Is There A Conspiracy To Take God And Biblical Principals Out Of America?

There was a time in America when joining a Christian church was something that people did if they wanted to hold a social position in the community and, while that is still true in some parts of the country, it is becoming less true every year.

A high-profile politician currently holding office in Maine said privately that he does not consider himself to be Catholic but he is a member of the Catholic Church because so many of his constituents were, and that was where he needed to go for the votes. Maine being one of the least religious states in the country, he still found that to be true.

When I worked for a city in Texas and directed the ambulance service there, one of the city council members, who I was friendly with, suggested that I join the Southern Baptist Church rather than the Church of Christ because that was the largest Protestant body in town, and it would help when it came to raising funds for the ambulance service.

So even today, in many parts of the country, people find it to be advantageous to identify with a Christian church. More frequently, they are seeking one of the more secular Christian churches, hoping to have the best of both worlds, I suppose.

However, in some parts of the country there has developed a stigma that works against those who identify themselves as Christian, and a lot of us aren't used to that.

I don't accept the fears that Christianity itself will decline as the population of the country evolves toward various forms of secularism or rationalism. Denominations may become more secular, but the Bible already tells us that the Lord is not going to recognize everyone who calls himself a Christian.

True Christianity involves a relationship with Christ and a devotion to God that transcends the idea that one denomination is right, while all of the others are wrong. It is likely that God will recognize Christians in many of the denominations, including Catholicism. I am personally acquainted with Catholics who I think are every bit as well versed in Scripture than their Protestant equivalents, and I may not agree with their conclusions but I cannot accuse them of ignorance. The Catholic Church even recognizes that it is true that Catholicism did not encourage its members to read the Bible in the past, but that is no longer the case.

Whatever their disagreements in matters of doctrine and church politics, there will be at least a remnant of true Christians throughout the larger Christian church, speaking of the entire body of Christianity rather than the largest denominations.

While I often share in the pessimism that many of us cannot help but see in the society around us, I consider that to be a fault. In my more lucid moments, I can see that the future of the Christian church is bright.

There is nothing in the promises that Christ made to us that would suggest that Christianity will dominate the secular world in numbers, so when you weigh the percentage of people who consider themselves to be Christians against those who identify as being a part of some other religion, or of having no religion at all, you are using a faulty standard. That's not a criticism, as I do it myself. It's hard not to. I think that it's a human trait that we like to be in the majority.

However, we are told that the gate to the path that leads to salvation is narrow, and few will find it, but that the road leading to damnation is wide and most will be on it. That tells me that if I believe that we may be in the last days, and I find myself traveling with the majority, I should probably reexamine my position. Salvation is not a political election. The majority vote does not prevail.

No, in my more lucid moments, I realize that the future of Christianity is bright. In Matthew 16:18, Christ tells us, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." If I cannot believe Christ, then I'm not really a Christian.

I have a friend here who was from the Philippines, but he lived in Saudi Arabia for a long time before moving to the United States. He said that the Christian church in Saudi Arabia is strong. The numbers are not high because it's not safe to be a Christian in Saudi Arabia. Because of that, people don't join the Christian Church unless they are committed Christians.

There would be no point in being a Christian if I could not trust the words of Christ, and He tells me that the future of Christianity is bright.

As Christians, we cannot change our standards in order to accommodate the secular world around us, for Christ is our standard. We cannot change Christ, and those who attempt to do so do this at the risk of their salvation.

However, we should recognize that there is a campaign against Christianity going on in this country, and realize that many of the people around us will increasingly view us through the lens of a different standard, and adapt our approach accordingly.

Secularists, who largely make up the body of journalists and sociologists whom the journalists will turn to for expert opinions, will tend to view these changes in the American landscape through the lens of politics and cultural wars. Looking at the numbers, they will see evangelical Christianity in terms of advance or retreat, and report that Christianity is losing, based on the numbers.

When Christians emphasize the public nature of the gospel message (which, according to Christ, is not supposed to be a private thing), they view this as a threat to the newly found American ideals of separation of church and state. For those who lack strong theological convictions, the idea that others might hold such convictions is viewed as incredible. Because they don't view matters of theology as being real, they assume that these convictions must be about something else, such as power, fame, or money. Sadly, there are always examples to be made of "Christian leaders" who are all about power, fame and money.

The reason why discussions between Christians and non-Christians are so often contentious is because they create a subculture of us versus them, and people divide up into sides, while others view the entire affair as being negative.

 

For one thing, we should not feel threatened by secularism, as there is nothing that they can do that would rob us of our salvation. There are no laws that can be enacted that would deprive us of our place in the family of God. In order for us to lose our salvation, we would have to abandon it.

In the past, when Christians held most of the political offices, Christians were able to legislate morality as they saw it. Because God views homosexuality as an abomination, homosexuality was made illegal. Now that this trend is changing all around us, we feel threatened by laws that encourage gay marriage and even a preference for things that God finds sinful.

While Christians have as much right to engage in the political and social realm as anyone else does, there is a tendency for us to take on the secular standards of winning and losing, thus viewing political losses as a threat to Christianity, which may lead to a sense of demoralization and depression, when the truth is that our salvation is between ourselves and God, and no one can threaten that but ourselves.

Recognizing that the world no longer shared their values, some Christians crawl into a shell, persuading themselves that it's best to keep their Christianity to themselves, refusing the command that Christ has given us to spread the gospel.

