COGWA Members App
Feast App
ROKU AppIs America Losing Her Vision?
Written by Adam Sanders
Whatever biblical heritage America’s founding documents contained is being altered by a newer, short-sighted vision. Has America lost her identity and her vision?
America, are you there? Oh you are, but you seem to have changed. It is as if you are losing your identity.
The history of this nation and the vision of the founding fathers are not very well known any more. Americans seem to take for granted the rights and freedoms we have, not recognizing their source or the responsibilities they require. Why is this?
John Adams is quoted as saying, “We are a nation of laws and not of men.” Yet these days it seems as if that is reversed, and we are a nation of men and not of laws. Of course, we have laws for everything, but we seem to have a hard time keeping any of them correctly.
Perhaps it’s similar to the days of the judges in ancient Israel when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).
Anything that gives some semblance of order or boundary or authority is being pushed aside in the name of open-mindedness, fairness or freedom without responsibility. Our lack of obedience to the law of the land seems to correlate to our changing vision of what we think America should be.
A look back
Let’s take a look at the past and see how it correlates to our future. The Bible tells us that after the death of King Solomon, the tribes of Israel split between the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south. The northern kingdom of Israel with her capital in Samaria later became known as the lost ten tribes of Israel.
Why were they lost? First, when they were taken captive by Assyria, they were forced to migrate and assimilate into the Assyrian culture, and so they physically disappeared. Second, they were also lost because they had forgotten their vision, their identity and their law.
Ancient Israel was chastised for many things, but two things in particular: Sabbath breaking and idolatry. In those two things they broke several of the Ten Commandments. As they did not show love to God, they did not love their neighbor either. This is also clear in the correction God sent them through His prophets.
They had forgotten where they were going, where they came from and where their boundaries were. They lost their vision and their identity.
After the split, King Jeroboam feared that the people of Israel would go back to Judah to observe God’s festivals, and he would lose his hold on power. So he set up two golden calves for the people to worship instead of God. Then he changed the date of his festival to a month later than what God had established (1 Kings 12:26-32). His vision for the nation changed drastically from what was originally intended by God.
In Jeroboam’s case, the change came because of his fear of losing power. But men over time have sold their vision for many things, including power, greed or lust.
Where are we going?
Where has America’s vision gone as a nation? We have sold our vision for similar short-term selfishness. In other words, our vision now is all about short-term gain. This, in return, produces lawlessness, because short-term gain is all about gaining at the expense of someone or something else.
We are making choices of short-term gain right now all over our country, spending ourselves into oblivion, not thinking about the next generation. Our morals have decayed, and we care less how it affects others. We try to make frenemies (God called it buying “lovers”) everywhere, not worrying about if they will stab us in the back later. We seem to be throwing everything that has to do with the law away, so we can rewrite the law with our short-term, selfish focus.
Most people in the United States do not have the same view about law and about God that the founding fathers had way back in the 1700s. John Adams also said, “Our constitution was only made for a moral and religious people.” Many people today no longer share that vision.
The original vision
If the original vision of America is compromised, then our will to obey her laws will be compromised as well.
God has a vision for people as well. It is called the Kingdom of God, but you rarely hear about it. It is based on the return of Christ, when His law will be established over the whole earth.
Since we rarely hear about the Kingdom of God, we rarely hear about the holy, just and good laws of that Kingdom. These include the Ten Commandments that are encapsulated in the two great commandments: Love God with all your heart, mind and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself.
As with America, the vision of God’s Kingdom has been compromised by humans through time. Therefore His law has been compromised as well, because it does not fit into our short-term selfishness.
America’s true identity depends on God, and its blessings came because of God’s blessings to Abraham. But America has rejected God and has chosen a short-sighted vision. She is in the process of rewriting history to make this new vision more palatable.
But if we do not understand where we came from, how can we understand where we are going?
Thankfully, God holds out the wonderful vision of the coming Kingdom of God, and He gives us His beneficial laws now to help us prepare for that Kingdom. That is the vision we must keep burning brightly in our minds. Learn more about that vision in our booklet The Mystery of the Kingdom.
Adam Sanders is a member of the Church of God, a Worldwide Association, and attends the Columbus/Cambridge, Ohio, congregation with his wife and four children.
Related reading:
