"One Nation Under God"?

[Petertherock]

My boss asked me an interesting question today. Keep in mind he isn’t religious at all In fact, he is quite strange and he will be the first to admit it.

Anyway, he asked me if someone told me I was stupid to believe in God would I be mad. I thought for quite a long time over this wondering what he was setting me up for and I said it depends on the persons tone. I believe we all have a right to believe or not to believe as God gave us free will but if he was insulting my beliefs I would be mad.

Then he said he wanted to ask it in a different way. He asked if someone doesn’t believe in God are they unAmerican? Since our founding fathers used religion in founding this country would it be considered un-American for someone not to believe in God.

I answered by saying I don’t know if it would be un-American because not even all the founders of this country believed in God and we have a right to worship God or not worship as we see fit.

Then he said, that what he is getting at is he believes that Iran and those countries are right when they call the USA the Great Satan. He said this country is only a couple steps away from being Soddom and Gommroah. He said 20 years ago you would never have gay people admit and talk about being gay in public. But now it’s all over TV shows and it’s almost like there are more gay people then straight people.

We have a guy at work that jokes about being gay (he’s not) and my boss said 20 years ago if he did that he would be in trouble for that.

My boss said we have been so accepting of sinful things like gays and sex, and profanity that it’s become the normal thing and we are losing the “One Nation Under God.” We like to think that the majority of people in this country are Christian but when we have a society like ours eventually Christians are not going to be the majority.

Then we got talking about the end of times and he believes that although it may not come in our life time the end is close. He said no matter how hard we fight it eventually the rest of the world is going to get nuclear weapons and we can’t fight the rest of the world forever.

There are signs there pointing to things like one world currency and one world government. My boss believes that eventually they will have a World leadership council of like 7 of the most powerful countries and one person will be the leader of the council and that person will be the anti-Christ.

Everything that he said makes sense especially about how anti-God our society has got. In the last 20 years we have seen sins become accepted as normal and if you speak out against the sinful ways you are finished. I do think my boss is right when he said we are no longer a Nation “Under God” but rather another Soddom and Gommorah.

 

[batteddy]

Is America a decadent, consumerist, evil nation? Sure, but not as bad as Northern Europe!

 

[stbruno]

This is an article I saved from years ago. The article is entitled:

Grace, the motivation for morality

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world were discussing whether any one belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among the world’s religions. In his forthright manner, Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

"Christian morality, then, is something that grows out of the relationship, a relationship that could not exist without grace"

There are glimpses of grace in some other religions, but in Christianity it is the very foundation of our relationship with God. There could be no relationship without it. Because God wished us to have a relationship with him that was built on love and trust, it was necessary for him to give us freedom of will. To be truly autonomous persons we had to be free to choose whether we would love God or go our own self-willed ways. At the beginning of human history, we blew it. Humans turned from God in rebellion and as a result we have all been infected with the moral disease of sin. In the imagery of the Bible, men and women were banished from the garden, no longer having access to the “tree of life”, that quality of life which has its origin in God himself.

The rest of the Bible is the story of God’s plan to win us back to himself, culminating in the entrance into human history of God himself in the person of Jesus Christ, one who was both fully God, yet fully human*. He came for a number of reasons - to demonstrate in his own life and character what human life was meant to be and what true goodness was like, but also to reveal to us in his own person what God was truly like. If this was all he had done, he would have been wasting his time, as we do not have the power to live that sort of a life. However, the main reason for his coming was something far more wonderful than that. It was to be identified with us, not only in our humanity, but also in our sin. Though he himself was without sin, he took the full consequences of our sins on himself when he died on the cross. In some amazing way the Father was crediting to the Son the sins of us all. The Bible states this truth over and over in different ways. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

*I have dealt with the evidence for the divinity of Jesus Christ, both from the written records and from history, in the booklet Is Jesus Really God?

*. *

 

[stbruno]

God the Father raised Jesus to life after his burial to demonstrate his satisfaction with all he had achieved for us by his death. After forty days, in which he appeared repeatedly to his chosen followers, he ascended to heaven where he represents us sinful people in the presence of his Father. On the basis of his sacrifice for us, he now offers us a free pardon and reconciliation if we will but acknowledge our sin, turn from it in repentance, and invite him into our lives as our Saviour and Lord. In other words, the way is now open to anyone who wishes, regardless of what their past life has been, to be fully reconciled to this holy God, and to live in a daily relationship with him. We may also have the certainty that we will enjoy that relationship for ever beyond the veil of death, as Jesus has won the victory over sin and death on our behalf.

It is this reaching out to us in love, in spite of our rebellion, that the Bible calls “grace”. It is totally undeserved, and not based on any goodness in ourselves. In fact, before we can have it we have to be humble enough to admit that we don’t deserve it. Someone has spelt out the word “grace” as an acrostic as follows:

God’s

Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense

It means that, because the debt for our sins has been paid in full, no one is too bad to receive this full forgiveness if only they will come to Jesus, and no one is too good not to need it. The only sin God cannot forgive is the refusal to come. When the thief who was executed on the cross with Jesus turned to him in faith, Jesus said to him, “I promise that today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Henk Kamsteed, editor of Challenge Weekly, puts it like this: “A sin-soaked criminal is received by a blood-stained Saviour. That’s the pure definition of grace.” The Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, warned against simply trying to live a more virtuous life in order to please God. He said:

*The greatest Christian heresy is to believe that the opposite of sin is virtue. No. The opposite of sin is grace. *

When we put our trust in Jesus and experience this reconciliation, then morality takes on a totally new meaning. Being “good” is no longer a matter of trying to reach some impossible passmark. It is a matter of responding in love and gratitude to the love and forgiveness one has already received, and which is wholly undeserved. Christian morality, then, is something that grows out of the relationship, a relationship that could not exist without grace. Without grace there can be no true morality. As Donald Bloesch concludes in Freedom for Obedience:

Ethics in this theological perspective is no longer submission to law but instead a response to divine grace

 

[stbruno]

I have also read accounts of hedonistic societies that predicted the end of a nation, or the end of the world because of how man has turned away from God. And the writers were from the early dawn of civilization and nearly every generation since. We just have not learned yet that if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. And that goes along with our inability as a nation to recognize the importance of God. We only seem to recognize humanism and the importance of man alone. We were not created by man…we were created by God. More reasons to pray and place your trust only in God. St.Faustina got it right…Jesus, I trust in you! Let’s pray that more people respond the same way.