Everyone knows that something has changed with the American Family. Compare the depiction of family in 1950’s television with 2017 and the difference is stark. The very definition of family has been radically changed much less the very environment with which we function as family. I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s with no cell phones, only 3 channels on the TV, and rotary phones that hung on the kitchen wall. A 20 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica on the shelf was our internet and I took photo’s on a Kodak camera that you placed at your belly and looked down into the lens. While some moms worked, most stayed at home with their kids and dad was the sole breadwinner. We laugh when we say it, but America was indeed a lot like the Cleaver household in the old sitcom, “Leave it to Beaver”, and the problems we faced were similar. Boy, have times changed. The family has been under assault since Dr. James Dobson started his radio show and writings nearly 4 decades ago. To his credit, he saw the spiraling trajectory long before most of us ever thought much about it. Unfortunately, a new generation hasn’t heeded the warnings of a previous generation and now collapse is ever closer.
Cultural Reformation
REBUILDING BLOCK 10: Uniting Bible-Believing Churches
In my opinion, one of the greatest strategic successes political candidates and parties apply against the church is what is know as “divide and conquer”. The reason we have difficulty advancing our causes and concerns is because we have no civic leadership advocating for them. The reason we have no political candidates willing to provide leadership in advancing our causes is because we cannot elect them. The reason we cannot elect them is because Christians have a hard time moving in unity to become a type of monolith movement that can influence election outcomes to their advantage. Politicians and parties know this and do everything in their power to dilute our influence and keep our influence spread thin. The easiest illustration to offer is the primary system of selecting candidates. The 2016 GOP primary process offered at one time over 15 candidates for president. Of that number, I could easily identify 4 or 5 candidates that might have made an acceptable choice for many committed and consistent biblical worldview voters. The problem was that our voting block diluted their impact among those 4 or 5 by spreading out our votes and consequently the less than stellar candidate navigates his way through the pack and becomes the nominee in a system that cannot think beyond a 2-party paradigm. When the general election takes place, the Christian assumes for their vote to matter they must choose between the “lesser of two evils” in order to avoid catastrophe from the opposing candidate. It is a scenario we have consistently seen for several decades now and inevitably all we get from it are the “table scraps” of political movement with regards to the great moral issues of our day. The millions of evangelical voters who could move rapidly to rebuild this nation into a Christian civilization will never see it happen because we haven’t figured out how to move as one.
REBUILDING BLOCK 9: The Priority of Revival
The Church has as a part of its mission and call a prophetic mandate. What I mean by the word “prophetic” is that the Church reminds the individual and the culture of it’s responsibility towards God. The biblical word most associated with that prophetic calling is the word, “repent”. The Church, led by it’s pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets and apostles, declare repentance to a lost and deteriorating world. Repentance means that there has been a change of mind with a corresponding action (fruits) that demonstrates a true heart transformation. Reformation without heart transformation is at best challenging and perhaps ultimately impossible. Christian civilization may be embraced because it demonstrates to the human mind the only viable, long term worldview which will beget any sense of liberty and success, but it is maintained because the hearts of individuals and communities have legitimately been touched by the presence and power of God. This will only occur when genuine revival takes place by the plan of God.
The Dismemberment Bill and Stopping the Killing
I literally hate writing this blog. To write a critique of the South Carolina House Bill entitled, “SC Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act” (H3548), feels at a visceral level very wrong. Yes, dismemberment abortion to a second trimester baby in the womb through surgical cutting or ripping is about as cruel, barbaric and ghastly a procedure as could be imagined by any sane person. A “gut” reaction to any thinking, moral person is to yell “stop it” now. But here is the problem…the same could be said for a half-dozen other ways to exterminate a baby in the womb and we simply cannot find the moral outrage or courage to look at this whole death industry and say, “stop it” now. In fact, upon reading the bill, you will find that it contains the usual exceptions: life of the mother, rape, and incest, as well as specifically excluding suction methods for abortion and extraction. I can only assume that this would maintain intact saline abortions (otherwise known as “salting out”) which after insertion of the chemical into the mother’s amniotic fluid sac and waiting an hour the pre-born baby is effectively burned to death and removed. No less ghastly and barbaric procedure, but apparently not gruesome enough to be enjoined in H3548.
REBUILDING BLOCK 8: Training the Next Generation
For all of the obvious errors that can be unveiled in a secular worldview, the strategy relativists and secularists have used to seize our culture has been amazingly effective. Say what you want, their relentless pursuit of changing the historical narrative of America, the philosophical underpinnings of our Constitution, and the dismissal of the need for a Judeo-Christian ethos has been remarkable. Everyone, including the most optimistic among us, recognize that we are on the front side of a “post-modern” America. Their success is due in no small part to capturing the minds of the next generation through any and every means possible. They have infiltrated the public school system, taken over most colleges and universities, and commandeered the media. There is hardly a direction you can turn that secularism hasn’t entrenched itself. The last bastion of hope still resides in the Bible-believing Church which unfortunately does not see the need many times to address the challenge or has simply capitulated to a theology of inevitability which has already raised the white flag of surrender.