Follow me on Twitter So what’s America’s big, seventh sin? It’s not what you think. It’s not abortion, homosexuality, political corruption, or anything else so obvious; yet it’s as basic and straightforward as it gets: America has forgotten God.
I know that sounds ludicrous seeing that the U.S. has over 450,000 churches, that (according to various polls) an average of 40% of the population goes to church, that over 80% of adults are Christians, that Christian bookstores and media programs are everywhere, and that, according to a June 24, 2008 article in the Washington Post, “92 percent believe in God … [and] more than half of Americans polled pray at least once a day.” All that may be true, yet what is happening is that the minute most people walk out the sanctuary door on Sunday or walk away from a religious event, they leave all things high and holy behind; and until their next visit, they forget about God.
God does not belong in everyday life; at least, that is how a great majority in this nation seem to feel personally. Business, family, social issues, habits, opinions, personal tastes and lifestyle—practically everything but a church related occasion is carried on with little to no real implementation of godly principles. “This isn’t the place for religion,” everyone says. “Things operate on a different level when it comes to such and such.” Oh, really?
Tell me what institution in this country does not need honesty or integrity. Show me what social situation could not benefit from fairness, generosity, or graciousness. And since when is justice, truth, or any of the other virtue God inspires and initiates ever out of place?
People in this nation really want double standards: one that makes them feel devoted and sincere and another that selfishly lets them make up the rules to life. Guess which one is their real favorite, their real love? Not the one they assert in stained-glassed edifices or private devotions; it’s the one they excuse, make sacrifices for, and actually practice. It’s the one they call “the real world”–rough and raw as it may be.
While all the other sins in this series are decisive and foundational, none is more so than America’s error of forgetting God in daily, cultural routine. We are deceived when we think that humanitarian motives produce ethics strong enough to support the weight of a responsible, forward-moving civilization. Just look at our secular societies crumbling right in front of all our heady but godless ideals! It is and always has been impossible to practice the righteousness of God without the God of righteousness; and at this moment in our history we, in our negligent state, stand to unavoidably loose the very values we claim to hold near and dear. Attending rallies, voting for the right candidate, organizing programs, and all the other activities we are currently involved in to save our nation from ruin are good and necessary; but, America, hear me by the Word of the Lord: no remedy is more effective or needful than to bring our faith and the name of Jesus to the forefront of everything we do.
As I said in an earlier post, I do not believe it’s too late for America. Based on what I know of the Bible and the power of Jesus Christ, I believe that God can and will heal our nation. But we’ve got to repent! All of us. Individually and absolutely.
May God bless—and be merciful to—America.
America’s sin is not having money, as some people say. No, if Americans have become corrupt, it is because they are guilty of loving money.
1 Timothy 6:10 says that “the love of money is the root of all evil;” and while God is not against money (His Word has many positive things to say about it), He ceases to bless us when we put money before or even equal with His principles.
Loving money has nothing to with your financial status. Poor people can be caught up with the love of money just as much as the stereotypical, greedy millionaire. I know plenty of lower income people who are stingy, calloused, manipulative, and underhanded when it comes to their money.
Loving money trains you to a certain mindset, and you begin seeing all situations through financial or materialistic lenses. This is where America has transgressed and where America needs to repent before the Lord. How many times do we approach others not with warm, hospitable motives but with a business-type mentality? We think in our hearts, “What can I get out of this person,” or “How can this relationship lead me to better opportunities.” We learn to use people. Far too many across this nation are infamous for breaking a contract or promise and hurting someone in the process, just because a better offer comes along or because they don’t want to pay their share. And again, whether we’re talking about one hundred bucks or one hundred million, this evil treatment against our neighbors is diabolically wrong!
We have sinned because we have made money, not principles or wholesome priorities, the tipping point of our decision making. Way too many people these days would rather sacrifice their children, their marriage, their call of God, and even their soul just to live out their “golden” opportunity. Way too many would rather participate in outright illegal activities or keep their mouths shut about dishonest things going on behind the scenes than loose their precious paycheck.
It’s time to get some guts and do what is right, what is really important in life, even if it means less wealth, less promotion, and less material goodies! Americans are givers, that fact is certainly true and certainly commendable; but what we do right with our money does not excuse what we do wrongwith it. Today is the day to stand up against bribes and enticements of all kinds—even if they come with a smile or good intentions. Stand up for your family, your friends, your ordained virtues, and for the truth of God that is in Christ Jesus; put these things before money.
