6/14/16

Vote Morality! by Dave Miller, Ph.D.


http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=7&article=1692

Vote Morality!

by Dave Miller, Ph.D.
For over 30 years, Apologetics Press has endeavored to defend the Christian Faith against the challenges of evolutionists, atheists, agnostics, humanists, and skeptics. We remain committed to demonstrating the accuracy of the Bible and the truth of the Christian religion. We continue to challenge the false claims of scientists in their rejection of the biblical account of Creation. Apologetics Press is not a political organization and has no interest in becoming one. However, in Satan’s perennial ploy to disguise evil and subvert people through deceit and calumny, he has managed to politicize moral and spiritual issues. More than ever before in American history, fundamental moral/religious issues have been hijacked by the politicians—forcing Christians to grapple with the dissonance created by loyalty to a political party on the one hand, and loyalty to God on the other. The old adage—“politics and religion don’t mix”—has become a nonsensical concept as Christians increasingly are being forced to face up to their responsibility to react to the political forces that have encroached on Christian morality. Specifically, the two premiere moral issues that have been politicized are (1) homosexuality and the definition of marriage, and (2) the treatment of the unborn via abortion. Christians must face the fact that, on these two issues alone, the very survival of America is at stake (see Miller, 2005; Miller, 2006). On these two crucial matters, Apologetics Press must, and will, continue to speak out—even at the risk of being accused of “meddling in politics.”

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

Without question, shock waves of seismic proportion were sent across the entire world when the highest executive official in our land announced his endorsement of same-sex marriage (Stein, 2012). All the angels in heaven must have wept. Such an unconscionable action that reflects our downward spiral into moral depravity stands in stark contrast to the political leaders at the beginning of the nation who openly avowed attachment to God and Christian virtue. Indeed, the Founders—to a man—would be horrified. After serving two terms as vice-president alongside President George Washington, on October 11, 1798, the second president of these United States, John Adams, delivered a speech to military officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts: “[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.... Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other” (1854, 9:229, emp. added). In his State of the Union address, the father of our country explained that the Republic may be sustained only if citizens “discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness—cherishing the first, avoiding the last—and uniting a speedy but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws” (1790). The homosexual movement flaunts laws instituted at the beginning of the country designed to hold in check sexual immorality, opting instead for licentiousness. As Samuel West explained in a sermon preached in 1776 before the Massachusetts House of Representatives: “When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he becomes the slave of base passions and vile lusts; heintroduces confusion and disorder into society, and brings misery and destruction upon himself” (1776).
Irish statesman, political theorist, member of the House of Commons, and one who supported America during the Founding era, Edmund Burke, understood this critical tenet of freedom:
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites….  Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters (1791, 68-69).
Another outside observer of American freedom was Alexis de Tocqueville who, in extolling the glories of American morals and marriage based on Christianity, made this insightful observation about what happens to a country when those sexual standards are relaxed: “In Europe almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and fluctuating desires” (1845, 1:304, emp. added). Indeed, when the Christian religion and Christian morality no longer characterize the people, and this spiritual framework is therefore excluded from the political process, we can fully expect the nation, in time, to collapse. God Himself obliterated cities from the surface of the Earth for homosexuality (Genesis 19), and caused the land to "vomit out its inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:22-25).

ABORTION & INNOCENT BLOOD

A second critical moral issue that has been politicized in America is abortion. God’s view on killing children is clear and decisive:
And they built the high places of Baal which are in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin (Jeremiah 32:35).
It never entered God’s mind to have people kill their children. Yet, in the United States of America alone, since the ungodly judicial decision to legalize abortion in 1973, over 53 million unborn babies have been butchered. The human mind is incapable of grasping the import of this statistic.
Isaiah 59:6-7 well describes the abortion industry that has developed in America: “Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood.” One of the things that God hates is “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17). If ever there was “innocent blood” on this Earth, it is the blood of the unborn. In the wake of the heinous act of murder, God declared to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). If the blood of righteous Abel cried out to God, imagine the sound of 50+ million shrieking babies crying out to God. While you and I cannot hear such pitiable, heart-wrenching sounds, the God of eternity can. He announced to the Israelites: “So you shall not pollute the land where you are; for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it” (Numbers 35:33, emp. added). Looking down from heaven, God must surely see the streets of America running with blood—atonement for which can only be made by punishing the civilization that has implemented and tolerated such horror.
One reason given for why God subjected Judah to the destruction of enemy marauders was because of the innocent blood that King Manasseh had shed—“for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon” (2 Kings 24:4, emp. added). “But I thought God would pardon anything!” National sins are punished by God in time by physical destruction. Hence, we as a nation are overdue for receiving the punishment that comes from shedding innocent blood for nearly 40 years! Those precious innocents must surely be asking God the very same question He was asked by the slain martyrs of the Domitianic persecution of the first century: “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10, emp. added). Make no mistake about it—God will avenge the blood of the innocents. It’s only a matter of when.
When one contemplates the magnitude of this moral atrocity that is rampant in the land—and one which wicked politicians have brazenly taken it upon themselves to champion—one can only wonder why anyone would think the economy is the “big issue” in the election, or whether a segment of the population is getting sufficient entitlements from the government, or even whether the politicians are going to create jobs. When God finally wreaks vengeance on our deserving nation, the condition of one’s personal finances will be of little concern.

WHAT MAY BE DONE?

While the ultimate solution to our nation’s woes is recommitment to God and the moral precepts of the Bible, one immediate strategy ought to be that Christians do more to control the political forces that are running amok. In the words of President James A. Garfield:
Now, more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If that body be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.... [I]f the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces (as quoted in Taylor, 1970, p. 180, emp. added).
On Friday, June 20, 1788, in the Virginia convention assembled to debate ratification of the federal Constitution, James Madison reminded his colleagues of the only ultimate safeguard for national preservation:
But I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficientvirtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them (Elliot, 1836, 3:536-537, emp. added).
Without a doubt, the current elections will provide direct insight into the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of a sizable number of Americans. We pray God that a majority will have the good sense to be “spiritually minded” (Romans 8:6) and cast their vote first and foremost on the basis of these critical, life-threatening moral issues.

REFERENCES

Adams, John (1854), The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, ed. Charles Adams (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company).
Elliot, Jonathan, ed. (1836), The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington, D.C.: Jonathan Elliot), http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lled&fileName=003/ lled003.db&recNum=547&itemLink=r%3Fammem%2Fhlaw%3A@field% 28DOCID%2B@lit%28ed0032%29%29%230030003&linkText=1.
Miller, Dave (2005), “Is America’s Iniquity Full?” Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/305.
Miller, Dave (2006), “Destruction of Marriage Equals Destruction of America,” Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3105.
Stein, Sam (2012), “Obama Backs Gay Marriage,” The Huffington Post, May 9,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/obama-gay-marriage_n_1503245.html?ref=mostpopular.
Taylor, John (1970), Garfield of Ohio: The Available Man (New York: W.W. Norton).
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1945 reprint), Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Washington, George (1790), “First State of the Union Address,” U.S. Government Info.,http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/ref/blfirstsou.htm.
West, Samuel (1776), A Sermon Preached Before the Honorable Council and the Honorable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, MA: John Gill).