Do You Believe in God?

It’s a good question. And an important one. Last week on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” the host asked Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading Democrat candidate for President, “You say you’re culturally Jewish — you don’t feel religious,… “Do you believe in God, and do you think that’s important to the people of the United States?”

Sanders would not answer directly. Because he knows the overwhelming majority of Americans do believe. Instead he replied that he believes in a collective existence in which people should help the less fortunate and not simply “worship…billionaires.” Well, he’s a socialist. “I am who I am and what I believe in and what my spirituality is about is that we’re all in this together…We do best as human beings — we fulfill our lives when we work together,” he said.

In other words, no. Sanders does not believe in God. Human beings, in his view, are the highest order of existence. And he, by definition, is the highest of all. The Bible says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” Why is unbelief so foolish? Because the evidence for the existence of God is overwhelming and irrefutable. One must be willfully blind to deny the existence of God. And when one does that, the psalmist goes on to say, he cuts himself off from any higher authority than himself. Which means, “They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is none who does good.” (Psalm 14:1) That is why in the name of socialism—Bernie Sanders’ chosen political philosophy—more evil has been committed against the human race than by any other political point of view. More people condemned to poverty, more people locked in dehumanizing despair. Because without God, it is the powerful who rule. And the powerful can be excessively cruel. Who is there to stop them?

Which brings us to Hillary Clinton’s eleven hour appearance the next day before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. In that contest, Mrs. Clinton came out on top in the game of political theater. She danced and weaved, held her ground, and dodged responsibility for the deaths of four Americans, including America’s ambassador to Libya. The next day, while her supporters cheered, she did a victory lap to celebrate her performance.

But in the give and take we learned what many have known from the beginning–that Mrs. Clinton is a liar on a breathtaking scale. She told the American people right after the Benghazi attack on the U.S. consulate that it was the work of a spontaneous mob inflamed by a third rate video mocking Islam’s prophet, Mohammed. She knew that was not the case. Two hours later she emailed her daughter to say that the compound had been attacked by a premeditated “Al-Qaida-like group.” She frankly informed the President of Egypt and the Prime Minister of Libya that the attack was the work of Islamic terrorists.

She knew the truth from the beginning, yet a week later she told the father of one of the Americans killed that we, the United States, would get the man who had made the video. That weekend the President’s spokeswoman told the Sunday news shows the same lie. And a few days later the President himself said the same thing in a speech to the United Nations. Deliberate lies and distortions, concocted cynically to ensure the President’s re-election in two months’ time.

Is there a connection between open atheism and telling lies? The answer is yes, for liars are practical atheists. How so? In another place the psalmist says of the wicked, “There is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flatters himself in his own eyes, concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit; He has ceased to be wise and to do good.” (Psalm 36:1-3)

The liar assumes that there is no God who hears what he says, or even more, that there is no authority who will hold him to account. The liar makes herself the highest authority in the Universe. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, she does not hesitate to tell one lie after another because she clearly believes that if she is a good enough liar—and she is good–, she will never be caught. Or to put it bluntly, no matter what she may profess, she believes that there is no God who hears every word she utters and who will one day replay them before the world to her shame. And so far in her life, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, the former President, have been telling lies for decades–and they have gotten away with it. The majority of the American people, according to polls, have rightly concluded that she is untrustworthy and disingenuous. But they may vote for her.

Why is truth so important? Because without truth society cannot stand. If those at the top tells lies, it says to those farther down the social chain that they need not tell the truth either. And then soon, a neighbor cannot trust the word of his neighbor in in their daily transactions. Agreements and contracts mean nothing. Promises made and received are worthless. It devolves to every man for himself.

Whether it is open atheism or practical atheism, our society is being destroyed at the core by those who do not believe in God. If God is not there and they think they will never be called to account for their lies or their sins, nothing remains to restrain the evil they may commit. The verbal exercise of naked power soon becomes the practical exercise of naked power. And the weak, the poor, and those who are not ruthless soon become victims.

Thank God He is there and that he guarantees that every idle word is heard and not forgotten. Thank God that liars will not in the end get away with their lies. Thank God that true justice will one day will be handed out. “He will recompense every man according to his deeds”–and his words. (Matthew 16:27) God made one of His Ten Commandments, “You shall not bear false witness.” He gave it for our good and the good of our communities and the good of our nation. A wise people enforces it.

Ruins of the Wicked

The November 2015 issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine, contains an article about Bulgaria that features a powerful photograph of the ruins of the Budludzha Monument*. The monument was once a tribute to the birth of Bulgaria’s socialist movement.