Yes, I believe God wants every one of us to be rich—rich in faith, good reputation, godly deeds, and rich in love for one another. Whether you have lots or little cash is of no consequence. There are many things in this world that are far more lucrative than the green-backed bill.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil!” – Isaiah 5:20
We complain about judges being soft and stupid, releasing pedophiles, career murderers, and repeat rapists back into the community; yet much as we hate to admit it these days in America, lunacy of judgment is a widespread problem found in our own backyards. For a number of reasons, a vast majority across this country label sin (in one degree or another) as being cool, acceptable, and justifiable while condemning righteousness as boring, futile, and intolerable. So if there are woes, troubles, and ruptures of judgment on a grand scale in this nation, it is because the common man on the street has rejected God and His good sense.
“America, the Lord is saying to you that each one must put on a mindset of justice and stop siding with the guilty. You pity the offender, play up his emotional and human side, more than the victim; and then you attack those who are crying for retribution and redress as if they had no right. Oh, you understand justice when you have been wronged! You scream it loud; but otherwise, you love to glorify the wrongdoer.
“Shame has come upon you because you have reveled in your shame. Instead of condemning naughtiness and moral filth, you have giggled and laughed with it; but now it is time to call what is evil ‘evil’ and what is good ‘good.’ If you want just laws and fair practices, if you want a solid society and save environments in which to raise your families, then each one of you must stand up on a person basis, in his and her personal world and both rebuke wrong and praise right.
“You are not beyond repair,” says the Lord. “I can and will heal this nation; but trading morality for immorality, right for wrong is an abomination in my sight. If you want my help, my aid, my salvation, then each one of you must turn away from your discrimination against my perfect sense of right and wrong. Learn to hate what is evil and love what is good. Return to me and my ways and I, the Lord your God, will take away the woes, the afflictions from off this land,” says the Lord.
You may have already noticed how one sin leads into and feeds off of the other, creating a dangerously convenient cycle, one that is generated by the individual and the culture, but worst of all, one whose parameters are widened to include the next generation.
God is very interested and impassioned with how we raise our children. He expects us to train them to what is right, wise, and good; and above all, God requires us to lead our children to the knowledge of Himself. This is such a serious matter with God that Eli, the Old Testament priest of Samuel’s day, lost the priesthood for his entire lineage because he honored his sons’ demands before those of the Lord.
The general populace of Americans are sinning and angering God right now because they are spoiling their children. While parents may be self-deceived by personal excuses and see their kids as innocent and normal, the rest of the world sees violent, uncooperative, irrational brats who are growing up to be violent, uncooperative, irrational adults! Sure, each child has or will have to make personal accounting for his life actions (and that could include eternal damnation), but enabling parents will be guilty of assisting in their sins.
Listen, whether you are working hard at it or not working at all, either way you are training your child to something. You are either teaching him that there are guidelines in life to be observed and appreciated or you are preparing your offspring to break rules and despise conventions while wrongly believing that there will be no consequences. All the same, as long as your children live under your roof, it is your God-ordained duty to enforce standards of excellence and practices that are wholesome and disciplined.
Stop being afraid of your toddlers and teens. Fear God more than their pouting, their resistance, or their threats. Fear God more than current fads or the pressure of what everyone else is doing. Get some guts and exercise personal, child-rearing discipline. Say, “No!” to your children’s selfish, stubborn demands; keep methodical regulations within the home; and back up your decisions with appropriate punishments and rewards. Teach your children to show respect towards authority and their elders (and that includes you). Teach them how to control themselves and how to be courteous to others. Teach them to work hard, be loyal to their family, and to serve the Lord with all their heart, soul, and body.
If you are at a loss as to how to bring up your child, don’t buy the first book you see or run to any old friend. Search out a family whose children are already exemplifying good, godly behavior and then ask a million questions. If you do want a book or a seminar, look for one that is founded on biblical values as well as on time-tested common sense.
God is telling us in America to break the cycle of national sin by breaking the cycle of dysfunction in our homes! We must repent of spoiling our children. This is the will of God in Christ Jesus.
One of the most serious and yet most underrated sins that America commits today is the overindulgence of pleasure. Everything these days must be made into a game for us—education, business, politics, even religion. Everyone seems to be living for only what feels good here and now, and nobody wants to be serious about anything except the next stimulating moment. But now, our bad habit of becoming quickly impatient and easily bored is proving to be a fatal weakness; for in lacking experience with diligence and earnestness on a personal level, we are making more and more serious, self-destructing mistakes on the social level.
The Bible says that it is the fool—the unconcerned person, the person preoccupied with frivolous activities—who says in his heart, “There is no God.” Show me someone given over to loving pleasure and I’ll show you someone who makes precious little time (if any) for God,who lacks sensible forethought of right things, and whose life is filled with chaos and wrongdoing.
