It seems as if our whole country is falling apart. When crazed individuals kill others as in Sandy Hook, or bombers strike as in Boston, one wonders if we will be forced to live under the specter of violence every day in our lives.
The Boston killing on Monday of three people and injuring of more than 170 during the running of the city’s marathon reveals a hints of troubling cultural problems. For years, we have lived in relative safety from such attacks, while Europeans and those in places such as Israel have suffered from violence in public places. Now it’s happening here.
But why? Are we becoming weak in some way — and thus victimized by enemies within and without?
A recently-published book compares Europe’s cultural and economic slide with America’s similar increasing woes that might cast light on the problem. Titled Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future, it is authored by researcher Samuel Gregg, who talks about Europe’s fallout after World War I and II and the tug of war between Christian and socialist ideology since then. Socialist policy is certainly winning there, and now we are seeing similar growing economic problems and violence that we don’t want to see on this side of the Atlantic.
Spiritual Renewal as a Defense
I’d like to suggest that we need a spiritual as well as economic and political renewal to enable our citizens to live in safety and peace.
A culture strong in the values of hard work, honesty, and a fear of God provides the spiritual infrastructure that provides for well-balanced people who don’t go shooting school children or killing others randomly.
I might be wrong, but it looks to me like Boston may have been a lone-wolf Al-Qaida attack. That is, a small operation of the kind that Al-Qaida encourages; but yet there is no communication with the terrorists in the field. It can be done by just a few (or even one person), and thus it is very difficult for the FBI to trace.
If it is Al-Qaida, it helps to understand their mindset. One reason why Muslim extremists hate us is because of our materialism — how we get wrapped up in our SUVs and wide-screen TVs, forgetting about God, and practicing all kinds of sexual license and perversion. This of course doesn’t justify killing innocent people, but it may point to a cause and effect. A moral and religious society, on the other hand, would garner more respect from these people instead of attacks.
“Get Religion Out”
I saw a bumper sticker on a car yesterday in the parking lot of a private, non-religious grammar school near my home; the school’s principal prides himself on the idea of a secular education. The sticker proclaims “Get religion out of politics.” Whoops — that’s dangerous thinking, folks. What would happen to the moral glue in society if we divorced our laws from a respect for Christianity and the Ten Commandments? I’d rather see a bumper sticker that says “Get atheism out of politics.”
Christian preacher and speaker Bradlee Dean has it right. He says in his recent column, “Know Your History”: “When we are no longer rooted in the same principles, corruption seeps in and begins to divide and conquer through outlets such as the media, public schools and colleges.” (Disclosure: Dean and his ministry, You Can Run International, are clients of our PR firm, TreeFrogClick, Inc.)
See Bradlee Dean’s YouTube video, which criticizes the rapture, “End Timers and Our Founding Fathers”:
Dean adds in his straight-talking way: “I can just now hear the media, the teacher, the ‘well-educated’ college professor or the philosopher (using big words with common-sense meanings) decry, ‘We are not a Christian nation’…. In their confusion they blurt out the truth: They would rather listen to man’s 10,000 commandments than to God’s Ten Commandments.”
Proverbs 14:34 says “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” The Boston killings were tragic, and there will be lots of angst and money spent over how to prevent it in the future. But we cannot keep every public trash can bomb-free or put an armed guard at every shopping mall entrance, sports venue, and public gathering. We can’t outlaw pressure cookers, nails, or backpacks. That kind of security must come from a society that anchors its customs and laws on morality, a fear of God, and a respect for the Christian church.
(See lots of videos with great graphics about the Constitution and our Christian heritage at Bradlee Dean’s Sons of Liberty YouTube channel.)
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Gosnell Crimes Driven By Lifestyles Of Lust
Closing arguments are being made in the grisly murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell. The case leads us to wonder: how has “reproductive care” come to this – the murder of newborn infants by snipping their spinal cords?
