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Post Election Thoughts

It is a rare thing in human history that one can experience the rise and fall of a great nation in one's own lifetime. It took more than a thousand years for ancient China to come and go, six hundred for Rome, perhaps two hundred each for Spain and England. In the case of America, it has happened in about fifty years.

Immediately following World War II, we were the most powerful nation on earth. Our technology was unrivalled, our production unprecedented, our self-image secure, and we were held in high respect by the peoples of the world. Today, we are on the way down. Our standard of living is decreasing, our output is diminishing, our self-image is in tatters, and we are the most disliked, if not outright hated, nation in the world.

What has happened? I think it comes down to three things: a loss of our spiritual grounding, a breakdown of our political system, and the results of irresponsible spending. As my father used to say, if we live too high on the hog for too long, eventually we are going to have to pay for it.

Loss of spiritual grounding

This does not mean we are any less 'religious'. What it does mean is that too many of our citizens have been content to lapse into false religions. The huge interest in astrology, the lottery and other forms of magic is bad enough. But the real problem is that large numbers of Christians have simply begun to worship false idols - belief in Biblical literalism, thus making the Bible itself an idol, belief in a false God who can be persuaded by us to do something if we do something in return (a vision rejected by Judaism and Jesus more than two millennia ago), and belief in our own superiority which we justify to ourselves by claiming to be the only 'children of God'.

When Thomas Althizer and Harvey Cox announced the 'death of God' in the 1960s, they were really calling people to reject the old, magical, God-with-a-beard-in-Heaven kind of God. At that time, most people in Europe understood what was being said and refused to go along with the false Christianity that had held sway there for hundreds of years. They left the churches in droves. But in America many people instead retreated into the refuge that the false God provides - certainty in our own righteousness, bliss in our own ignorance, safety if we blindly follow the God of wrath and judgment and Laws. Today more than 75% of Americans claim to believe in the virgin birth and a physical Heaven and Hell, and almost as many insist their God created the earth in seven days.

The result is a nation deeply divided between people who are concerned about real-life issues - war and peace, social justice, the health and welfare of the people - and people who are concerned, instead, about 'values' -- by which they mean dependence on a magical God, adherence to ancient taboos, the necessity for everyone to believe as they do, and safety in raw (though often hidden) power. Such a nation cannot prosper, because its prevailing religion is internally corrupt, divisive, and an offence to the God of love and justice. ...