Let's Keep America Beautiful by Chris White

Several nights ago I was conversing with a young person about his recent trip to Africa.  Like most Americans who travel overseas, they are often shocked by the amount of litter that seems to be everywhere and my friend was no exception.  I explained to him that when I was growing up (during the 1960’s and 1970’s) we had a litter problem that was just about as bad as any place I have ever visited outside the U.S. but we had something that put an end to it: The Keep America Beautiful Campaign.  Night after night, as we sat in the glow of the family television set (only wealthy people had more than one set in their homes) we would see a public service announcement featuring an American Indian from the past paddling his traditional canoe into a present day modern and industrialized but unnamed metropolis.  Everywhere he goes, this man who deeply loves and respects nature, encounters careless and thoughtless people throwing their trash out the window.  The announcement closes with a motorist dumping the remains of his drive-thru hamburger meal right at the feet of this native man and looking directly at the camera we see there is a tear running down his cheek and then we hear the voice-over  admonition that caring for our great land begins and ends with you(if you want to watch the video for nostalgia/or/informational purposes go here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=j7OHG7tHrNM

My young friend was quite surprised about this and asked me if I really believe that one public service announcement had that much power to change the face of America?  “Absolutely”, I told him, “to this very day whenever I throw my hamburger trash out the window, I’m haunted by a vague sense of guilt and the face of an Indian man who is being a big cry-baby about some litter that by the end of the week is going to blow into the next county or will be eaten by a bunch of wild possums.  Never underestimate the power of a good public service announcement.

Bombs in Boston and the Judgment of God by Chris White

The bombing of the Boston Marathon has once again brought up the discussion among Christians as to whether America is under the judgment of God and whether we should declare a call to prayer and fasting as found in the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles 7:14 “ if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”  Such an idea was discussed recently in a column by Joseph Farah of World Net Daily and has been well received by many (read the article here: http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/day-of-prayer-earns-congressional-endorsement/?cat_orig=faith).  As a pastor and someone who preaches the Bible, I often struggle when this verse is rolled out in regards to America because it is definitely being used out of context and while the precept holds true, to the best of my knowledge our country does not have a covenant with God as Israel did and thus is not a promise.  In Chronicles there is only one time where the people actually did humble themselves and pray as prescribed here and God did relent in His judgment of them. But within a couple of generations the entire nation was taken into captivity by another nation (an ancient war technique in the near east) because God said the evil had gone too far and the repentance was too little.  So the very people with whom God directly made this promise were not spared the consequences of their actions at a certain point.

Despite my longstanding tradition of being a contrarian whenever I see an American flag and Cross get too close (it’s more of a knee-jerk reaction), I actually want to go on the record as endorsing a national day of prayer and fasting on 9/11/2013.  While I harbor no illusions or even wishes that America is God’s new chosen nation, there is no reason to believe God doesn’t specifically judge Gentile nations when they spin out of control with evil.  More important is that often God judges the real gods of these nations.  The great example of this is when God called the Ten Plagues on Egypt, each plague (flies, sores, frog, river turning to blood, darkened sun, etc) was actually a judgment on a different god in the Egyptian pantheon.

Our dear nation has too long abandoned the true God and has largely followed after the gods of Mars (war and power), Mammon (money), Mercury (merchandising), and Venus (beauty and sex).  What do we see before us in the headlines?  Our gods being destroyed by some unseen hand.  Despite the most advanced military we are bombed from within.  Our wealth is evaporating and can never keep up with our spending.  Even though we all have more stuff than we can ever use, we are all trained from childhood to consume to our full capacity and to be insatiable about it.  Personally, the very fact that Christmas decorations start appearing in stores right after 4^th of July is a judgment all its own!  We have gone from permitting sodomy in the privacy of one’s bedroom (as if that was ever a virtue to begin with) to making it an issue of marriage equity and civil justice.  We may not be under God’s judgment in a cataclysmic sense with the proverbial lightning bolts and earthquakes, but if within every sin there is the seed of its own punishment, we have sown to the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind and who knows where this will end.  Do we need to repent, pray and turn from our wicked ways as a nation?  Absolutely.  Will I be praying on 9/11? Ditto.  Will God heal our land if we do?  I honestly can’t say.  But I would hope “we the people” would be open to praying more and often for our nation.  Perhaps if we did that, flying the flag at half-mast would be a little less common.