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Twelve Principles Show How We Abandon Our Heritage
No nation is problem-free, even if—and when—it faithfully acknowledges God and seeks to honor Him. Yet, as America has drifted, its citizens have seen their national problems multiply exponentially—and their freedom and liberty curtailed. The fact that these have taken place simultaneously is not coincidental. How did we move so far away from the solid ground on which we started? Rather than cite specific events in our history that indicated movement away from God, morality, and truth, let’s examine several principles and trends. They tell the story quite well.
- It is natural to drift away from a secure place. The drift involves letting go of moral virtue and ethical disciplines and moving along with the pull of the current downstream.
- It’s always easier to drift and to follow the current than it is to fight against it to stay anchored in a safe place. Remaining where we are requires discipline.
The drift becomes almost imperceptible when we have no absolute standard by which to judge our movement, or when we ignore points of reference indicating where we once were. Yet we hear from experts (here, here, and here) that to prevent getting lost, one has to focus on fixed points of reference and adjust one’s course accordingly.- The drift becomes imperceptible when we listen to the popular culture—those surrounding us and moving with us—over the sage wisdom of the ages.
- The drift becomes almost imperceptible when we act on our emotions rather than our intellect, when we follow our hearts rather than our heads.
- The drift inevitably involves choosing to please ourselves over God. In other words, it involves developing patterns of sin—departing from God’s absolute standard of righteousness.
- Sin is pleasurable, but not forever (see Heb. 11:24-25). Still, the immediate pleasure it brings keeps people traveling down its road.
- Sin is subject to the law of diminishing returns. In other words, when we develop a pattern of sinning, we typically have to go even further the next time to get the same “rush” we got the last time. This increases the speed of our downward spiral.
- People have a tendency to ignore or deny sin’s inevitable consequences because facing them is neither fun nor pleasant.
- When an individual or a culture is drifting, it is difficult to see clearly looking forward. We look toward the future with short-term rather than long-term vision. This makes it harder to break free of our downward spiral.
- We have a problem seeing clearly as we look back. Over time, during the drift, we develop a habit of denying the realities of where we’ve arrived and how far we’ve traveled. Put another way, we can say that when we’ve been sick for a long time, we forget what it was like to be well.
- We have a problem understanding just where we are in the present. A decaying culture is a one of darkness rather than light. Darkness hides the truth about the nature of the place to which we’ve come and its inevitable consequences. (See John 3:19-20.)
Copyright © 2016 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
top image: Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash