Look Up and Remember God

At the Constitutional Convention in September 1787, Benjamin Franklin spoke in support of adopting a Constitutional Republic, insisting it would be a blessing to the people and “can only end in despotism…when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

Why would Franklin warn of a “need for despotic government”? Because the ever-increasing corruption of a people requires increasing governmental control, if only to keep those people from taking the license to, as Scripture says, “bite and devour” each other (Gal. 5:15).

There is an equal but opposite correlation between the increase in societal corruption and the decrease in Christian commitment.

There is an equal but opposite correlation between the increase in societal corruption and the decrease in Christian commitment.

Those noble Christian ideas that sustain the house of true freedom and flourishing are rejected in favor of false rights under the circus tent of personal autonomy. Instead of using the Bill of Rights to protect against government overreach, evil men inside and outside of government twist those rights into a noose around the neck of this once-great Republic.

The evil commodification of human flesh called pornography is protected under the First Amendment. The soul-destroying blight of abortion is loosed upon America under the Fourteenth Amendment, as is the “right” to same-sex marriage, undermining the basic unit of stable civil order. State legislatures now legalize vices that undermine family and physical health, such as no-fault divorce, physician-assisted suicide, gambling, and gateway drugs like cannabis under the Tenth Amendment. 

Can America’s moral train wreck scramble back up the embankment to the railway of true God-given liberty after tumbling down into the swamp of atheistic personal pleasure?

Forsaking God’s wisdom to follow a path of our own creation careens us to the brink of death as individuals, families, businesses, churches, and society. This temptation to disobey God, believing our knowledge will afford us more life and blessing, is as old as Adam and Eve. God gave Adam a warning in the Garden not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).

All of us have fallen to this temptation. In fact, because we are all sons and daughters of Adam, we are therefore children of darkness, with the sinful proclivity to disobey, to forget God.

Since we are made in God’s image, to forget Him means we forget ourselves—we no longer understand what it means to be human. Now that we know we are teetering on the brink of destruction, the first step back from the precipice is to look up and remember God.

In Christ,

Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div.
CompassCare CEO
EMC Frontline President

P.S. CompassCare is dedicated to serving women and saving babies, providing a tomorrow free from abortion. Be part of that tomorrow by providing free, life-saving medical care to a woman and her baby with a gift of $47 per month. Go to www.compasscarecommunity.com/donate!

---