THE ROOT OF OUR DECLINE
I’m amazed at the ignorance and willful blindness of the masses, but also at the dullness of heart of so many Christians. It reminds me in similar ways of the willful blindness of the Germans and their eager embrace of Hitler and Nazism. Many seem shocked and aghast, that we are living in a time of history where academics and popular culture are forcing on us and our children the denial of objective reality. Such as there is no sex difference between a man and a woman. Such as men can get pregnant! Recently in fact, our leaders placed a judge on the highest court in the nation, whose job it is to rightly interpret laws, to make sound judgments that become binding on us all, who could not and would not, as a woman herself, define what a woman is. I would not trust this judge to babysit my kids, let alone make such important binding decisions for the rest of her life on the Supreme Court!
Many wonder among themselves, how could it have possibly come to this? That we tell our little boys they can be a girl, that we tell our little girls they can be a boy, that we allow such folly to be taught to our children, or force on their sports teams such insanity as boys dressed up as girls can compete against our daughters.
Let me explain this and help you understand how we got here. Almost 60 years ago, in the face of objective reality, academics and our schools began to tell our children that in spite of all the evidence that a universe so complex, a universe so incredibly well designed, must have a creator, that creator being God, instead, they began to teach them the absurd lie that man evolved from nothing. That there is no Divine Creator. That everything our eye sees, our senses take in, simply occurred all by themselves. This pernicious lie, called evolution, has infected everything. It was in fact a driving factor in the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews. Darwinism was a part of Nazi ideology. It brought untold death, brutality, suffering, and misery to millions and millions of people. This mantra, There Is No God, was at the very heart of communism, of Stalin’s brutal purges and his starvation of tens of millions of Ukrainians. It was at the very heart of Mao’s murderous reign of terror over millions in communist China. Men determined to deny the God of the Bible, and ignore objective reality, instead created hell on earth for hundreds of millions of people.
This denial, this rejection of God as God and Creator is at the very heart of the great decline of our nation and our citizens. This is precisely what is taught so powerfully and so eloquently in Romans 1:18-32 NLT. As a result, we as a nation have invented all kinds of stupid, foolish ideas, ideas that fly in the face of objective reality. We’ve become a nation of fools, led by fools, unrestrained in our wicked pursuits, and asinine, destructive ideas. Ideas and beliefs always have consequences!
Here is a hard, difficult truth we must understand about the times we live in. In most cases, we cannot change many of our present institutions! We cannot remake them into bastions of objective truth. They are beginning to crumble under the weight of their moral rot! All of our moral outrage will not save our children from their wicked grasp. Rather, we must find a way ourselves to save them from the wickedness around us. Instead of simply moral outrage, we need moral outrage in action!
WHAT NOW
Here are some very important and strategic things to prayerfully consider.
Is it time to walk away from these wicked places? To abandon them, just as God did in Romans 1. He abandoned them to their own lusts, letting them destroy themselves.
Is it time to more deeply ponder the implications of 2 Cor. 6:14-18 NLT? “To come out from among them and separate ourselves. For it is then God will live and walk among us in a powerful way!” Isn’t this part of what it means to be His people? I encourage you to freshly, prayerfully consider this passage of scripture and ask yourself, in what ways might God want you to apply this to your family?
In addition, let me ask you to also prayerfully consider this statement and ponder what God may want you to consider in light of the present times we live in.
Consider this: If you would not send your child to a church or Sunday school for 1 hour a week, that taught the current social doctrines, moral doctrines, sexual LGBTQ doctrines, origin doctrines, and systemic racism doctrines, all of which are outright lies and extremely anti-God, which are currently being systematically taught at our government schools. Why would you send your child for 35 hours a week to a school that teaches those lies? In addition, are we not as parents trying to teach our children to respect authority? When those in authority are teaching them so many lies totally contrary to God and God’s teachings and warnings, what are our children supposed to think?
May 2023 be a year of renewed, zealous commitment to God for all of us. May God give us great wisdom and discernment to effectively raise our children in these very evil times.
One last practical suggestion. Find and participate in good, upright alternatives for your children to be involved in.
Such as Trail Life for boys to participate with their fathers, instead of Boy Scouts, or Heritage girls to participate with their mothers instead of Girl Scouts. There are many wonderful, upright alternatives for you and your family.
My earnest prayer for all of us is that God would give each of us the courage to be the Christian dissidents God has called us to be in these wicked and evil days we live in. Maranatha is our living hope.
*Note: There may be secular institutions God calls you to work at, not for the purpose of changing the institution, but for the purpose of being a light for Jesus Christ and the Gospel to the people around you there. This is a commendable calling.
Helping you become a Strong Disciple,
Because of Jesus,
Pastor Mark Darling