Bulgaria fell under the power of the Soviet Union after World War II, and the Russians turned it into one of their slave states behind the Iron Curtain. The Monument appears once to have been a vast auditorium. The center of the huge, sweeping, domed roof bears a red and green image of the hammer and sickle symbol of Communist power. Now the sunlight pours through the slats of the decaying roof revealing gaping holes which admit rain and snow. Below on the rounded walls, faded gigantic portraits of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin stare out unseeing, and the faded colors and forms of what once were painted murals of the workers paradise slowly peel from view.

The concrete floor lies empty of furniture, just a big, void space littered with trash and a few piles of unmelted snow. A lone poster, once plastered on the face of the broad stage declares, “Workers of the World Unite!” A laughable memory for the chanting crowds that once gathered here to cheer on the heroes of the revolution. It is an awesome place, an eerie relic of bygone conflict and fruitless promises.

A current Stephen Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, evokes the feel of those days. I recall them well. Elementary schools held “retention drills” on Monday mornings. Across the city eerie air raid sirens wailed and we children were marched into the hallways, pulling our coats over our heads, and told to lie down against the walls. While we didn’t fully understand what an atomic bomb might do, we were suitably frightened. A neighbor dug a bomb shelter. The Russians were a dreaded enemy, a seemingly invincible force that threatened our lives.

But then came the fall of the Berlin wall, and the Budludza Monument began to rot. Was the Communist threat real? Were we right to be alarmed? Oh yes, believe it. But the present state of the once powerful empire is closer to the truth. And here is the truth. From God: “Woe to you, Oh destroyer, while you were not destroyed; and he who is treacherous, while others did not deal treacherously with him. As soon as you shall finish destroying, you shall be destroyed; As soon as you shall cease to deal treacherously, others shall deal treacherously with you.” Those are the prophet Isaiah’s words (Isaiah 33:1). He was speaking of the Assyrian Empire which rolled unstoppable over the civilized world in the eighth century BC. The Assyrians were cruel, paralleled ISIS in their atrocities, and every nation fell before them like so many dominoes. They terrified everyone.

But God was stating the reality. He had allowed the Assyrians to be his tool to punish the wicked, but in the end he would destroy them. And that was exactly what happened when their time ran out. Their fall when it came was sudden.

The wicked, those who oppose God and his truth, ultimately fade from view. Every time. And who is it that lasts and continues to stand through the ages? Isaiah had prayed, “O Lord, be gracious to us; we have waited for You. Be our strength every morning.” (v 2) Historically, Jerusalem was the only city in the world that the Assyrians failed to capture. The Annals of Sennacherib record after a list of his conquests, “I shut up [King] Hezekiah like a bird in a cage.” But he could not prevail and withdrew from Palestine after suffering the loss of 185,000 of his troops. To this day it is not the Assyrians who still stand, or the Soviet Empire of our time, but the people of God, and the truth that God is God. Those who trust in him will endure. It is they who remain from age to age.

There is a lesson for us. The world is full of wicked people, those who defy God and flaunt his commandments. Often they appear almost invincible. Today it is Muslim terrorists and ISIS who slaughter Christians in the Middle East, Iran with nuclear weapons almost in hand, the renewed Russian Bear which has emerged from hibernation. It is lawless rioters and treacherous gangs that rule our city streets by night, enemies of humanity who traffic in the body parts of aborted infants, and political leaders who despise the authority of God. At times they can cause us to despair.

But the truth remains. One day they will run their course and they and their evil deeds will be forgotten. It is the people of God who will remain, and the truth of God which will endure. There are many, especially among the Millennial Generation, who look askance at the world and repeat what many citizens of Jerusalem were saying in 701 BC, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” (Isaiah 22:13)

But the wise choose to trust in God. He declares to the wicked: “Because of your raging against Me, and because your arrogance has come up to My ears, Therefore I will put My hook in your nose, and My bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way which you came.” (Isaiah 36:29) Let us take courage!

Note: For an interesting comparison, Google Google Images, Budludzha Monument, Bulgaria.

Why Christian Institutions Lose the Faith

In a conversation a few days ago with a friend in another country, I learned that the Dutch Reformed Church, the largest Reformed denomination in South Africa, has just declared that it now approves same-sex marriage. It gives pastors the right to perform same-sex marriages and will not require homosexual Christians to live in chastity. In other words, the Dutch Reformed Church has capitulated to the culture and given up the clear teaching of the Word of God.

If this report proves true—and it has been widely reported—then that major South African denomination, so influential in that country’s religious and moral life, has stepped beyond the bounds of what may be considered Christianity. It joins denominations in the United States that have moved beyond the Christian faith—the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church, and the United Church of Christ. We see the bastions of historic Christianity collapsing, and the sound of their fall is mighty.

