A Nation Gone Under

For several years, a New York teacher had this quote from Ronald Reagan posted on her classroom wall: “If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.” Recently, the teacher was ordered to remove the quote, telling her it violated the U.S. Constitution.

Many of those who follow national and world events concede that Christians have lost the culture war. Our military has labeled evangelical Christians as religious extremists and conservative Christian organizations as domestic hate groups. Bibles were banned from Walter Reed Medical Center. The IRS has targeted Christian ministries to silence them, demanding from some to turn over their membership rolls and the content of their prayers. And of course, the Obama administration has been relentless in tearing apart the foundation of our nation’s Christian heritage.

The most visible loss is the rise of the “gay rights” groups, who have successfully changed homosexual behavior into a discrimination issue rather than a moral issue. Our culture now holds as hero’s Hollywood stars such as Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John, and Jodie Foster. Our culture forced out Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla Firefox because 6 years ago he donated $1,000 to support traditional marriage. Our culture is comfortable with homosexual CEO’s like Apple’s Tim Cook, and is fine with those who give millions every year to support their cause. And in every recent court case where business owners have tried to defend their religious freedoms against gay activists, gay ‘rights’ has won.

For most of America’s history, Christians and Christian principled people were the guardians of our culture, providing a safe and wholesome environment for families to flourish. Even during hard times, belief in God’s goodness and a strong sense of right and wrong carried us through. So it made sense to the ‘forces of evil’ that in order for their ideology to win, Christianity had to go. And with each year, their success grows. Christians are no longer the “salt of the earth.”

So why am I harping on this so much? A couple of days ago I talked with J, a Campus Crusade for Christ volunteer who disciples college students on campuses outside our city. He shared that, in rural areas, students’ openness to the gospel is rapidly decreasing, and in the city it’s almost gone. When I asked him why this was happening, he summed it up in 2 words – western culture. In recent months, I've heard the same sentiment from several church leaders. From TV to the internet, from Hollywood to Miley Cyrus, from Walmart to Wall Street, most 3rd world cultures look to America as their example of what they want to be like.

Interestingly, the places in the world where we are seeing the greatest growth in the Christian church today are in those places where western culture has yet to reach, places like rural areas of China, India, Indonesia, and in some of the former Soviet Union countries. But in places like the Philippines that has a wide open door to western culture, with its themes of greed, immorality, power, rebellion,and humanism, responsiveness to the gospel is diminishing.

In the past couple of months, I’ve been doing a self-study on the evolving content and growing influence of western culture, and the results have been shocking for me. For example, did you know that, according to some calculations, 1/3 of all worldwide internet traffic is pornography! I have been disheartened that my home country, which was once the beacon of Christianity for the world, has now become the primary exporter of the forces against Christianity. I’m currently revising our core lessons to deal with this enormous threat, hoping to open the eyes of non-believers to what is influencing their hearts and minds, the things we so quickly excuse as ‘entertainment’, as well as equipping believers to exercise discernment with what they watch and listen to.

Even though we have lost the culture war, our purpose, our task, our marching orders remain the same: to be light in the darkness, to show up the world for what it really is. As Jesus warned in John 3, most people love the darkness and will not come to the light. But for those who do, the eternal rewards of genuine love, joy and peace await. As followers of Christ, we were never to put our hope in America. And though we get discouraged, we never despair, knowing that who we have on the inside is far greater than anything on the outside, and the day is coming when western culture will be no more, when godly culture will prevail for eternity.