Window or Mirror?

When the first Congress opened, it opened with prayer as Franklin had suggested. In fact, the prayer lasted for three hours. Silas Dean wrote home and stated that it was a prayer worth riding 100 miles to hear (a week’s ride). When the prayer was complete, a Bible study on Psalms 35 and Psalms 37 was conducted. Patrick Henry and George Washington were said not to have left their knees for the entire first day of that session.

In 1962, SCOTUS heard Engel v. Vitale and ruled that a simple voluntary prayer could not be a part of a student’s day. So, should I yet believe the Supreme Court of the United States in 1962 when they tell me that the Fathers didn’t want prayer in governmental institutions? Or should I believe the words of the Founding Fathers themselves?

Let’s get back to the phrase, “separation of church and state”. It appears nowhere in either founding document and also does not appear in four months of notes from the floor of the Constitutional Convention. Now, I’ve heard people say, “But I KNOW that’s around the time the phrase came about”, and they are generally correct. The phrase was coined – as far as we know – in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association that was very specific and involved a query on whether or not the United States would ever mandate a state religion such as the Church of England in Britain. This letter was written fourteen (14) years after the Constitution was signed and responded to a very specific condition, not the general state of affairs. Also, since I am being “picky” about listening first to the men that were there and created our founding documents, I must reveal to you that Thomas Jefferson – from his own letters – can be shown to be in France during the formation of the Constitution and readily admitted that it was complete and penned before his return. He wasn’t even there!

In NewDow v. U.S. Congress, 2002 it was argued that reciting the pledge would establish a religion and that the state was “backing” a God-based form of religion. This case was dismissed, but only because SCOTUS determined that the parent who brought the suit was a non-custodial parent of the student required to recite the pledge and therefore had no standing before the court on her behalf. Jefferson himself would disagree, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God”? Jefferson used the word “conviction” because he knew that this was something that had to be taught to children and bred in them from a young age. The concept of “melting pot” used to be that if you came to America, at age 18 when you left school that you would know what our American values were and you were willing to participate in that system and defend it. Jefferson knew, even then, that we were straying and said, “That they (liberties/values) are not to be violated but with His wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever”.

What is the effect on a nation when morals are blown by the wind and ethics are based on what is right each in our own mind? What happens when we remove God from schools, from science, and from all teaching? Univ. of Texas at Austin, Kent State, Fullerton Library, Stockton, Lindhurst, Richland, Bethel, Pearl, Jonesboro, Parker, Thurston, Columbine, Heritage, Buell, Red Lake, Amish school in Lancaster County, and a Louisiana Technical college three days ago. This is not an exhaustive list of school shootings, and I don’t pretend to say that removing God from school is the sole cause of events like these, but I think it is no coincidence that the earliest recorded shooting is 1966, and God was “officially removed” in 1962.

Good people, we tell our children that they came from a primordial pile of ooze, that this “evolved” into monkeys, and then into people. We further reinforce this idea of “existence irrelevance” by treating the unborn as cosmic accidents and as problems to be solved. This is a recipe for creating people that do not respect life; their own or anyone else’s. Add a teenager that is insecure with their body, their mind, feels unloved, and has been raised to have no base for a “soul”, and it all adds up to social violence. We’ve created the environment that molds people into beings with no self-respect and no respect for others.

So, what then shall we do?

John Francis Mercer said, “It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government, and the interest they have in maintaining it, that is to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form; men are the substance and must do the business”.

Reverend Mathias Burnett: “Finally, ye.. whose power it is to save or destroy your country, consider well the important trust.. which God .. [has] put into your hands. To God and posterity you are accountable for them. Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you”.

John Hancock: “I urge you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only to pray but to act”.

All of these quotes sum up the concept that we must act. Evil triumphs by default if we sit by and do nothing. Make no mistake folks, we are already on a slippery slope. The slope is human nature, and it is base and ever-downward. The slippery stuff, it’s called sin, and there is only one thing that can cleanse it and right our down-turned lives. John Adams knew what that force was and when he was asked if we would triumph in the war over Great Britain, he answered not with a military strategy, numbers, or any other measure of human strength, but with the phrase, “Yes, if we fear God and repent of our sins“.

Folks, I pray that we will follow Adams’ advice, fear God by honoring Him as the King of our lives; repent of our sins to an Almighty God and turn away from those sins; and finally, I pray that we will act.

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