Pick any example, when we lose a fight against the legalization of gay marriage or the courts require the removal of a placard of the Ten Commandments from the wall of a public school, too many Christians view this as a loss for Christianity.

While these fights are not wrong in themselves, it is far to easy to get wrapped up in these things, forgetting that the things of this world are not to be our primary concern.

God is not harmed by gay marriage, nor is my salvation or yours lost because gays are allowed to marry one another. By the standards of the world, many of the Old Testament prophets who spoke out against various evils lost because they were killed for having so, but we revere them today because they had the courage and the strength to do what God told them to do.

While it is not wrong to speak out against evil in society, it is the evil within individuals that matters, and we can't legislate that. Being able to structure society according to God's laws is great if we can do it, but someone isn't saved because he is forced to act like a Christian.

People have to be changed from the inside in order for that to occur, and we can no longer depend on a Christian government to facilitate this change. In that sense, we are more closely approaching the conditions that the Early Church faced, and in which the Early Church thrived. No, they are not placing Christians in arenas with lions yet, but probably only because this would offend the animal rights lobby. Christians are being persecuted in other parts of the world in many of the same ways that they were in the time of the Early Church, and I believe that it will come here as well.

In some ways, the increasing marginalization of Christianity offers an opportunity for the Christians to reclaim a gospel message that has too often been obscured.

One of the problems with Christianity in the United States is that we have often assumed that there were more of us than there were of them, and that is not the atmosphere in which the Christian Church flourished. Plus, there is the fact that we were often confused about who we included in the category referred to as us.

Most Americans identified as Christians, and many of those who didn't nevertheless viewed Christians as being moral and good, and aspired to many of the same values that we considered ours, such as healthy marriages, stable families, strong communities, etc.

Politically, we mingled God and Country together, as if they were one and the same. As a Boy Scout, I received the God and Country Award, and the Christian church has been all wrapped up in patriotism.

Now however, we need to recognize that the government is the enemy of the church. I say this not in the sense that we should get out our guns and start shooting people, but in the sense that we need to recognize that our government and our court system is more likely to work against us than for us.

It is becoming clear today that American culture doesn't merely reject orthodox Christianity, but it rejects the key aspects of what we know of as traditional values.

As long as we hold onto the illusion of America as being a Christian country, we will grow angrier and more pessimistic about the future of Christianity, recognizing that we have lost something that once belonged to us.

Instead, we should look at the advantages. The previous alliance between American culture and the Christian church fostered a climate where many sectors of the church could read the Bible as if it were pointing us to America rather than to God and the hope of salvation.

Rather than trying to create heaven here within the borders of the United States, perhaps now all of our efforts can be focused on leading people to Christ, who can put them on the path to salvation. This doesn't lead to disengagement, but to a more effective form of engagement that is more explicitly Christian.

Fighting my own Anabaptist leanings, I will say that politics and culture are still important, and Christians may be called to engage in such sport, but the success or failure of Christianity is not measured by elections or court rulings.

I don't know how you get that from this:

 

You have made some excellent points, and posed some very good questions, not just in this post but others as well.

As a legal concept, I agree with you. I do not want a government telling me what religious views I need to hold, nor do I believe that a government should tell you which religious views you should hold. In the sense that it was intended in this country, I believe in the freedom of religion.

But freedom of religion was intended as a constraint upon government. It was not intended to restrict people from sharing their faith, nor was it intended to force people to adopt the idea that all faiths are equal and true. In itself, that would be the opposite of freedom of religion.

I know that you have said elsewhere that you consider your religion to be private, the assumption being that you think that others should keep their religion to themselves too.

However, that is the opposite of what the Scriptures that I believe in tell me to to do as a Christian. Several verses of Scripture tell us that God expects us to spread our beliefs.

In Mark 16, Christ tells His disciples to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” When He made this command, he clearly wasn’t telling them not to annoy those who didn’t want to hear the gospel, as every one of them was greatly persecuted for following Christ’s command, and all but John were killed for having done so.

Matthew 24 records Christ saying, “And this gospel will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Matthew 28:19-20: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Revelation 14:6-7: “Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell upon the earth — to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people — saying with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgement has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.’”

Psalms 96:3: “Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.”

Yet, we continually hear about man-made global warming.

There is more than one belief when it comes to religion, but there is only one truth. What you don't seem to understand is that, to a Christian who truly believes, it is a fact to them, and if they are right about what they believe, then it is a fact to everyone. A fact is a fact, regardless of who believes it.

Facts are not always provable. For example, if someone is charged with a crime, it may be a fact that he is wholly and entirely innocent of the crime, but the prosecution may nevertheless be able to convict him. So it may be a fact that someone is innocent of a crime, while simultaneously being a fact that he has been found guilty of the crime by a judge or a jury.

True enough. There are facts, but we may not know what they are until the end. What we accept as fact, we accept on faith, but faith that is based on evidence.

Good question, and one that I have asked elsewhere in the forum. Many people do have a faith that is strong enough to overrule the natural human fear of death. Perhaps it is a fear of the unknown, since the Bible doesn't give a clear idea of just what heaven is going to be like.

Not every Christian is assured of his salvation, however.

"So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling." -- Philippians 2:12

 

Actually, I did. I think your problem is that you viewed my statement as a reproach for something you might have said when it wasn't that at all. I didn't address it to you or to anyone in particular, but to Christians in general, and to the topic of this thread. I had no intention of defending against something that I didn't say.

I'm not very good at Reader's Digest answers, I'm afraid.