Faith in God is quickly fading in our country and it threatens societal order.  According to Gallup, “Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.”

Our society is under the increasing strain from the weight of unbelief. Lost souls that rebel as they search for meaning and what is right.  Accepting every societal whim as “right,” does not seemed to have helped.

Early in the founding of our country, we were provided a warning of sorts about how faith is the foundation of our government.  Our second President, John Adams, said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 

The morality and faith of the citizens, it seems, was believed to be the compass of right and wrong to hold our elected officials accountable. That compass is no longer functional.

Jesus too gave us instructions, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” Matthew 28:19-20.

As believers, we have an obligation to pray for our leaders, share the gospel, and love our neighbors. This might sound trite in the face of so much conflict, but sharing the love of Christ is what our fellow citizens, need now more than ever.

Have you ever borrowed a tool to fix something around the house?  Maybe you even borrowed a truck to bring home some lumber.  How did you treat the borrowed items…maybe with kid gloves?  If it was a truck perhaps you parked the most isolated spot in the lot!

When we borrow things, we know we are responsible and we have to return the item, hopefully in better shape than we picked it up. After all, our friend, neighbor, or relative entrusted it to our care. 

What about taking care of the world and everything in it all made by God (see Acts 17)? How is our stewardship of, well, everything?” Are we treating God’s possessions with the same respect that we may have treated that truck? Our lives and our very bodies deserve respect.  The air that we breathe, the water that we drink, even the many minerals on the earth that make our modern lives possible…everything. 

It is our daily stewardship call to take care of His world and to be thankful to Him for all with which He has blessed us.   

“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:16 

One of the themes during the current unrest in our nation is the idea of white privilege.  That is, if you are caucasian you have certain unearned privileges simply because you were born white.

To say that certain people are privileged simply because of undeserved birthrights, in my mind, is obvious.

Time and Space Privilege

None of us gets to choose where we are born, when we are born, and to whom we are born.  I was born in the late 1950s in a small industrial town. We didn’t have much money, but this time and space into which I was born was an undeserved privilege.

For example, what if I had been born in Eastern Europe during the rule of Communism or in rural America during Great Depression?  My life in the small industrial town would have been considered incredibly plush in comparison.

The Privilege of Intelligence and Talent

There are people born with great intelligence and universities and later employers often seek them for their particular privilege. Did they do something of their own accord to develop this innate intelligence? That is a privilege that may allow them to out perform and out earn others and put them amongst the top earners in the world.

Some people are born and gifted with exceptional athletic skills – taller, faster, stronger, and/or better reflexes than the vast majority of the public. They may be able to turn this unearned privilege into a contract with a sports team and possible earn them tens- if not hundreds-of-millions of dollars.

Undeserved Disadvantage

Others are not so fortunate. Some are born in the inner city to single parent households. They may struggle to put food on the table and get basic medical care.  Others are born with debilitating diseases and/or severe limits on their cognitive abilities.  They did nothing to deserve this unfortunate set of circumstances.

Christian are Called to Share

As a Christian, I believe God is clear in his word that we are to help others in need.  This simplest and oft quoted, Love your neighbors as yourselve is a good starting point for believers.  In James 2 it’s a bit more blunt:  “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

Later in James 5 there is a warning to the rich “You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.  The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.”

Christians should not look to the super wealthy when we see this warning; we all have some wealth we can share with others.

Again and again in Scripture, we are told to share our privilege with others. This does not say support a mandate by elected officials, WE ARE CALLED personally to help.

Our society would be greatly healed if we all considered how we, not others, might use our particular privilege to help others and help our nation heal.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how fundamentally we are made to be social.

My wife, after seeing her co-workers in her school district on a compilation video, looked at me with tears in her eyes, “I miss everybody.”

As a family, we have been planning video chats almost every night now. We desperately miss our children and grandchildren on the other side of town. We long to give them a hug like we have nearly every week for years.

Walks Become Socials

Daily walks in our neighborhood have turned into a great social. We see other walkers, runners, bikers, rollerbladers, and kids playing (at safe distances). Almost without fail, there are smiles and warm greetings. Why the pleasantries at the height of a pandemic? I think it’s the social connection that is warming our hearts in the midst of so much sorrow.

Love

Jesus, in replying to the religious leaders of the time about the greatest commandment, said, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22).

I Corinthians 13 says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Our Creator had made us to love and be loved – could this be any more evident than it is today while we are forced apart?

Enduring Lessons

This is a horrific time in which we are all living. We don’t know when it will end and we certainly don’t know what tomorrow holds. But while we all pray for an end to the pandemic, perhaps one of the enduring lessons we can take beyond this day is to put one another first above the television, above social media, above money, above all but God.

How much time do we spend with worry? Worry about our family, worry about our career, worry about our health, worry about our wealth.

We all go through chapters where life does not make sense and we have to navigate difficult situations. As it has been said that you are either in a crisis or you in between crises.

But what does worry do for us? It makes matters worse by the release of the chemical, cortisol.  An article in Psychology Today states, “The stress hormone, cortisol, is public health enemy Number One. Scientists have known for years that elevated cortisol levels interfere with learning and memory, lower immune function and bone density, increase weight gain, blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart disease…”

Worry can make a bad situation much worse.

Life is not fair and at times extremely difficult, but worry will not only not help, it will make matters worse, potentially much worse.

If you are a worrier, resolve to get this under control. It’s not easy, I know this very well. As a Christian, I often recall the words of Christ in Matthew, “Therefore, I tell you do not worry…”

I TELL you, not recommend, not consider…tell you. Some days I have to remind myself of these words repeatedly.

If you are looking for a new healthy resolution, maybe committing to put worry aside is a resolution to adopt.

11.12.19

Scripture provides us great wisdom. So often the commands are so simple, so basic, and still so difficult.

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:36-39)

And yet we insult one another, we hate, we take advantage of others, we love ourselves, but hate our neighbor.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal…But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” C.S. Lewis

Love one another as we are commanded and change your home, neighborhood, church, workplace…

11.12.19

Before we had social media, “we” would discuss our differences face-to-face.  Today we post memes that struggle to include a scintilla of truth.  These short, and often vacuous, posts are more likely than not to be loaded with inflammatory language, sure to raise the ire of those who hold another view.

This isn’t debate – it’s at best cowardly.  At worst, you (right or left) are being used as an unpaid foot soldier by the political party and the wealthy to promote their message on social media.  Every share from some “independent” webpage is one more advertisement that didn’t cost them so much as a penny.

What is perhaps even more of a concern is that while we (the electorate) are busy attacking each other, we are distracted from the real problem: A bloated, out of control government that doesn’t reflect the limited Republic that Benjamin Franklin warned us about maintaining.

I am very concerned about the “state of politics” in the world today.  I am very concerned about loss of freedom, a federal government that is more in touch with Wall Street and the elitist than they are with “we the people.” But these emotional jabs, which lack any substance that friends are taking at one another, don’t further the cause of the country.  In my opinion, they only cause further division.

Perhaps we would all do well to meet in the town square, local coffee shop, or tavern and engage in respectful debate … face-to-face.