With the latest horrific act happening within our borders, especially within our school, I keep hoping that someone is going to get the point.
Instead what I have seen is the same old arguments. Gun Control, Mental Health, Parenting, Drug Abuse and Personal Responsibility. Just so that everyone knows these conversations have been going on for years all the while things continue to spiral out of control in every area.
So I would like to propose that we have a greater problem, and that each of these earlier mentioned issues are actually the fruit of the deeper issue.
The deeper issue is that we, as a society, actually believe that the government can legislate morality, behavior or for that matter much else. Along with this trend, it is made worse as we have continued to allow government to have more control… All the while continuing to show that they can make about anything worse by taking control of it.
Truthfully, the issue is that government in it’s nature is self-governing. They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We have witnessed this within my lifetime as we have watched government abuse and control run rampant.
The real issue is that God instituted government because we chose to have a king rather than the King. (1 Samuel 10:17-19) However, government established by the founders of our country had a clear plan, to keep power out of a centralized government and instead in the hands of the people.
But, people as always didn’t want what was best, and found it was really easy to allow government to “take care of them”. This has led to the mess that we have today.
God has been told to stay out of schools, out of the military and out of government. We see the results… Levels of abuse of power no one would have imagined, weekly scandals rocking our most powerful leaders and school shootings and military abuse cases coming out on a regular basis.
At the end of the day the fruit is what God told us would happen, (1 Samuel 8:10-18) when we told Him to go away. It is also one of many times throughout history where we see similar and worse situations when the people chose to leave God out of their lives.
As we continue to slide down the moral scale, I wonder when the people will realize that it is each one of us. Yes, it is personal responsibility that will change this direction. It is a group of people praying instead of arguing, it is a group of people living sacrificial lives and loving their neighbors, even their enemies.
It is all about putting down our battle axes, and picking up our plows to make a new crop.
It will require more people, and I hope more people of faith, that will make the sacrifice. It will require finances, time and passion. But, until the Church chooses to go back to living like Jesus, things will continue to go downhill.
My concern is that we have seen the depths of how far apathy can allow morality to take a society. (The holocaust, Rwandan Genocide, Cambodian Kamara Rouge and numerous other atrocities) Each one seems to be a little more brutal and each one is a little bit more bloody and really, more evil.
So, I am declaring that I am done with the arguments. It does not mean that I will not still share the truth. I just will not choose to engage with people who just want to argue. I want to move past the problems and get to the discussion about solutions.
How about you? Are you willing to look for common ground? Are you willing to do something instead of just yelling? Are you willing to join me on the battlefield, and fight a different way than the world wants to fight? (Ephesians 6:12)
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