Who Are We?

I am watching CNN international news. I am thousands of miles away from Sandy Hook Elementary School, sandwiched between a civil war in Syria and the Mediterranean Sea wondering if my cousin who is a school nurse at a Danbury, CT, area elementary school witnessed the horror today. I pray she is alright. I pray for grieving families. I pray for a grieving community. I pray in astonishment at what we have become. Who are we? We shake our fists and curse at those "terrorists over there" while we are breeding our very own brand of terror right in the quaint towns nestled in the rolling hills of New England. Our culture, our society, our country has lost its bearings. We kind of sensed this was happening. But something has snapped. Something deep in the heart of who we are as a people is crumbling. We know, of course, biblically, that apart from Christ's work of regeneration in the heart, we are all of us depraved totally. Certainly God, in his mercy has shed a common grace of moral restraint upon the polities of humanity. But I'm not talking here about the Hitlers, Stalins, Sadam Hussains, and Qadafis. Those devils arose in post-Christian or a-Christian cultures. I'm talking about our culture, birthed in and shaped by a Protestant (dare I say, "Puritian") ethical worldview. There was a day when God's moral restraint in our society was more commonly felt. In times past our greater American society felt a stronger impact of the power of the presence of the church of Christ in its midst. Now, it feels like the grip of the common grace of God’s hand on us is loosening. Why? Who have we become?

An humble attempt at diagnosis: Could it be that when we as a nation legalize the killing of millions of our unborn children in their mothers’ wombs, that those of us who survive our births feel our lives have been cheapened in significance Is it not true that each of us feel a psychological blow-to-the-gut because we know we have been demoted from the status of "child" to “choice”? Could this be part of the reason no one truly knows how to value the sanctity of life the way we once did? Could it also be that when we redefine marriage so as to do away with the notion of covenantal commitment, that the resulting redefined “families” produce untold numbers of "redefined children" who can feel no true stability, which produces, in turn, a nation full of spiritually, emotionally, and mentally unstable adults? Could it not also be that when vast sectors of the Christian population in America are afraid to talk about sin because such talk is unpopular or not "post-modern" or simply for fear that it might scare people out of our pews, that we thereby witness to a relativized “truth,” and in turn, see a horrifying multitude of people increasing among our compatriots who have no idea what the line is between right and wrong?

And then the only public discourse to ensue after the massacres of 2012 surrounds the issues of gun control and funding mental health programs (not bad concerns in and of themselves, but these are ultimately an example of using band-aids in an attempt to stop our internal bleeding). We once again look to the governments of man to solve all our God-sized problems. People...brothers, sisters, moms, dads, and children, look rather to God, to His word, and to His Christ. Church, speak prophetically once again in a dark and depraved generation. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth...Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:14 & 29) I pray, although we do not deserve it, God have mercy. -jts