Rocky Road Devotions: The Death of Faith in America

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure. You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think the Scriptures have no meaning? They say that God is passionate that the spirit he has placed within us should be faithful to him. And he gives grace generously. As the Scriptures say, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come close to God, and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. James 4:1-10

On a pleasant Sunday afternoon drive my bride and I passed an old church on a country road. We stopped to admire the setting. As a church-aholic I couldn’t resist trying the door. To my shock, there is at least one unlocked door in 2020.

We went inside, and Elizabeth played the piano while I took some pictures, one of which was the mourner’s bench in the front…the place where those who were under deep conviction for their sins, and, declaring their repentance, would sit, until examination of their lives by church elders was deemed sufficient and successful to formally join, or rejoin the congregation. As I examined the bench where such examinations were held, I noticed what may be wrong with faith in America…spider webs on the repentance bench. It seems we have (as one writer long ago observed) lost the ability to blush at our sins.

Most everyone in America must be wondering, what in the world has happened? Why the hostilities, the wars, the anger; why this road rage existence we live? Many have a ready answer, and much of it solves nothing. Perhaps the reason is because we are chasing the ghost of fond memories; that which is long past and was never so. By that I refer to longing for better days, when people were good to each other, and life was young and beautiful. We want to know why this is no longer so, and how can we get it back.

The illusory image of what President George H.W. Bush called a kinder, gentler nation, is a rose-colored glasses version of reality. America has ever and only been great, or kind, or gentle in its nobler moments of sacrificing its own comfort and self-aggrandizing for the sake of other’s liberty and fair treatment. The moment the motive shifts to self is the beginning of the descent into death of our faith and honor.

The Apostle, James says we have quarrels and fights ongoing because of the evil desires at war within. The antidote for such attitudes and lifestyles, says the half-brother of Jesus, is to run to the mourner’s bench, humble ourselves before God, let the tears flow over our sins, and trust Him for forgiveness…and then DO live the way Scripture teaches.

The kinder, gentler moments and memories we have of so-called better days are no more than the aftermath of the several Great Awakenings[1] in America. These were times of flaming pulpits, and revival, that of the kind of holiness which can only be God-inspired. During, and for a short period after, such times good will and better behavior were the norm. But, like combing your hair will only last so long as you keep it out of the wind, reforms without discipleship will soon fade like a morning mist. As the Proverb writer has it, like a dog returns to its vomit, so sinners return to what we want. And a human being in revolt to the Spirit of God repeats the process without fail.

Short version: unless people walk in the Spirit, they will live in the flesh. And if there are, as people are wont to say, dead churches in our land, it is only because faith, and the will to live as people of faith, died first.

For You Today