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Can
Man Live Without God?
Milton! thou shouldest be
living at this hour: England hath need of
thee: she is a fen of stagnant waters:
altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic
wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again:
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the
sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay
−WilliamWordsworth
This was the cry of William Wordsworth early
in the nineteenth century as he saw the
demise of English culture underway. The
Church, the state, the home, the writers and
shapers of society were called to task, for
the nation had lost its soul and was
hurtling headlong towards moral defacement.
"Milton!" he cried, "England hath need of
thee."
Num 10:31 "Please don’t leave us," Moses
pleaded. "You know the places in the
wilderness where we should camp. Num
10:32 Come, be our guide and we
will share with you all the good things that
the Lord does for us.
Moses was going somewhere
he had never been before. And can I tell you
America is going someplace she has never
been before. We are living in a culture that
has no moral compass. Francis Schaeffer
described our culture as one that had its
feet planted firmly in midair.
Our public school system
has told us to leave God out of our
education.The courts have told America to
take God out of the public
square.Politicians have said there really is
no place for God in the legislature.In
essence, it is time to bury God.
A young college student
walks into a dorm and class rooms and
murders thirty-two people. The media is
shocked as they should be, and they begin
their the most asked question "Why."
The question that needs to
be posed is, "Does America really want a
solution or is the constant refrain ‘why’ a
way of escaping the responsibility of the
answer?"
The Bible tells us, "He
has showed you, O man, what is good. And
what does the Lord require of you? To act
justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly
with your God" (Micah
6:8). Jesus wept over His own
beloved city and said, "If only you knew the
things that belonged to your peace, but now
they are hid from your eyes" (Luke
19:42).
Their problem was not the
absence of answers, rather, the suppression
of them. Our predicament, I believe, is the
same. There are answers we already
have—enough to bring correctives within our
reach. But do we really want the truth?
At the start we would do well to remember
that no out-ward environment alone can
completely eradicate the destructive. But
that does not mean that there is nothing we
can do to minimize the murderous instincts
of some. There are issues in our society
that we must have the courage to address,
though they are not popular and never will
be, for they stare at us in the face. Our
societal indicators are important because
they are pointers to the moral bankruptcy.
At the root of our
cultural decay is a reckless failure to
admit our contradictions. We have given our
children contradictory assumptions about
life and are then shocked at their evil
behavior and the disintegration of their
lives. This cultural breakdown did not
happen overnight. Years ago secular thinkers
espoused pathetic and deter-mined efforts to
create a value-free educational system that
planted the seeds of relativism. At the same
time our imaginations were fertilized with a
wide array of sensuality, profanity and
violence. Philosophy denied truth and art
claimed to be free from any boundaries. In
this soil, Generation X & Y was harvested.
With thirty-three dead
bodies we ask "Why" is the fruit so bitter.
What else would you expect
from young people who have been told that
"man is the measure of all things" and that
life is nothing more than DNA?
If the physical
− is all
there is, then the logic of the weak is to
prove to the physically strong and the
spiritually doped that a gun in hand is
stronger than a jock or a Bible. We have
sown to the wind and are reaping the
whirlwind. Here again the
contradiction of naturalism plunders a life.
Academics mock the Christian for invoking
any transcendent point of reference for
life’s meaning. Christians are vilified for
such an assertion.
I might well counter that
if meaning has no objective reference and
each one may choose his or her own morals,
why do we still marvel at a Virginia Tech
tragedy? We should marvel that there are not
more. Is it because we cannot shake off the
soul! It speaks from within to say that
there must be a sense to life, otherwise,
everything falls apart at the center?
The blend of an amoral, purposeless
existence makes liberty a wreck waiting to
happen. In this combination may lie the
answer to why America is today the most
violent country on earth .cause, I believe,
America has a volatile mix. At Virginia Tech
the freedoms guaranteed by the first and the
second amendments met
− in an
aimless and alienated mind. The result was
carnage.
John Adams, America’s
second President laid out a must for
America’s liberty: "We have no government
armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by morality and
religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or
gallantry, would break the strongest cords
of our Constitution as a whale goes through
a net. Our Constitution was made only for a
moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other."
Here is the hard fact that underlies all our
contra-dictions. We want absolute answers
without granting that absolute freedom and
absolute truth are mutually exclusive. The
painful reality is that the question cannot
be answered without an objective moral law.
The choices life offers us are not
value-free.
In Eden, there were no guns. In Eden there
was no television. In Eden there was no
internet. Two things combined to bring about
the first murder. Malcolm Muggeridge said
that all new news is old news happening to
new people. He was right. The parents of the
first family in Eden questioned whether God
had really spoken. Here autonomy squared off
against the revelation of God. A value-free
society was introduced.
Second, the son in turn
questioned whether the altar really had any
worth. Secularism evicted the sacred and
planted the void within. Denying the place
of a moral law and short-circuiting the
legitimacy of worship built the first
cemetery at Eden. Muggeridge was right,
atrocities are not new, only the victims
are.
It is easy for our comedians and moviemakers
to portray Christians as rigid, stoic, and
irrelevant. When was the last time a
Christian or minister was hailed as the true
component of health in our sick society?
They are rebuked when they speak out for the
unborn. They are taken to court when they
warn of sexual aberration and indulgence.
Political power tells them to stay out of
the moral implications of law. They are
mocked when they speak of a Creator rather
than of a mindless evolution that brought us
into being. Christians are castigated as a
lot when one in their midst falls.Yet, we
must not grow weary of doing what is right.
We don’t do what we do to gain the world’s
approval. We do what we do because it is who
we are. Christians! _
When the bodies have all
been removed, the police have finished their
job, and the media have gone home. Who is
going to rescue the wounded souls as they
look for healing and hope for tomorrow?
We need guides to lead us through this
wilderness—warning America and caring for
America. There is a place for the voices
that speak to the masses. There is a role
for one to speak to a nation. But that is
relatively easy to do if one has the ability
and passion. But those who walk where the
hurting walk; those who listen as the
hurting speak; those who embrace as the
hurting tremble—they are the real heroes.
Theirs is not just an ability. Theirs is a
commitment and the compassion to be there
when they are needed. They are the Miltons &
the Jethros who walk in lowly service and
whose souls are like shining stars. They
travel with us on life’s common and uncommon
way.
That’s our assignment as
believers in a dark world.
Mat 5:14 You
are the light of the world-like a city on a
mountain, glowing in the night for all to
see. Mat 5:15
Don’t hide your light under a basket!
Instead, put it on a stand and let it shine
for all. Mat 5:16
In the same way, let your good deeds shine
out for all to see, so that everyone will
praise your heavenly Father. God bless you- Mike |