Perhaps the root cause can be found in the widespread glorification of sex. Not sex within marriage, but promiscuity, hook-ups, and pornography (in other words – just plain lust personified.) A culture of licentiousness has convinced people that sex is only about pleasure and should be “consequence-free.”
An Honest Laugh
I remember getting a hearty laugh from a woman who was a rather popular liberal talk show host on the subject of sex when I told her, “If you can get the milk for free, why buy the cow?”
“Why buy the cow?” is the refrain today of millions of carnal-minded men who see a woman as the object of his pleasure rather than seeing her as a person with dignity. Such a belief is the product of our Planned Parenthood-inebriated society. And PP will no doubt be tooting its horn through the puppet media in 2016 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of one of society’s most sordid snake pits – the first birth control clinic in the nation. That shameful event took place in New York City at the lead of Margaret Sanger, whose American Birth Control League was later renamed Planned Parenthood as an attempt at image control.
Stay Out of the Bedroom
Sanger justified contraception over the claim that women should have control over when they have children. Huh – when to have children? How about staying out of the bedroom? Try using periods of abstinence – a system whose effectiveness has kept pace with the artificial methods in every era, from the 1930s to the 1950s with the temperature method, to the 1960s with the sympto-thermal method, and forward.
And yet the very twisted thinking about contraception that was supposed to liberate women has turned women into objects of use. Hmm… contraception. This matter is no longer a “Catholic only” issue. Today, many Christians are questioning what contraception has to do with love, or are wondering if the Bible has anything to say about it. What has been known as the sin of Onan throughout the centuries has been a tool for teaching that masturbation and contraception is wrong. In Genesis 38:9-10, Onan was struck dead by God as a punishment because of his unnatural act by “spilling his seed on the ground” when he had intercourse with his deceased brother’s wife. (The article “The Sin of Onan Revisited” offers a thorough explanation in the light of modern challenges to this teaching.)
Beauty and Meaning
Although Christians differ on this subject, it should not be a matter of contention (or ignored), but a launching point for further discussion, especially in our troubled times when the beauty and meaning of sexuality has been so misconstrued.
Someone once told me that a wise priest once said, “No abortion ever came from an act that did not involve contraception.” It’s also been said that abortion follows contraception as night follows day. That is certainly true, as seen in U.S. Supreme Court decisions allowing the sale of contraceptives and later abortions: judges today continue to quote a so-called “right to privacy.”
It’s simple logic – when birth control fails, the resulting pregnancy is seen as a mistake. Then abortion is trotted out to “fix” the problem.
President Obama’s decisions, appointments, and disappointments on abortion are pointed out in this video, “Barack Obama’s Track Record on Abortion”:
“Perfect American Family”
I remember an incident when I was a sidewalk counselor outside of an abortion clinic in a large city. A minority couple crossed the street toward the clinic. As I walked with them, trying to discourage them from entering, the man exclaimed to me with a kind of mock pride: “We have enough children – two. The perfect American family.” Does that make your blood boil, or what?
The Gosnell trial – an event that has been nearly completely avoided by the kow-towing mainstream media – should make every American do an about face toward this growing horror. Preacher Bradlee Dean and his ministry, The Sons of Liberty Radio, clearly point out Gosnell’s horrific acts in his column, “Advocates of Murder No More” (Disclaimer: the Sons of Liberty Radio is a client of our PR firm, TreeFrogClick, Inc.)
Video: Bradlee Dean on “Abortion” from his documentary “My War”:
Dean rightly lays blame, too, at the complacent churches throughout America. “Three hundred thousand pulpits have become accomplices to murder by their silence….” He also points to an unrelenting assault against the unborn by the government, with its chief offender being President Obama himself (who wimped out when asked about the Gosnell case, blabbering about whether “violating medical ethics” was involved.)
It’s time to stand up for life, and for a true respect for the dignity of the person in his or her sexuality. If you feel you are at a loss regarding what you can do to stand up for these values, at least give Dean a “like” on his Bradlee Dean Facebook page.