Today, I found myself seeking a moment or two of solitude; just sitting quietly by myself, hoping to quiet my thoughts and get a sense of the heaviness that I was feeling. As soon as I shut down all the distracting noises of the world, I quickly understood that the weight on my spirit came from the realization that this oppression is coming from the accumulative erosion of the virtue in our society.
Before I can continue with this train of consciousness, I need to define my idea of "virtue", and why it's important to me. Virtue is a valuable commodity in my Biblical worldview, and it stands for the goodness, righteousness, integrity, honesty, decency, incorruptibility, moral, and principled manner in which a society operates. It matters to me because those are the standards that I use to measure if the society in which I live is worthy of my respect and adherence. I believe that my God, Jesus Christ, created this world to glorify Him; its peoples to follow His ways; and its laws to mirror His government in Heaven.
That may sound like a naive perspective for the 21st Century, but as I look upon the direction this modern civilization is headed, it is apparent to me [by my standards, which are God's] that, by abandoning this criterion, we are becoming a dying society and culture. And it has been a death by a thousand cuts; so gradual that we didn't even see how we were compromising our covenant with God. Just in my lifetime, I can see where the idea that "God is dead" took root in philosophical circles. That theology is nothing new -- Satan has tried to implement this groupthink since the Garden. Various civilizations throughout the history of man's existence have bought into this lie that we don't need God. But I can trace the rise of this secular idea and the abandonment of traditional beliefs in God [during my lifetime] to the 1960s and the rise of rebellion among American youth.
That defiance and resistance to anything suggesting conformity [especially to Biblical principles] quickly saw prayer, God, and the Bible removed from our schools. This is in such stark contrast to their place in education at the dawn of America. In fact, a classical education in the American colonies emphasized the study of the Bible and Christian principles as foundational to all knowledge and learning. Schools were established to ensure Bible literacy, and the curriculum included theology alongside classical subjects like Latin and Greek.
Just ponder these quotes by the Founding Fathers, and whether you are a Believer or not, you cannot deny the importance they placed on God and His place in a just and moral society ... "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other" [John Adams]; "Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle" [George Washington]; "No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people" [Noah Webster]; "Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion" [John Adams].
It's so easy, if you employ critical thinking, to recognize Satan's tactics: sow into vulnerable minds the temptation to believe that God is unnecessary; therefore the idea of Him is dead, which leads to the conclusion that prayer and the mention of God and the Bible are no longer necessary in our classrooms. And without the guidance of God or His tenets, we become our own god, giving ourselves the freedom to do whatever pleases us [instead of Him]. And so we bought into the lie that drugs, sex, and rock and roll gave us a more enjoyable lifestyle than the dictates of a Biblical lifestyle. Free sex with whomever you desired understandably resulted in unwanted pregnancies. It's not convenient for your self-indulgent lifestyle? Then abortion is the answer. And to keep religion or guilt from "meddling" in your life, well then, we worked to get government to enact laws that gave us the legal right to murder those babies.
Can you see how easy it was to remove the semblance of virtue from our society? But this progression is nothing new in the history of man. In actuality, there is a demonic presence that Satan has introduced throughout different civilizations to mock and destroy God's ability and authority to create Life. Remember, Satan can't create anything! He can certainly tempt humans to listen to his lies and follow his instructions to worship him [and act in his ways] instead of following the One True God. So, in an effort to mock and oppose God, it was to Satan's benefit to introduce the false god known as Molech [or Moloch or Malek, depending on the different cultures that existed at his introduction to the Canaanite culture and tribes].
Men were tempted to build statues of Molech, which resembled a human body with a bull's head. Usually made of bronze, the statue appeared with arms outstretched and a belly that opened to serve as a furnace. In the ancient cultures, families would offer to pass their children "through the fire" [to be burned alive] in order to secure favor and prosperity. Fast forward through the centuries, and we see that even in the 21st Century, the spirit of the false god Molech is still alive and working as a dark, evil mirror of our disintegrating society. Abortion is the law of the land, and it reflects the practice of infant sacrifice, which is part of Molech worship. It doesn't take a genius to see that abortion exalts death, which is what the worship of Satan and Molech exemplify. Whether a woman identifies abortion with Molech worship or not, the act of killing your baby accomplishes the same thing for Satan.
In today's society, Satan tempts women to sacrifice their children in the name of Self ... specifically in the name of access to education, career goals, financial concerns, lack of stable relationships, and inconvenience, among many other emotional reasons. And I want to make it clear that I am not insensitive to the issues of rape or the mother's health. Those are difficult decisions that I hope would be made after much consultation with Jesus, who created the child that the mother carries. But I also believe far too many women choose to sacrifice their babies out of a desire to meet their own needs. That process also ignores the fact that they are destroying what God has created. In that sense, women become their own god, giving themselves the authority to destroy life. With over 65,000,000 babies legally aborted in the U.S. since 1973, I think I can argue that we have created a culture of death in this country -- the exact opposite of God's desire for humanity.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Each one of us is born with a spark of God's Light in us. And that Light shines in the darkness of Satan's world here on earth, when we are in kinship and unity with the One who created us. When I think about over 65,000,000 Lights extinguished in the last 52 years since Roe v Wade was enacted in 1973, my spirit is overcome with tremendous grief... grief for those innocent babies who felt the pain of being gruesomely destroyed in what was supposed to be a safe place for them, their mother's womb ... grief for the women whom I believe will one day experience the spirits of guilt and shame when they realize that they fell for Satan's lies ... and the grief of Jesus, whom I believe has borne the pain [and shed the tears] of those precious lives He created.
I am no longer the unsuspecting and over-trusting young girl of my youth, who believed what I saw through the rose-colored glasses I wore and what I was taught about my country's history. I have seen behind the curtain, and I recognize the deception that I was spoon-fed. There are far too many believable conspiracies behind political assassinations; false reasons for wars [that resulted in untold millions of unwarranted deaths and suffering]; and willful duplicity and treachery for personal gain and power. And the deception seems to keep growing. We are not turning away from the path Satan has set before us. And when we become aware of it, and we don't make an effort to turn the ship back towards God, then we are complicit with the system of destruction.
Sadly, I believe the system has become too powerful, and the expanse of society is too comfortable in their deception. Looking forward, I think it is going to be up to each individual to decide whether their personal virtue is worth preserving, or if the battle over it seems too ominous, burdensome, and colossal. I understand. But we also have to decide how we want to appear before Jesus. For me, I want to finish strong in His sight. I want to stand before Him as a Daughter in whom He approves and is proud of. In my flesh, I unapologetically want to try and reclaim some small part of my impression that this country was founded to be representative of God's Goodness and Provision. I don't know if that is even possible anymore. But I promise you this ... I will be true to who God made me to be and to who He is. I will not cooperate with Evil, and I will not compromise with a world who only seeks self-gratification and self-worship. I believe Jesus is coming soon, and I am ready for His rule and reign!
"Yet even now," declare the Lord, "return to Me with all your heart [in genuine repentance], with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts [in sorrow and contrition] and not your garments".
