Have We Fallen So Far?

This morning Fox News ran a story titled, "Bush family wants funeral that avoids anti-Trump sentiment." Seriously people. In a time when the daughter of a former Senator used her father's funeral as political theater, it is sad that the family of a just-passed president – a man who by all accounts was good – needs to give orders not to tarnish his memory with petty politics from the proverbial pulpit. I'm reminded of a quote from Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.

"It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unaware of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because they have no standard outside of themselves by which to measure their times. If there is no fixed concept of justice, how shall men know it is violated? Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on, because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen." – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen [1895-1979; bishop, scholar, and communicator for the Catholic University]

The last sentence rings so very true in today's age. Back in the 1990's and early 2000's much of the argument was on relativism, with a keen focus on destroying relative truth. Satan attacked us using our own financial successes, scientific gains, and leaps in knowledge to challenge absolute truth with a moral relativism that lead to gender dysphoria, skyrocketing abortion rates, socialism disguised as populism, and tribalism that is destroying our God-given freedoms.

How far have we fallen that we need to remind ourselves that a funeral should be a celebration of a man's life, not a debasing of a successor? How far have we fallen that we cannot honor the man who was president without disrespecting the man who is president? How far have we fallen that Christians cannot recognize the folly of constantly dividing our nation through morally relativistic argument?

Christians, God gave us an answer to this very problem, if we would just read His word.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:30-31, NIV)

How simple is His solution to our self-inflicted problem – to love our neighbor as we love ourselves? We must start by recognizing Satan's handiwork, his efforts to destroy this free nation that God has raised up, and by rebuilding God's temple. The Bible records many times in history when the kings of Israel and Judah returned to God's favor, reinvigorated worship, renewed their covenant, and rebuilt the temple. When Jesus came, died on the cross, descended into Hell, defeated Satan and raised himself from the dead, he ascended into Heaven from where he sent his Holy Spirit to live in us as the new temple.

Christian, let's rebuild the temple. Let's reinvigorate our worship. Let's renew our covenant with Christ. Let's read His word. If we prepare ourselves during this Advent for His coming, we'll find that moral relativism that has so engrossed our generation falls away. When we Christians embrace the absolute truth that is Christ Jesus, when we love our neighbors as we do ourselves and our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, we find we won't need to say "This will be about the celebration of the noble public service that George H.W. Bush gave. It's not going to be about anybody else." Instead, we will say, "Come worship the living God with me. Love the living God with me. Celebrate life with me."

Because whatever Satan divides through hate, God repairs through love.

–Mark Klages is an influential contributor, a former US Marine and a lifelong teacher who focuses on applying a Christian worldview to everyday events. Mark blogs at https://maklagesl3.wixsite.com/website under the title "God Provides where Hate Divides," with a heart to heal social, political, relational, and intellectual wounds through God's divine love and grace. Mark can also be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-klages-04b42511/.