In Pittsburgh, all holidays from Thanksgiving throughChristmas and New Year's have been blended into a gargantuan commercial celebration called "Sparkle Season."
Truly, America has forgotten God. And it is reaping the consequences. I spoke before a board of newpaper editors recently, where one of them--striking a pose of enlightened urbanity--boasted that he had led a campaign in his city to remove the 10 Commandments from classroom walls. Yet not 15 minutes later, the same editor was bemoaning the crime infecting our nation's schools--rampant violence and stealing. "Hmm," I said, "maybe you should put a sign on the wall: 'You shall not steal.'" The man looked embarrassed as he slowly made the connection.
That coversation vividly illustrates what lawyer Phillip Johnson calls the modernist impasse: The modern mindset wants to set individuals from from moral restraints, but at the same time wants to live in a society bound by restraints that prevent violence and injustice. Clearly, the two are incompatible. As Augustine wrote, the consequences of sin are sin. If we reject biblical morality as individuals, there's no preventing social chaos and crime.
The first step in cultural renewal is repentance of our own failure to uphold God's law--in our personal lives, our churches, and our public life. It's easy to treat prayer as a celestial 911 call, asking God to sweep down and wipe out injustice, but national renewal begins with personal repentance. Our prayer should be "God change me first."
Then we must make the case for the positive social role reliegion plays. We must learn how to show people--as I tried to show that newpaper editor--that the secular world view gives no basis for social order. Unless we make that case persuasively, religious freedoms will continue to erode. We must argue that the only way to bridge the modernist impasse is to bow before divine law.
This is not an easy message, as I discovered from the somber silence that met my remarks on the National Day of Prayer. But anything less is a mere placebo, incable of healing a nation that has forgotten God.
REPRINTED BY PERMISSION: COPYRIGHT 1996: PRISON FELLOWSHIP MINISTRY/JUBILEE MAGAZINE
Text: Charles Colson
Illustrations: Ken Westphal