I have often heard this phrase
“America is a free country,” but have never really understood what it really
meant. My family moved to this country from former Soviet Union in search of a
better life. This better life we were
looking for included having freedom from government control, which was destructive
for Christians during the communist years.
Christians were persecuted because they refused to worship this man-made
god, Lenin, a dictator at the time. They
refused to recite the pledges and wear the symbols that represented allegiance
to Lenin. Upon graduating from High
School, Russian people had to join the communistic party in order to have
success in life. Because Christians
refused to take part of any of these observances, they were not allowed to
continue higher education, nor were they able to get a good-paying job. This was why my parents moved to
America. They wanted their children to
have a better life, to get higher education, and work in good paying jobs. Above all, they wanted to live in a free
country where they would not be persecuted for their religion. Though many of
these things became realities upon arrival to the new country, American did not
turn out to be as “free” as my family perceived it to be. When I started school, I quickly realized
that this country is not so much different than the former Soviet Union. Even though it is a democratic country, it
does not completely exercise its freedoms the way it originally intended when
this country was founded. It started out
as a country founded on God, where the church and state were married and all
components of society were under the guidance of God. However, these freedoms have disappeared from
our country with the separation of church and state leading to a non-Christian
atmosphere in schools and workplaces. As
awkward as it may seem, but it appears that America has shifted backwards to
what it originally escaped. It started out
as a free country worshiping God in all aspects of society and ended up as a
free country banning God from every aspect of society including educational
settings, work organizations, and media.
The educational setting provides one
vivid example of how America has transitioned from being godly to godless. If you look at the history of our country, the
founding fathers have instituted prayer and Bible reading in schools in the
1620s (GonzoII, 2009). They started out
teaching their children the letters of the alphabet by using verses from the
Bible. Prayer was a fundamental
principal of school life as well as other aspects of society. This continued for another 300 hundred years
or so until some began to question these ideals. In 1954, the country felt it needed to add
the phrase “under God” to the pledge of allegiance because it might have felt a
threat toward Christianity (Robinson, 2002).
However, it was not enough. As
more people flooded into the country with opposing religious viewpoints, this
Godly country slowly started passing laws to take away God from schools. In 1962, Supreme Court ruled that children
could no longer recite a school prayer in school (GonzoII, 2009). Then in 1980, Supreme Court ruled the Ten
Commandments could no longer be posted in the classrooms in fear that children
might obey them (GonzoII, 2009). All
these attempts to take God out of public schools have only caused
problems. The same year of the Ten
Commandment removal, the U.S. schools reported “its lowest S.A.T. scores ever,
after 18 straight years of decline after 1962 ban on school prayer” (GonzoII,
2009). This was only the beginning for
the decline that was to come. Schools
now struggle to keep kids from dropping out.
Not only that, but they struggle to keep kids from drug and alcohol
abuse, gangs, and teenage pregnancies.
Not to mention that the achievement gap keeps getting wider. The godless state of this country only
created more problems for educational settings even though some might believe
otherwise. Annie Laurie Gaylor, for
example, speaks against school prayer in an article called “The Case against
School Prayer” saying, “One might just as well credit the lack of prayer with
the great advances that have taken place since the 1962 and 1963 decisions on
prayer. Look at the leap in civil
liberties, equality, environmental awareness, women’s rights, science,
technology, and medicine!” (Gaylor, p. 681).
Though this might be a legitimate argument; however, most of these
advancements have only made our country weaker.
There was a reason why God placed a man in charge and the woman a
homemaker. So all these advancements
toward equality and women’s rights movements have only put more burdens on the
women and created generations of children growing up with no parents. Nevertheless, not all is lost because schools
today still continue to have the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance
that is being recited every day. Maybe
that is the reason why education system still manages to send kids to college
and attempts to raise test scores. It is
mindboggling to imagine what could happen if that phrase will one day be
removed.
