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Voltaire, a French philosopher of the 1700's, famously predicted that Christianity would be dead within 100 years. Well, those who put their money on those odds found themselves a bit light in the pocketbook after that century, and after the next, and on and on unto this day. The Christian faith stands on its own two feet, unaided by either government or the force of arms.

It was once said that America is a Christian nation. If so, we should see a Christian society. We do not.

We see cracks in the societal foundation of this nation, namely, the diminishing of biblical influence among everyday individuals. In the 1830s, another French thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville, said that America needed a uniquely unified Christian citizenry for her experiment in ordered liberty to be successful. Today, the influence of the church appears to be waning, and society is showing the wear and tear, leading to a country that is defined more by our disagreements than our unity. 

Sociologists will list several factors that make up any given society, whether contemporary or historical. We can quickly look at these and see that American society is a balloon, untethered and set adrift. The day that the church claimed that there was an American "moral majority" has taken flight, lost among the sun and clouds.

1. Economy. Our national prosperity has led the way in forging a people known for self-reliance rather than biblical faith. The Bible is rife with descriptions of how wealth's icy claw pulls an unsuspecting people's heart away from God. Needy people cry out to God for help. Well-fed and comfortable people are prone to put their trust in the riches of their own empire. 

“Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." (Deuteronomy 8:11-14 ESV)

2. Technology. It has been well documented, especially in the last five years, how technology has reshaped our thinking and the cognitive development of our youth. It has delivered a proliferation of evils that were once done rarely and in isolation - to our home’s front porch like an unexpected Amazon box. It gave bad ideas and malign influences instant personal access by way of the telephone that we carry in our pockets. Evil is now only one or two "clicks" away. Because technology gave sin a reliable vehicle, it has run amok with very few guardrails. Tech has given us good things, but the collateral damage has led to the fracturing of the self and society.

3. Education. Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, our educational institutions were hijacked by American complacency. Scripture states that foolishness is bound up in the heart of our youth, yet discipline displaces that foolishness. 

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child,
    but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15)

Several decades ago, beginning with our public colleges, we gave up on disciplining and teaching our youth. Instead, college professors began affirming, endorsing, and celebrating cultural, ideological, theological, and personal foolishness - teaching each as a sustainable philosophy of life. They knew that their wide-eyed students would drink the elixir of self-indulgence instead of surrendering to intelligent and rigorous personal formation.

Accordingly, they created a generation of foolishness-embracing college graduates who either went on to teach in our public schools or who progressed to augment their affirming professors in later decades. Colleges and universities became a foolishness-producing machine, fueled only by the outlandish social imaginations of each age. That machine has never stopped churning and producing adults who are deeply divided, fractured, and lost. They produce blind people who loudly insist that they can see better than any person in history. 

4. Government. All governments are ordained by God, whether they are good or bad. (Romans 13:1-2) That does not stop governments from being good, bad, or somewhere in-between. It is what God has allowed for us in the time that we draw breath. 

Politics in America have become more and more divisive. That has not been driven by a strong conservative swing in politics, causing its opponents to squawk and riot.  Instead, it is because this nation has been on a decades-long slouch toward Gomorrah, legislating ever-progressing sinful ideas in an attempt to satiate society's ever-increasing appetite for extremely licentious social laws.

Some want government to provide everything, yet they also insist that government completely take its hands off of the society that produces the wealth that could possibly foot such a massive tax bill. Instead of laws ordering society and freedoms while enforcing justice and order, unbridled personal autonomy is enthroned while injustice and disorder are allowed to collide at every social level. America acts surprised when bankruptcy and chaos ensue from a completely unregulated society. 

There is a noticeable internal moral and social erosion in our country. It is a destructive boulder rolling downhill, gathering no moss. Where and if it will stop, only God knows.

5. Family. The family has found the low point in American history.

Our citizens eschew marriage for a number of reasons. If marriage eventually comes around, children are not soon to follow. Practice, propensities, and polls reveal that young husbands and wives see children as a burden instead of a blessing (Psalm 127).

We have decided that we can kill unborn children, especially if we suspect that they will not be perfect when they are born. We have decided that suicide is a perfect solution for family members who encounter despair. We divorce with the ease that we broke up with a boy/girlfriend in high school. We do not value children's wellbeing in any respect - instead we look only to ourselves and our own gratification when it comes to children. Government unreasonably encroaches on the family as schools, legislators, and organized interest groups endeavor to rear our children in lieu of parents. 

There are things that are wrong with families. There is a ton of things right with families - it is the most basic governmental body that God instituted for our good and His glory - but the family has been under constant attack by innumerable social forces for a long time. 

6. The Church. 

Every force has been beating down the walls of the church like a battering ram applied to a defender's city gates.

Prosperity has led to historic levels of self-reliance. Thud.

The vehicle of technology has self-driven evil into the hands of everyone. Thud. 

Public education has been overrun by those who have no regard for common sense and the Creator. Thud.

Government has condoned and pushed disorder in our faces, all the while insisting that "wrong is right!" Thud!

The basic building block of society, the family, is in a historic crisis. THUD!!

What is the church to do? Some churches have run outside their building and have defected to these vile forces, throwing a party for the destructive forces – complete with tea and crumpets, dressing these dark forces up in robes of clergy, then pretending that Biblical Christianity can be hollowed out in such a way that there is room for every idea under the sun. 

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there are no new ideas under the sun. What they propose to import into their stained-glass dappled sanctuaries is biblically defined sin. Sin is as old as Genesis chapter 3. 

... there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
    “See, this is new”?
It has been already
    in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
    nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
    among those who come after. (Ecclesiastes 9b-11 ESV)

Yet, there is hope.

Here in these United States of America, there remains a set of churches, believers, families, tech leaders, educators, professors, politicians, and business leaders who have grasped the truth of sacred Scripture. They are standing firm in the faith. They are the ones who are valiantly fighting the spiritual battle for this age, this country, and this society. They are the ones who bravely stand in the gap and pray for our country, forgive their enemies, feed the poor, devote themselves to the authority of the Bible, love their families, work hard, seek justice, love mercy, and hold this country together with the glue that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about -

Christian faith. 

Fight the fight of faith, Christian. Be His disciple who is being discipled and who is making disciples!