were born of our own vacillation.

Where is the Church’s voice in all of this? There’s no more time for the Body of Christ to be consumed by the absolute irrelevancies of petty personal preferences! We are already well into a contest we have been losing in blissful self absorption for generations, and there is a new understanding of what Paul meant when he said it is ‘HIGH time’ to wake up (Romans 13:11). Our children don’t know who they are – they have lost their sense of corporate identity, and are being led by the Pied Piper of their own disconnected relativism to an abyss of our passive making.  Let us not gloat because a particular politic prevailed in this snapshot of time – rather let us revisit Josiah’s treasure room and recover the remnants of righteous worship and objectively righteous living. We are still a Christian nation – that is clear – but until the character of our nation is more aligned with responsibility than self-esteem, our message will continue to be a muddled idealistic goal rather than the clarion of John Winthrop’s ‘City on a Hill’.

The apostle John said that when (not if) you sin, you have an advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1). We have kept our ‘attorney’ on spiritual retainer for far too long as a people – it’s time we transact the judgment of our corporate sin in repentance, accept His sufficient grace as payment of our just penalty, and get back to the business of keeping the Father’s commandments (1 John 2:2-6) rather than trying to be the first generation to successfully outsmart our omniscient God. The first step is to get our hearts right, but the next and necessary step is to get our hands right!  I, for one, am praying for a genuine revival in our land, and not just another cyclical political swing to the right. With apologies to Lincoln’s address to congress at a low point of the Civil War (and Reagan too), America is not mankind’s last best hope — that is in Christ alone!! Let’s not lose this opportunity to the ever shifting political winds, but let us truly be ‘salt and light’ while this door remains open.