Unfortunately, education is not the
only entity that is suffering with the absence of God. Most organizations in America do not function
on the basis of Christianity. Just
consider some of the major corporations and whether their primary focus is to
honor God. Take health care for example
with their advance use of technologies to change people’s bodies, choose baby
gender, and conduct abortions in manners unprecedented to humanity, thus
playing God. Do these practitioners
consider what God thinks of their conduct and do they do it by the will of
God? Absolutely not! On the contrary, health care and every other
institution in America have gotten away from seeking God. Almost all workplaces have eliminated
anything that would promote any type of controversy when it comes to
religion. The argument for this always
comes down to the fact that this country is a free country and should allow
everyone to practice their own religion freely.
Though this is the case and this is a free country, people forget the
reason what the founders of this country fought for. They shed blood so that people can worship
God freely, a God that is the creator of this world, a God that sent his son
Jesus to die on the cross so that people could be right with God, a God that
will one day judge all people regardless whether they believed in him or not. That is the God upon which this country was
founded, not Allah, not Buddha, not Virgin Mary. Why do people think this country was so
prosperous and successful for so many years?
There is only one explanation for that, which is found in the Bible on
numerous occasions. Genesis 39:3 states
when talking about Joseph in Egypt, “His master saw that the Lord was with him
and that the Lord made everything he did successful” (LASB, p. 74). Could it be that the economic state of this
country could be accounted to the fact that this country is becoming more and
more ungodly?
Not just the school setting, nor the
public institutions, but above all the media portrays and even promotes ungodliness
in America. More and more movies come
out with the RR rating. Not only that,
but the movies that are rated G, which are supposed to be free of corruption
and inappropriate images and language, are becoming more and more inappropriate
for kids. Just the other day, we took a few kids to the movies for one of our daughter’s birthday
parties. The movie was rated G, but I
could not stop thinking about some of the images that were in that movie
including half-naked women dancing in a casino setting. This was a G-rated movie! I will not even mention the PG or the PG-13
movies because if a G-rated movie is that corrupted, the next ratings could
only get worse. How many Christian
movies actually come out in movie theaters?
Maybe one movie per year or less and even then that movie has to have
some corrupted components of sex and violence or else it does not get a good
audience. Beyond the movie industry, the
television has also moved away from family shows portraying a family with a mom
and dad to gay and lesbian families.
Every show or movie these days must have someone who is gay, or else
that show or movie will not succeed. This
is not to mention what is seen in the magazines nowadays. Nobody ever talks about God, but rather who
had the next affair, who had the next plastic surgery, or who turned gay
recently. What happened to a country
founded on God? It has completely turned
into a godless country, especially when it comes to media.
So what are the implications of all
this? Will this country completely
destroy itself? This might very much be
the case for America if it continues to deny the existence and supremacy of
God. Americans should look at the
history of Israel as an example and learn from it because whatever happened to
them with their unwillingness to follow God will happen to America in years to
come. Jeremiah 25:8-11 says, “Therefore
the Lord Almighty says this: ‘Because you have not listened to my words…I will
completely destroy them and make them an object or horror and scorn, and an
everlasting ruin” (LASB, p. 1234). All
those things happened to Israel and will happen to America as it continues on
this godless path. This is when people
like Annie Gaylor will have to grow silent with her ideas about how “We know
from history how harmful and destructive religion is in our public schools” (p.
679) and realize that what was destructive was not religion or prayer, but the
denial of God. America needs to wake up
and bring God back to schools, organizations, and media or it will face
destruction it has never seen before! It
needs to bring back the true freedom where people are free to worship a real
God and be truly free from the devil’s snares.
Above all, America needs to be free from the wrath of God and the only
way to do that is to turn back to God. A
recent church billboard said, “We hide from God by hiding in God.” That is exactly what America needs to do!
Bibliography
Gaylor, A. L. The case against school prayer.
Elements of Argument: A text and reader.
Boston, NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
GonzoII. (2009).
An outline history of religion in
American schools. Free Republic.
Life Application Study Bible: New
International Version. 2005. Carol Steam, IL & Grand
Rapids, MI: Tyndale
House Publishers, Inc. & Zondervan.
Robinson, B. A. (2002). The U.S. pledge of allegiance: Background
information. Religious
Tolerance. www.religioustolerance.org.
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