Yesterday was Yom Kippur – the holiest day of the Jewish faith. It is a day of Atonement – a day to look inward and realize how far we have come and how far we have to go. It is a day of fasting and reflection for Jews, so much so that Israeli was attacked on this Holiday in 1973 because their attackers knew that the country basically shuts down on this day. (That has changed.) It got me to wondering how anyone can be a Christian and also be anti-Israel. These are God’s first people – meaning that when they were the first nation to put God first. And in doing so, the nation of Israel became God’s tool to change the ancient world – literally. (Through Israel comes Christ, through Christ comes Christianity; through Christianity comes the conversion of the pagan Roman Empire.)
His tool, sort of like America before we began to put God aside. If you objectively look at the history of our country, and track the level of our outward reverence for God versus our ‘status’ and role in international affairs, you see an undeniable correlation between the two. The high moral points of our War for Independence, the Civil War and abolition of slavery and the World Wars, these were times when our nation was unmistakably ‘under God’. Think of this formative part of our nation’s history as God sharpening His tool for its use in saving the world from its greatest threat – Totalitarian Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that without U.S. (God’s) intervention, humanity was doomed. We were God’s tool of choice at that time.
But tools need to be sharp and in good working order to be useful, and we have let ours fall into disrepair. It’s not so much that we have become less compassionate, or less capable. It has become a matter of forgetting our purpose. It just seems to me that our focus as a nation has shifted from serving God’s will to serving our own best interests as a political entity among other political entities, and in doing so we have migrated away from the source of our strength and determination – God. Take the present situation with Syria. Our actions are based on ‘public’ opinion, building consensus and what other people might think, rather than doing the right thing. We all know what the right thing to do is, but we lack the conviction as a nation to do it because we have lost faith in our moral compass due to lack of use. This is how we become indecisive and wishy-washy and frankly – lost. Don’t you feel that we are lost as a nation? Trillions in debt, unresolved military engagements, abortive infanticide and legislative gridlock – we are so lost – so lost that we now look to anyone – including Russia – to lead us to safety. What kind of tool have we become for God’s purpose? It is no wonder that what was once a ‘shining light on the hill’ through God given abundance is a hollow shell, a shadow, a lame duck, a tool no longer fit for the job. And what becomes of tools that no no longer work?
But of course there is hope – there always is. A nation is only as good as its people; and its people are only good as their beliefs. The choice of course is ours. Each day, one decision at a time we just need to ask, ‘what would Jesus do?’ and then do it, regardless of ‘public opinion’. It will take time, maybe more than what some of us have on this earth, but it’s still worth the effort. We still can be the tool that God created us for…”For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Eph 2:10.
(FYI – We should think the alternative unacceptable. Take for instance this article that I came across this week. This is a prime example of a lost society <click here>)