Those who are drunken with keeping everything light and party-like, who refuse to make their life accountable to God, always treat sin as nothing more than amusement. Think about it: the filth and degradation of pornography is called “adult playtime;” wild, rebellious, shameful conduct is all passed off as “just having fun;” and what they consider “entertainment” is sitting around watching today’s movie characters rape, molest, destroy, and mangle innocent people. Millions today are on their way to Hell, laughing all the way!
If we recognize we have grown calloused and lazy, if we moan that normalcy and common sense are rare finds, if we complain that we as a nation lack genuine heroes and leaders we can trust, it is because we have become lovers of pleasure more than lovers God—and it’s time that this ends! It does no good simply to cry “Victim!” and put all the blame for our personal deterioration on the nebulous monster of Today’s Society. Each one of us must awake from our own lazy stupor and work off his or her obesity of poor work ethics, indifference, and this ignorant fascination with randomness. We must repent of our pleasure-seeking ways and search for the real treasure that is in personal responsibility before Christ—the trait that made us great in the past and the virtue that will make us great in the future.
Our fog of stupidity will lift only when heed the admonition of Jesus Christ:
- “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” – Luke 21:36
God says, “America, I am displeased with the way you are treating one another. You do not look out for one another; you use each other for your own sexual pleasure. You have thrown away brotherly love and common courtesy and you have given yourselves over to lust and immoral fantasies. You treat one another like dogs in the time of mating.”
God says, “Parents, I am against you for allowing your daughters to dress provocatively and your sons to treat girls like personal sex toys. I am holding you just as responsible for your children’s promiscuity because you failed to teach them; you failed to train them not only how to restrain themselves from lust but you failed to train them how to act properly toward the opposite sex. You did not train your daughters to be virgins nor did you train your sons to keep their girl friends virgins.”
God says, “It is enough! Break off from acting like harlots and animals. If you will begin exalting morality, decency, and virginity again, I will begin exalting you as a nation again. Turn off your pornography. Turn off your filthy TV shows. Turn off from your eyes the sights and the sounds of fornication and adultery, and I, the Lord your God, will clean up this nation. I will heal your children. I will bring sanity to the court systems: they will lock up and finish off the epidemic of pedophiles, for I will cause them to have wisdom and I will cause them to find criminals and put them away for good.”
God says, “Do not laugh and say, ‘Our sexual sins mean nothing. We are used to this way of life.’” God says, “Unless you treat each other with respect and chastity, I will fight against you. I will continue to allow your homes to decay and your children to rebel against you. But if you will say, ‘Lord, we have sinned. We have not been sexually pure,” then I will bring a healing to this land and I will bring a family strength. I will heal marriages. I will restore proper and healthy conduct between male and female. I will even bring strength to you to fight off homosexuality, which you in your filthiness are unable to ward off.
“Know that I am speaking to you and that I call you to a higher level. Know that I, the Lord your God, judge every act that is done in secret as well as in the open. Clean up your act, and I will clean up this nation,” says the Lord.
Like Sodom, America’s biggest sin is pride. It is not so much a pompous kind of pride as it is a self-centered, “me-ism” kind. Yes, our so-called self-esteem movement has produced a generation who walks around with vulgar and obnoxious behavior, and accepting correction from no one. This, our cockiness, is not only repugnant to others, it offends God and the Lord is saying to each one of us, “Repent!
“Repent of putting individual preference and importance above everything else. Repent of being so self absorbed that you don’t care how your decisions hurt family and those around you. Repent of denying your need for God and of rebelling against authority, just so you can fulfill your little fantasies. Repent of thinking everything has to revolve around your goals, your dreams, and your feelings.”
There is nothing wrong with having confidence, but confidence should be tempered with healthy submission. In all our forward motion, we must not neglect to think as a unit, as a people, as how our individual functions will affect the whole. We also need to see that authority is God-ordained; and while those in charge are obligated to be fair and just, we who are under their care are to propagate public harmony by honoring their decisions and their position. Besides, freedom is not the absence of rules or codes; freedom is the responsible application of the right kind.
It’s time that respect and thoughtfulness, honor and dignity become our praised virtues, not rebellious, naughty, short-lived passions. As a nation, we have got to stop basing our entertainment, our education, and even our home life on the idea that compliance to structure is bad and that doing whatever we as individuals want to do is some kind of a high and holy value.
It all starts by seeing that Jesus Christ with His principles is the real center of the universe. We are creatures, not creators, who are designed to live in a particular, prescribed way—God’s way. Humility, then, is the strength on which we ought to rely, and it is the practice for which God is now calling.
If I were to ask you, “Why did God destroy Sodom, the infamous city in the Bible?” you would give me one answer: because they practiced homosexuality. Indeed, that was a great evil practiced there, one that still infuriates God. Yet surprisingly, “sodomy” is not the first reason or even the biggest reason the Scriptures give for its punishment. The Bible says,
“Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.” — Ezekiel 16:49-50
God gave the prophet five reasons why He sent fire and brimstone upon Sodom. Let’s put those reasons in order as well as into modern terms.
