Reflections for April 22, 2009

One Saturday morning while I was still in high school, a friend and I went squirrel hunting. As we wandered through the woods, we soon realized that we were not sure where we were. After crossing the same creek twice in the same place, we decided to walk in a straight line until we came to a road. When we came to a road, it was a long distance by highway to the place where we had left our car. If we had had a compass and if we had known how to use it, we would have reduced our wandering considerably.

The illustration above is more humorous than it is tragic. However, it does lead me into another problem that is anything but humorous. It is the most serious problem facing our nation today. Despite what public opinion polls may say, it is not the economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the war on terrorism, education, immigration or any of the other problems that are often listed. I we do not check this problem, in time we will find ourselves on the scrape heap of great nations that have come before us. This problem did not occur over night and it may take it decades to bring about the demise of this great land. Make no mistake however, if it is left unchecked it will ultimately bring about our fall.

The problem is the loss of our moral compass. Presently, we are wandering around in a sea of moral relativism and we have all but lost our moral compass. When it has been completely obliterated from our public landscape, we will find ourselves in the same condition that the Jewish people found themselves at the end of the Book of Judges. The last verse reads, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (NASB) All one needs to do is to look around and he/she can see evidence of this problem.

Unfortunately, this problem has also infected the church. Polls reveal that those who attend church regularly are as confused as those outside the church. In fact, attitudes toward many of the moral issues of our day vary little between professing Christians and non-believers.

Where do we find the moral compass that can help us to avoid certain demise? For over 200 years the Holy Bible has served us well as a compass. This does not mean that all of our people were believers but it does mean that the foundations of our attitudes toward right and wrong, good and evil could be found in the Scriptures. These foundations have been under attack over the last half-century. There has been a continual outcry by many to take the God who gave us the Scriptures out of the public square completely. Unfortunately, these forces seem to have the momentum at this time.

The answer to this problem must begin among believers. There must be a return of the Bible to the pulpits of America. Even more important, the Bible must once again become the moral compass of individual believers across the country. People must once again look to the Scripture for the principles of life rather than to the talking heads that parade before us each day on the pages of the media or the television screen. We must once again take seriously II Timothy 3:16,17: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for ever good work.” (NASB) Whether we do this or not will have a greater impact on the future of our country than anything else. I guess you could say that it is a matter of national security.