Americans were a Christian people who founded a country based on Christian principles. Those principles held for about 180 years or so.
As I mentioned before, Americans in 1800 were primarily Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists, all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). It’s fair to say that those WASPs would have agreed that Christians were called to keep the 10 Commandments, which God gave to Moses in the Old Testament.
From Exodus Chapter 20, “And God spoke all these words, saying,
1. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”
2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
3. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.
4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
5. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
6. “You shall not murder.
7. “You shall not commit adultery.
8. “You shall not steal.
9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”
In the New Testament, when asked which of the ten are the most important, Jesus distilled the 10 down to two. He said, “The most important one is this: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”
Many people say they believe in God, but what does that mean? I follow the God of the Bible, the God who gave Moses the 10 Commandments. I follow Jesus Christ, Who summarized those commandments into “love God and love your neighbor.”
It’s clear that many people living in American today follow other gods. Many follow the god of money, the god of material things, the god of political power, the god of victimization, the god of chaos, the god of lies, the god of self hate. News stories celebrate liars, thieves, atheists, murderers, narcissists, pedophiles, and sexual deviants.
I have nothing in common with those people. I don’t want to live with them. We can’t reason with them. Arguing with them is a waste of time. Only God can open their eyes. Only God can save them. We need a revival. We need to pray.
We need God.
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