OPINION:
Those of us who lived through the 60s have seen our share of turmoil in the highways and byways of these United States.
From that “old crazy Asian war” that Kenny Rogers sang about to the racial divide and unrest that consumed our nation for most of a generation to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, the entire decade shook our nation to its knees.
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If there could have been a theme song for those days, surely it could have been the 1969 Creedence Clearwater Revival hit “Bad Moon Rising.”
“I see the bad moon a-risin,’ I see trouble on the way, I see earthquakes and lightnin,’ I see bad times today.
“I hear hurricanes a-blowin,’ I know the end is comin’ soon, I fear rivers overflowin,’ I hear the voice of rage and ruin.
“Hope you got your things together, Hope you’re quite prepared to die. Looks like we’re in for nasty weather, One eye is taken for an eye.”
And who could forget the oft-repeated haunting chorus of “Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life, There’s a bad moon on the rise.”
Don’t look now, but somebody ought to re-release the song because it is extremely relevant to this very moment in time as it was in its time period. To say the least, we, in America, are living in dark and difficult days. Not only that but there is a failure in leadership in every aspect of our existence.
SEE ALSO: Dear Christians: You can’t sit on the sidelines while America goes straight to hell
Whether you look to the worldly strongholds of government, politics, pollsters, science, education, military, entertainment, and even cultural theology, your search for answers comes up on the short end of the stick.
For instance, if educators cannot control even their own campuses, how are they going to supply leadership for the world? Business and world commerce are managed by an oligarchy of tycoons. Even the talking heads on the various media outlets keep moving their mouths, but they ultimately have very little to say of any substance.
The reality is that none of these groups or segments of our society have any viable solutions to the stench of humanity’s failure that emanates from the gutters of our daily existence. Each of these provides clear and glaring failures in the realm of leadership. There is seemingly no one or nothing to lead us out of this moral morass or out of the difficult problems that have us all tangled up with each other and ourselves. We are surely living in one of the most difficult seasons ever in the history of our nation. But on top of all of this, it is also perhaps even the worst era in the history of the church, at least in the modern era.
So, if this assessment is correct, and I would suggest that you will be hard-pressed to find an unbiased appraisal otherwise, then how in the world did we allow ourselves to get back into a similar predicament to what we experienced in the 60s and swore then that we would never return? The answer is quite simple: the American people have forgotten the lessons of history and have allowed themselves to be duped in the process.
The old adage that if you tell a lie long enough and with enough fervor folks will begin to believe it certainly has some validity. However, I am not so sure that this thought process now represents the mentality of our culture.
Hannah Arendt, a German historian, and philosopher who lived through the Nazi takeover period, had a lot to say about the process of indoctrination. Her thoughts have been summed up in this manner: “This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A person who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, are, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”
In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” she went on to add, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
When the world around us is fluidly incomprehensible and the fuel of non-fact-based propaganda is added to the fire of confusion, is it any wonder that the masses could “reach the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, that everything was possible and that nothing was true….” Sadly, the art of the lie has even reached the point where the attribute is even deemed admirable when adroitly applied. Since Satan himself is the father of lies, he must feel really proud of himself and his minions.
Perhaps the saddest commentary on the entire conundrum is the ignorance and sometimes even the complicity on the part of the American church in this tide of deceit that so overwhelms the common person. Ignorance in the sense of sitting on its hands in the hopes that the situation will go away by itself and complicity in the very act of accepting and perpetuating the lies especially when it comes to the most basic biblical moral issues of the day. That is why true moral courage is so needed on the part of true Christ followers in America today. Unfortunately, its rarity causes it to be sorely missed. In the end, however, there is no amount of political fervor or patriotic animation that will prove to be the salve that heals America’s wounds. There is a great big hole in the middle of the heart of America’s psyche that can only be filled through true repentance and a full return to the God of our Fathers. It is time that Christ’s church in America lifts its head and becomes what it was intended to be from the day of its birth at Pentecost.
It was Jesus Himself who gave us the key to unlock the stupidity of our cultural enigma. In John 8: 31-32, He tells the Jews who had believed in Him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
At Southern Evangelical Seminary we are clinging to the hope of our salvation found in knowing our Savior who is the living Word by abiding in His written word, the Bible. If you are tired of the haze of fog surrounding America and your existence, then isn’t it time that you also turned to the pages of Scripture wherein lies the only truth that matters and the only hope of our nation and its individual inhabitants in these days of uncertainly? After all, it is the only antidote to poison carried about in the dual-pointed fangs of deceit and despair.
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After a successful career as a lawyer and judge, Judge Phil Ginn retired as the Senior Resident Superior Court Judge for the 24th Judicial District in North Carolina. Throughout his 22-year judicial career, he had the privilege of holding court in almost 50% of the county seats in North Carolina. Currently, Judge Ginn serves as the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary (ses.edu) and is a regular contributor to Christianity.com and The Washington Times. Judge Ginn has also been featured on Fox News, CBN, Newsmax, Decision Magazine, The Christian Post, Townhall and many others.
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