Blessed is the nation whose God is YHVH. – Psalm 33:12
‘To whom much is given, much more is required.’
It is my understanding that the intent of the heart often carries more weight before Heaven than the actual results of our efforts. Like the poor widow’s few mites given as compared to the large donations given by the wealthy from their excess. Those brave Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 set forth their intents in the Mayflower Compact, an Idea of freedom that would pave the way for One Nation Under God. The later Founders of the nation who wrote the Declaration were steeped in Biblical Judeo-Christian thought and morality and ethic, descending from the Reformation, and influenced by the Enlightenment. Most of those men referred to God with serious reverence in their writings, including Washington and Adams and Jefferson and even that old badger Franklin, including in the Declaration itself. Prayer was no small part of their lives, and I believe the Creator honored their intents, making way for the prosperity of a nation that would spread from sea to sea, with no king but God Himself, and a sound Constitution.
That being said, men being quite imperfect, made grave errors in the outworking of that Ideal, which the Creator held us accountable for. Those Founders inherited the institution of slavery from the British colonialists, a blight that was finally ended by a bloody civil war. Lincoln proclaimed that the horror of that war was the judgment of God for enslaving other men and refusing to put an end to it peacefully, as did the British by the hard efforts of a devout Christian in parliament, William Wilberforce, some 40 years before the war, without firing a shot.
The nation nevertheless prospered and grew, albeit with many birth pains. But the Judeo-Christian ethic remained at the backbone of the USA, a foundation paved by the Founders. Thus the opportunity for success and prosperity became available to most, including the Jew, who had never before found a more hospitable nation, myself included. And a Black man became president of the USA, among many other high positions. A church may be found on nearly every American street corner to testify to that history.
Now we are 400 years (4 biblical generations) past the Pilgrims, as designated in the Ten Commandments. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked (Luke 12:48). I cannot think of a nation to whom more has been granted than the USA. The foundation to which I refer is being rapidly devoured and eroded, and chaos is taking its place, with really nothing to replace it, except for a desperate “Age of Nothingness” in a post-modern world.
That post-modern worldview may be seen reflected in much of today’s western art, which reflects the morality of society. Such works as ‘The Piss Christ,’ supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the distorted ugliness and despair expressed by many modern artists, including pornography and perversion, exemplify that trend. There is power in Art, as all the empires of the past understood. Even Hitler knew that as he confiscated all art that stood against his worldview, and hired the best artists to create Nazi art as an influencer, and a good logo to rally the nation under. Today that simple logo recalls to the viewer, in the bat of an eye, all of WW2, the Holocaust, and Evil itself. The Communists knew and did the same thing, as did the Greeks and Romans. Only the Jews, producing little national art in their history, depend upon a written Word of an immutable Idea that assures their survival.
One might prefer to ignore the increase of now daily senseless mass murders and acrimony in the USA, the vast divisions and lawlessness and loss of faith in the government and its leaders and the police and in America itself (even being taught in schools), the breakdown of families, along with increasing events of Nature’s disasters, but I cannot see how these symptoms, that speak of a deeper serious illness, can long be ignored. I do hope the American avalanche can be held back by a return to her foundational ethic, for the sake of our children, and the rest of the world.