- Pride – being mentioned twice (the second time as “haughty”), this was Sodom’s worst sin—yes, even before sexual perversion.
- Fullness of bread – this could be correctly stretched to mean materialism, but in any case, this is overindulgence.
- Idleness of time – laziness; wasting life with foolish, non-useful activities; loving fun, entertainment, and good times way too much.
- Did not strengthen the poor and needy – being filled with pride, overindulgence, and idleness, the people of Sodom did not want to bothered with the problems of friends, family, or their neighbors.
- Abomination – God commanded Israel through Moses, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” — Leviticus 20:13 Amazingly, homosexuality is referred to in last place.
We of the 21st century would not have listed pride as being such a horrible trait, at least not worthy of such severe punishment; and yet to God, it was the number one offense. We might, in fact, be inclined to downplay all of these reasons as being “not that bad;” but that would be our gross mistake, for God’s priorities are very different than ours.
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America needs to change. That is the nearly unanimous, current sentiment; and yet I say by the Spirit of the Lord that it needs to change according to God’s agenda, in ways that may not be either immediately evident or of initial concern to us. Most of us are seeking to change America through political, economic, and institutional venues, but the real problems are much more organic. America’s soul has to change, and that means that each one of us has got to line up with the only thing, the only One that can fix this nation. We can have the best laws, the best economy, and the best community programs; but if we as individuals are corrupt, all that is working will soon be destroyed by God if not by our own hands.
This series of posts I am about to make will address what I believe God is saying to America and by extension to Western culture itself. I believe we as a nation and as a culture have not gone too far to be healed, but we have to cooperate with the Great Physician and His healing process. Please read the upcoming posts carefully and prayerfully, not pointing the finger at anyone else but ourselves.
Ever talk to a person who has recently given into a sinful lifestyle? In practically every case (and provided that they are being completely honest) they will convey a feeling of freedom—freedom from the mundane, freedom from religion, and freedom from God. And know what? They have freedom.
They are free from the correcting counsel of righteous people. They are free from obligations of obedience and conformity. They are free from their own nagging, denied curiosity, which they have fed with secret fantasizing. They feel free because they are; the problem is, their kind of freedom is that of a homeless wanderer doing their own futile thing, a fugitive on the run from truth and reality. They have no more ties to God’s promises so they no longer receive His benefits of peace and blessing; and because they have cut the cords of self-restraint, decency, wisdom, and a clear conscience, they have become vulnerable to a slew of lurking problems. They are free alright, free to walk straight into Hell!
There is for everyone a sense of liberty in full fledged enthusiasm and participation because that is how we are built. I am convinced that many current sinners who grew up in church or at one time attended, failed to give God 100% and therefore lived in a miserable “valley of decision,” sometimes for decades. They never knew the emancipation of being sold out for God. The hypocrisy is, they came to blame God for their blasé life; and when they finally dove headlong into a sinful lifestyle, they experienced the awesomeness of full commitment (albeit with lethal consequences). Foolishness! Why choose freedom from God when true freedom is in God?
Christianity is never properly lived out, let alone enjoyed, unless you are putting all of your body, soul, and heart into serving Jesus. The biblical standard has always been, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” for truth is a treasure to be passionately sought. Anything less invites the delusory lie that there is a better, happier life through sin.
There are a good number of respectable prophetic voices these days that are declaring America is going to be judged and destroyed; and yet there are just as many, just as respectable voices prophesying America will experience revival and turn around. So which is it?
The answer may surprise you.
Jonah went to the major capital city of his day and had but one message, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” Jonah had no message of mercy, no promise of Nineveh’s course being altered, just a prediction of destruction; and yet we all know what happened. The city was not overthrown and Jonah’s prophecy was never fulfilled. Why? Becausee the people repented; and when the people repented, the Bible says, “And God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.”
Was Jonah a false prophet? No. Was his prophecy off or out of order? No. It’s just that the people of Nineveh understood the nature of prophetic predictions: they are messages from the God who offers mercy as well as who keeps justice.
I believe that God is both warning America and encouraging her at the same time. He is telling Americans that we are now on a path of abomination and that if we keep on going He will execute unfavorable and destructive changes within our shores. On the other hand, He is letting us know that He still has plans for us, greater plans than we could ever imagine, and that He is able to turn the tide of corruption and deterioration and bring healing to our country and culture.
I do not see any conflict in what God is saying through His present day messangers, be they on the negative or positive side of relative prophecies. I see the same God that sent Jonah giving the same option He did to Nineveh–”America, I’m warning you: wake up and repent so that I may cause you to live!”
