Years
ago, when I was learning to fly, I read these words of wisdom from a highly
experienced airline pilot. He was writing of the dangers of flying into
inclement weather. He said, “Remember, the weather is not what someone
forecasts. The weather is what you see through the windshield.”
I
have found this to be good, life-saving advice over the years – and, not just
for aviators. So, I also use this realistic approach in my everyday
life. I try to assess reality according to what my mind’s eye can actually see
through the windshield of the present moment. And here is one of those things.
There
is a simple operational principal which governs the quality of both our
personal and our national relationship with God. It is revealed in the
New Testament writings of the apostle, James. There, he said, “Draw
near to God and He will draw near to you.” Simple, right? And,
the reciprocal principal is just as simple and just as true for both an
individual and a nation. It is this. Draw away from God, and by your
movement, He is drawn away from you.
And,
when this parting movement comes to our relationship with God, there are always
practical consequences due to this loss of His benevolent guardianship -
consequences which become ever more dire as that relational distance widens.
Consequences like those which have happened in America over the last four
years.
For
example, we have become a deeply divided and greatly weakened nation – fully
immersed in a dark, downward spiral which now touches every facet of our
society. Our own government, now deeply infiltrated with Marxist Democrats, has
purposely invited a huge daily invasion of would-be foot soldiers through our
southern border to eventually help topple our society. And, that same
government is now filled with disloyal politicians, bureaucrats, and political
operatives, people who detest our way of life and daily plot its end.
Indeed, they are an imminent threat to our very existence as a free and
prosperous nation.
And, our greatest societal defense, the rule of just laws,
has greatly crumbled away under their seditious hand – as has the integrity of
our elections. Prices have soared as the worth of the dollar has experienced a
free fall, not due to natural forces, but by the willful design of these same
seditious Marxist plotters – their plan being, to break the back of our
prosperity and replace it with a Marxist system which has never led to anything
but impoverishment of both treasure and soul. And, beyond all of
this, our military, judicial, and educational systems have been widely
corrupted by the foolishness of their “woke” and socialist agendas.
And
one cannot help but notice the unusual movement of our salivating enemies.
Communist Russia, the Chinese Communist Party, the psychopathic leaderships of
Iran and North Korea, the lawless and brutal drug cartels, and the now
way-out-of-the-closet Marxist Democrat Party are all now being drawn together toward
the same nexus point – that being, America’s societal “nightfall.”
Certainly,
this massive and relatively sudden occurrence of dark events in America begs
the question, “What is driving these
unnatural, and yet, seemingly well-coordinated developments?” But to arrive
at a truly encompassing answer to that question, we cannot limit our search to merely
the physical dimension of life. The full
explanation for these movements simply doesn’t lie entirely within this physical
dimension. It also, and mostly, lies in
the metaphysical (spiritual) dimension.
It
is a grave mistake to think that these dark difficulties which have engulfed
this nation are just part of the normal social and geopolitical ebb and flow of
this physical world. For too long now, the
gaze of too many has been deceptively abridged and misdirected by the satanic whispers
which insist that our world should be viewed as self-contained, and thus, we
should simply ignore the spiritual in favor of the more purely physical view of
life.
Nevertheless,
the true human reality remains unchanged by this lie of the Darkness. In fact, that larger spiritual dimension of
life surrounds, deeply impacts, and ultimately entirely governs the physical human
existence every single day. So, if we truly wish to accurately explain our
existence in any given moment, we must always take into account that spiritual
reality, the God who rules it, and its ongoing war between God’s light and
Satan’s darkness. And, in fact, that war
between good and evil is perhaps the strongest indicator of the daily impact of
the spiritual dimension as it constantly spills over into our world in a
multitude of ways, including those we’ve just mentioned.
So,
indeed, for too long now, our misdirected gaze has been mistakenly fixed only
on the physical realities and the human perpetrators of America’s disintegration.
And certainly, those elements are hugely important. But they are still only the downstream
results of the much more fundamental cause of our woes.
The
real headwaters of our rapid national disintegration actually swirl out of that
previously mentioned widespread relational withdrawal from God. And these resulting political and social
difficulties are just those afore mentioned practical consequences such as
always flow from a nation’s willful relational retreat from Him.
The
historical pages of the Bible actually hold vivid and detailed accounts of ancient
Israel’s times of such estrangement from God. And, that relational
distance was always created by the same behavioral pattern. It was their
broad departure from God in the rejection of His values, His truth, and His
benevolent leadings – just as both the secular and religious segments of the
American populace have been widely doing for decades now.
Thus,
this self-inflicted loss of God’s protective national guardianship has now come
also to us. The beginning point of that loss is easily marked by His
non-intervention in that disaster that was our 2020 presidential
election. And, the seriousness of that loss is clearly underscored by the
rapid pace and great depth of our national decline ever since.
But it would seem that now our compassionate Heavenly
Guardian may actually be offering a divine “olive branch” to the nation in the
form of this incoming and vastly more enlightened federal administration. And, the rise of this political relief would
further make it seem that these last four years were actually a very well-intentioned
divine object lesson. Seemingly, they
were God’s cautionary way of clearly demonstrating to the nation the harsh
reality which always emerges when our hearts begin to widely depart from Him –
thus precipitating the loss of His protective interventions.
Indeed,
it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the last four years were actually God’s
very dramatic way of helping us to avert our complete societal failure. Certainly, as a result of these past years, we
are now much more aware of what is really at stake if our growing secular
arrogance and widening shallowness in the Church go unchecked. Those continuances will only widen that
distance from God’s benevolent watchcare to finally precipitate that final,
national failure.
So,
history now waits to mark its record. And, so must we also wait to see
how present generations in America will treat this dawning opportunity to
widely reestablish a truly respectful relationship with our divine Guardian and,
in turn, know a wonderful national healing.
Thankfully,
we have managed to overwhelmingly elect this new and more enlightened political
leadership. But that political good
fortune is, by no means, all that’s required to effect America’s rescue from
the huge satanic onslaught which has beset us.
The spiritual must also be kept in play.
It is imperative that we also face up to and address that much more
fundamental issue: our national
relational rift with God. That failing –
no human administration will be sufficient to save us from what is already our
looming societal collapse.
So,
the big questions remain. Will we go
that whole distance which an American renewal truly requires – addressing not
just the physical, but the spiritual requirements as well? Will we take advantage of this burgeoning opportunity, however
brief it may be, to truly and deeply fix America, including our now widely
God-estranged heart?
Or
– Will secular America just continue
to grow ever more disrespectful and arrogant in their own delusional self-sufficiency? And, Will
our widespread pretense and minimized investment of heart, mind, and well-spent
energy within the present American Church simply continue to spread even further
across its ranks?
But
one thing is not at all in question. If
we choose that latter course, those “consequential events” will just continue
to unfold, in spite of this opportune election, finally pushing us into the
abject darkness of our own final societal disintegration?
So,
it is existentially critical, as individuals, as the Church, and as an
imminently imperiled nation, that we come once again to a deeply honest
humility before The Almighty. Indeed, it
must be a level of humility which will freshly enable us to embrace, to the
very depths of our soul, this immutable truth.
“Genuine and durable prosperity, whether
individual or national, ever resides vastly more in God’s up-close friendship than
in the delusional arrogance of our own self-sufficiency.”