How can it be that denominations—and Christian institutions generally—that have since their beginnings stood strongly for Biblical Christianity, so easily give way to the social pressure mounted by perhaps six million people (in the United States)? It didn’t happen all at once, clearly. It took a series of steps, each one seemingly tiny when viewed alone, but proving in accumulation to have been a long path of compromise.

Let’s look. A few weeks ago the South Carolina Baptist Association, with 2000 Southern Baptist Churches called upon the First Baptist Church of Greenville, SC to recant the declaration its congregation adopted in May 2015. To my knowledge, the big, socially prominent church has not responded. The next step, if they fail to comply, will be a motion at the SCBA November convention to remove First Baptist from the state association. Let’s go back to trace the steps.

First Baptist has a storied past. The church’s founding pastor was the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention when it was formed in 1845. (The SBC is today the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.) The church served as the birthplace of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary which has sent out thousands of graduates to organize new churches and to call people across the South to come to Christ. But by 1999 First Baptist found the Southern Baptist denomination’s theology too rigid, and withdrew from the SBC. They joined 2000 other former Southern Baptist congregations in forming the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a “moderate” umbrella organization that would not press them theologically. They remained in the South Carolina Association to preserve appearances.

Near the end of 2014 FBC had drifted so far that it initiated a six month “discernment process” which led a vast majority of the congregation to adopt an LGBT non-discrimination policy. This was not a vote on whether homosexuality was right or wrong, you understand. The pastor explained the declaration merely said that the congregation would worship together without discriminating against LGBT marriage or participation in church leadership roles. In effect, it allows “marriage of gay couples and opens the way for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members to be appointed to leadership positions, including ordination.” You notice the subtle wording and reasoning. As the pastor said, “it will encourage evangelical gay people to return to their Baptist heritage.” How noble! How kind! But how contrary to the Word of God! (I Corinthians 6:9-11)

But how does a church or other Christian institution come to the point where it can actually take such a stance and persuade itself that the step is wise and righteous? It is subtle. Last week I received the regular PR publication of the college from which I graduated. It announced the results of an exhaustive study to determine the future of the College. It was full of self-congratulation and evidences of the glowing state of the school—not without merit. The college is responding to a number of changes in society that compel the school to adjust. So far, so good. This is facing reality. It is prudent. Society is constantly evolving. Adjustments in course are always necessary if an institution is to survive and flourish.

There are a half dozen liberal arts colleges in Western Pennsylvania, all fairly much alike, all founded by groups of Christians in the middle 1800s. They possess a rich spiritual heritage. But times are different now from when the colleges began. All of these schools draw from a population that prospered from the flourishing oil, coal, and steel industries. The schools aimed at middle and lower middle class families who were eager to educate their young. But as those basic industries waned, the general population shrank by as much as twenty percent. Energy and population have drifted south. And then there is the additional reality of a shrinking middle class. According to the Pew Charitable Trust, just fifteen years ago 49.3 percent of Pennsylvania families belonged to the middle class. Today that figure is 46.5 percent. Translation: fewer students to draw from.

At the same time, costs have gone up. “Liberal Arts colleges are very expensive to operate given the low student-to-faculty ratio and programs and amenities required of residential institutions,” explained the president. “Families demand personal attention and the best amenities, but are increasingly unable to afford it.” The median middle class income has shrunk by over $3000 from what it was seven years ago. You see the problem.

Finally, fewer people see a liberal arts education as valuable. The college founders sought to provide for “the mental and moral training of youth.” Today, that breadth of education and understanding seems more and more irrelevant. What students want today is an education that leads straight to a job and the guarantee of financial success.

So change must follow if the institution is to survive. Accordingly, my college has dropped certain majors and added new ones. And the choices are revealing. Among those courses dropped are Christian Education, Latin, and Greek. The college once upon a time prepared young men and women for careers as pastors or workers in the church and the school turned out many illustrious pastors and Christian leaders. No more. Abandoning the religious emphasis only puts finis to a gradually decreasing emphasis of the college. However, the steps toward that change began much earlier. I recall in my freshman year that the school began consciously to de-emphasize Christianity in the selection of its faculty and leadership. Knowing and following God’s Word slowly became a non factor. Sometime along the way the college opened its dorms to co-ed residence. Small choices, small steps. Ultimate abandonment.

