Monday, 06 July 2009
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Independance Day Reflections
We’ve just concluded a three day celebration of the 233rd birthday of our great nation, during which many of the debates of recent days were left unattended to enjoy the parties, parades, BBQ’s and fireworks, and in the din of the rocket’s red glare, as it were, patriotism and faith were allowed to coexist as equal, but separate partners in the celebration.
Somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten not only that they can coexist, but that it was the original intent of the founding fathers that they do coexist. Our great constitution doesn’t mandate that there be no religion in our lives or national posture, but rather that our government shall neither disavow faith nor dictate any preferential faith. Separation of church and state as we currently practice it is more of a twentieth century concept than an eighteenth century one. Faith in the Christian God was part of the formation of our nation, whether people today like it or not. History can be re-written to make it more politically palatable but re-writes don’t change the facts; only our perception of them. Sadly, it is also true that perception is reality to the one perceiving.
When my youngest child was in second grade, her teacher showed me the new social studies book they were now required to use. Every reference to our Judeo-Christian heritage was either removed or sanitized. The Pilgrims still left England, and still celebrated what we now call Thanksgiving Day, but for all the manipulation and disregard for truth in this fabrication, they may just as well have departed to get better seats at the Rose Bowl as for religious freedom. The England left behind was one where women who knew the herbology of homeopathic medicine were burned as witches. You’d never know that from a book that replaced Christmas, Easter and freedom to pray with Kwanza and Martin Luther King Day.
Were our forefathers believers in a Judeo-Christian national ethic? Perhaps not all, but read the words of our first President:
“O eternal and everlasting God, …increase my faith in the sweet promises of the Gospel; give me repentance from dread works, pardon my wanderings and direct my thoughts unto thyself, the God of my salvation; teach me how to live in thy fear, labor in thy service, and ever to run in the ways of thy commandments; make me always watchful over my heart, that neither the terrors of conscience, the loathing of holy duties, the love of sin, nor an unwillingness to depart this life, may cast me into a spiritual slumber, but daily frame me more and more in the likeness of thy Son Jesus Christ.” – undated prayer from Washington’s prayer journal, Mount Vernon
Join me in prayer for nation, our leaders, and for a national awakening – before it’s too late.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:11-13)
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