Our Desperate Need for Christmas

America's current state strikingly illustrates our desperate need for Christmas.  Let it not be lost on us this season, as the very tragedies we are reeling from as a nation are precisely the reason why there is a Christmas.  For if we continue to fail to make that connection, we are lost ... as a nation, and as individuals.  The stakes could not be higher.

As my recent Facebook posts illustrate, I am NOT a fan of gun control.  I believe very strongly that we have enough gun control laws already ... far too many actually.  What is needed is not more controls (which have no effect upon criminals anyway), but rather internal controls ... aka "SELF-control" ... and self-control will never come through governments or laws.  Self-control only comes through good parenting and the development of sound inward convictions - both of which must be based on a solid moral foundation and upon the principle of personal accountability for one's actions. 

Ultimately, this means the Judgment of God ... in a word: HELL.  Without understanding that there exists a Holy, Perfect, All-knowing, and All-powerful Judge and that there are eternal consequences to our behavior ... sin ... there will never be any basis or motivation for personal responsibility (not to mention a defendable basis for our legal system) or self-control. 

Despite what our children are being taught today, our nation was in fact conceived, founded, built, and administered upon the moral code of God found in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.  It is the basis for our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our Legal System, and even the very "triune" structure of our government.  For nearly 200 years, America was run in such a way as to recognize and magnify God as our Creator, Judge, and Provider.  We taught our children the moral laws of God in public schools (and spanked them when they misbehaved!); we held our citizens accountable to them through our legal system; and our churches openly and clearly taught the Biblical foundations of accountability and consequence both in this life and the next for our choices - as individuals and as a nation.  This is not to say that people weren't allowed to practice the religion of their choice, they have always been. But our laws and culture are based on the Bible. Period.  The practice of other religions has always been free only insofar as it has not contradicted the laws of America - which are based on the Law of God.

Today however, in a staggeringly rapid and accelerating fall from all that once made us great, our government, schools, and even churches have walked, nay RUN, away from even acknowledging, much less teaching these values and principles.  We have eradicated them from our schools, stricken them from our laws, reinterpreted our own Constitution, and banned the public display of even the symbols of these great principles and truths.

Yet, God's laws have not changed, for they are based on His nature and character which is immutable and timeless.

Sin is still sin.

Judgment is still Judgement.

Hell is still Hell.

And it awaits all those who do not surrender their lives to God's will and control as it always has.

I personally harbor no further hope that our government is capable of saving our nation from its ongoing decay and coming destruction.  Sorry if that sounds overly pessimistic. I would call it "realistic".  Our lawmakers are indeed a primary source of this decay and daily demonstrate that they have no grasp of the root problem, thus no solution will be forthcoming from that quarter.  If our nation has any hope of even slowing its headlong rush into oblivion (much less recovery), it lies not in the election process (recent events have demonstrated this beyond argument), but in calling its people back to God ... to a knowledge of sin and our personal (and national) responsibility and accountability for it, and thus need for a Savior/Messiah both personally and nationally - which can be filled by Jesus Christ Who was sent specifically and uniquely for the purpose of saving us from the consequence of sin.

As we reel from recent and ongoing tragedies that have rocked our nation, we are brought face-to-face with the very problem I speak of - the black, ugly, evil of sin that pervades the human soul.  The Evolutionists, Humanists, and Post-Modernists try their best to deny its existence teaching than Man is inherently good or at least neutral, and that evil acts such as school shootings must be the result of some kind of external corrupting influences.  They therefore look to external means to try to control them - gun control for example.  But attempting to control the inward evil of sin in a heart by external means is like the proverbial act of gold-plating a turd (please forgive the vernacular, but the analogy is appropriate).  For God's Word describes the condition of the human heart apart from Him in this way:

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." -- Genesis 6:5

"All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." -- Isaiah 53:6

"But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away." -- Isaiah 64:6 

"... For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" -- Romans 3:23  

"So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God." -- Romans 8:8  

"...Without Me you can do nothing." -- John 15:5  

Outward controls will never change the inward sin nature from which the evil originates.  Indeed, God Himself demonstrates that His own outward Law can never fix the problem of sin.

"For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death." -- Romans 7:5  

"The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law." --  1 Corinthians 15:56  

 For the purpose of even God's Law was never to "fix" men's hearts, but rather to spotlight sin and hold them accountable for it.

"For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law." -- Romans 5:13  

No, the solution to the problem of sin is not more laws - either from God of from Men - but rather a new heart, and inward change of nature which can only be wrought by God Himself.
 

"For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh," -- Romans 8:3  

THIS is reason that God sent His Son into the world - that the penalty for our own sin could be paid for by Someone other than ourselves

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." -- Romans 6:23 

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.  He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. " -- John 3:16-19

Without the life-changing power of God available through Jesus Christ, we would all not only be accountable for our sin but powerless to change ourselves or our destinies.  But in His love God gave us Christmas.  Of course I mean the advent of Jesus Christ (whatever time of year it was :) as the only true solution to the problem of sin and evil.  By extension then, it becomes also the only true solution to the problems facing our nation as well.

This Christmas season, as we wrestle with the long list of tragic events and difficulties we face looking forward, let us not only remember and reflect on God's "indescribable gift" (2 Cor 9:15), but let us also commit to doing all we can - as individuals, as families, and as citizens - of proclaiming the only True Solution to our problems. Teach your children and proclaim to those you know that America's future lies not gun control, or a balanced budget, or immigration reform or smaller government.  It lies where it always has - in Jesus Christ, and in making Him and His principles and His solution for Mankind's evil the center of our personal actions as well as those of our nation.

We must of course continue to do all we can as citizens to slow the tide of this decay through the legal and democratic means afforded us. We would be remiss to not.  But we must also recognize that these can only slow the tide we face until we restore our Nation to Godliness and her people to recognition of and accountability for sin.  When we have done that, we will once again rejoice to sing these forgotten verses of "America The Beautiful".

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,

Whose stern impassion'd stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness!

America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw,

Confirm thy soul in self-control,

Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife,

Who more than self their country loved,

And mercy more than life!

America! America! May God thy gold refine

Till all success be nobleness,

And ev'ry gain divine!

To each and all, a very merry and blessed Christmas season in all the full meaning thereof,

- Tim -

I leave you with the words of the 3rd and 4th verses of "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear"

Yet with te woes of sin and strife

The world hath suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love song which they bring:

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

For lo! the days are hastening on,

By prophet bards foretold,

When, with the ever-circling years,

Shall come the Age of Gold;

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And all the world give back the song

Which now the angels sing.