Christ says in Revelation 3:11, “Hold fast what you have, in order that no one take your crown.” Christ was speaking to the first generation of church leaders. A church, a denomination, a Christian institution is founded by people who have a passionate desire to serve God, who possess a vision, and who have the skills to bring it to pass. They must remain vigilantly committed to their foundations. But those who follow in succeeding generations have a different concern. They are more preoccupied with preserving the organization or perfecting it.

Therefore when conditions begin to change they feel greatly the pressure to adapt to those changes that appear to threaten the original institution. The danger for them is that bit by bit and little by little they make choices that open the way to a loss of the passion that once infused the work. A great denomination that has apostasized, a church congregation that has wandered from Biblical truth, a Christian institution that loses its purpose, only dies because those within have first given up their own faith. It didn’t seem like that. There were always good reasons for the choices they made. Today we are seeing the fruits. To you who remain: Buck up! Greater dangers are afoot.

What’s Behind the Oregon College Shooting

Before the bodies had cooled or the blood congealed, President Obama stalked to the nation’s television cameras and with phony rage damned the guns that law abiding Americans own, and blamed them for the latest mass shooting.

He pursed his lips. He glared. He was really mad. He said, “Here we are again. This has become routine. What I have to say has become routine.” So he said it anyway–that we wouldn’t have shootings like the one that had just occurred at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon if we had stricter gun laws.

It was all theater, set against a backdrop of horror and tragedy for the victims and their families. A convenient opportunity for the President to push one of his favorite causes: the disarming of the American people. Banning guns would fix what is wrong with our nation. Hypocrisy. Blatant political manipulation. The President said that the states that have the strictest gun laws have the fewest shootings. Pile on the lies to make your point, Mr. President.

Let’s take the President’s home state, Illinois, as an example. Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Chicago, where the President calls home, has tighter gun laws than almost any other American city. Since 2012 there have been 6000 shootings on the streets of Chicago. One thousand six hundred seventy-five people have been murdered. Ninety percent of these are black on black crimes. The streets are ruled by gangs. Fifty people were shot in Chicago over the past weekend. All those gun laws did a great job of keeping the peace didn’t they? But the President does not speak of this.

Umpqua Community College was a gun free zone. Nobody had guns there, not even the lone security guard who was on duty on the other side of the campus. It should have been a place of safety, a refuge where students young and old could learn in peace. The sort of place President Obama would praise as an example of what he has in mind by banning guns. The nearest police were based forty minutes away. All these factors made UCC a soft target for a psychologically disturbed twenty-six year-old man who had washed out of army basic training. He arrived on campus with five hand guns and a rifle. No one could stop him.

He walked into a classroom and shot a professor in the head at point blank range. Then, according to eyewitness and survivor testimony, he lined students up and asked them, “What is your religion?” To those who answered that they were Christians, he said, “That’s good, because in about two seconds you are going to meet God.” Then he shot them in the head. Others he merely maimed. Nine lie dead. Nine others are wounded. When the police finally arrived he turned on them and died in a hail of bullets.

Are guns the cause of the string of mass shootings we have been experiencing across America? Of course not. But there is a cause. With each crack of a gun we are hearing the snapping of the American culture as it fractures and collapses around us. Something is dreadfully wrong. And it is us. Our hearts, not our guns.

Many of our fellow citizens have entertained a hostility toward God and his people. A seething hatred has slithered out of hell and infected millions upon millions of us. It rises all the way to the top. The President’s administration is the most openly hostile, anti-Christian government in our history. As a result persecution directed against Christians has now come out into the open. In Oregon Christians were singled out and slaughtered. In Charleston another gunman invaded the sanctity of a church to commit his religious murders.

Go back to the President’s desk. The United States has received 4000 Syrian refugees who are Muslims. Meanwhile Christian refugees from Syria are being deported and others refused entry. The ones who have been especially targeted by ISIS are denied sanctuary by the State Department. The same question that is put to those in Syria was repeated by the Oregon shooter: “Are you a Christian?” To answer in the affirmative has come to mean death.

Jeremiah the prophet spoke for God: “At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; If that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation, or concerning a kingdom, to build up or to plant it; If it does evil in My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will think better of the good with which I had promised to bless it.” (Jeremiah 18:7-10)

The mass shootings are nothing more or less than the voice of God warning us that we cannot escape him. If things are falling apart, then to divert the blame toward the false issue of guns is another evidence of our rebellion. The remedy is to repent and to seek God. Not the “bad guys,” whoever they may be. It is for you and me to seek God. And if enough of us own up to our sins and turn back, then God perhaps may reverse the judgment that is surely falling upon us. Quickly, before another burst of gunfire may be directed at a group in which you are gathered.