Who Secularized America?

One of the most important issues that our nation faces today is the secularization of American life. Our society has done anything and everything to eliminate God from public life. It forces us to ask the question, “Who secularized America?” Who decided we don’t need the Bible anymore? Who decided to throw it out of public life, because we can supposedly live our lives as we choose?

We as Americans have come a long way from our early days. Let me quote to you, for example, one of the prayers of George Washington, the first president of the United States, who in his prayer journal wrote these words:

“I beseech thee, O Lord, for the sake of Him in whom You are well pleased, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, that You bless the people of this land. Be a Father to the fatherless, a Comforter to the comfortless, a Deliverer to the captives, a Physician to the sick. Let Your blessing be upon our friends, our families, our kindred. And be a Guide this day and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Flood of Unbelief

We are under a flood of unbelief, led by atheists, skeptics, and rationalists who have decided, “We need to remove all religious symbols and Bible quotations from public view. After all, we might infringe on the religious beliefs and ideas of somebody else.” Yet they will turn around and coddle any other kind of religious expression except the truth of Jesus Christ.

Who did that to us in the first place? Why are we sitting back and allowing that to happen? Our society is becoming corrupted by the moral laws of those who want to accommodate an ungodly lifestyle. Our courts are making decisions that absolutely shock the living daylights out of us.

Why is all of this happening? Where does all of this come from? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer straight out of the Bible itself. He says:

“In whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

It is the activity of Satan behind the scenes who blinds the heart and mind of the unbeliever to say, “We don’t need God. We’ll live our own lives and make our own decisions without God. And anybody who claims to know God or believe in God is infringing on our freedoms.”

We tragically and strangely will turn around and defend trees, whales, and seals, but not marriage, the family, or the rights of the unborn. Why? Because man is essentially moralistic in nature. He was created in the image and likeness of God. So when his morality does not come from the Bible, he has to get it somewhere. If you are not going to stand up for the truth of God, you have to stand up for something, or you feel like you are in moral violation of life itself.

Tide of Secularism

The end result is that there is a tide of secularism sweeping America right down to the emptiness of life itself, and it will ultimately bury this nation in unbelief. That nation that does not know God is a nation that is desperate without God. We try to find meaning, purpose, and significance in our own selfcenteredness. We ourselves want to choose what is right and wrong. But we are almost always going to find ourselves choosing that which is wrong, instead of that which is right. We are on the verge of pushing America spiritually to the very precipice of extinction and destruction, for God may well say someday, “Enough with this nation,” and walk away from us.

We are so full of ourselves, that we are not filled at all with the presence of God. We are so blinded by the god of this world, that we have taken the attitude that we do not need God.

The tragedy is, when people do that, sometimes God will leave them unto their own choices and devices. He will say, “Fine. Then go on with your life, and see how it works without Me.” Crime is out of control. Kids are out of control. Society is out of control. Marriages are failing. Lives are desperate. Hearts are destitute and empty. These are the end results of a world that has said, “I’ll do it my way,” instead of saying, “Oh, God, help me to do it Your way.” America faces some of the greatest challenges that we have ever faced as a nation. We are being pushed to the very edge of the consequences of our unbelief.

To violate the command of Christ for the cause of political correctness is to be so Biblically incorrect that we are out of step with God. And when we are out of step with God, we cannot expect the blessing of God on this nation. America is in the tide of secularism today. She is the victim of relativism, the philosophy that says, “There is no absolute truth. Truth is relative to its context. It is relative to your own experience. I am really the god over my life. I will decide what is right and wrong for me.” You hear it all the time in our television programs. You see it in the lives of so many of our public leaders, movie stars, and athletes: “It’s all about Number One. It’s all about me.”

Relativism then leads to secularism. If there is not truth, there is no God. There is no meaning and purpose to life. That leads to materialism: it’s all about how much stuff I can have. And we are a society that is absolutely absorbed with trying to have more and more things, conveniences, and gadgets to somehow make us happy. Yet we are the most unhappy generation that has ever lived. We have more depression, more divorce, more suicide, more frustration, and more outbursts of anger, than any time in American history. Why? Because God is not there.

Finally, you push God right out of the picture. You are just living for yourself and your stuff. But that is not enough, because it won’t love you back. So then you turn to mysticism. You start to imagine something else to be god. How did the pagans come up with some of the ideas they did in the first place, thinking, “If I pray to this idol or this statue, it can really hear me” or “If I go through certain incantations to the great spirit, that’s enough”? It was not because they were trying to be irreligious. No, they were trying to make a religion of some sort out of themselves, nature, their circumstances, and life as they understood it. But they were without the guidance of “Thus saith the Lord,” the Word of God itself.

Have you ever observed the chain reaction of evil that takes place in the first chapter of the Book of Romans? That chapter is so convicting and so indicting, that many unbelievers hate it. There are people who would like to take Romans 1 and just rip it right out of the Bible and throw it away. It starts out talking about the grace of God, and about the power of the Gospel unto salvation.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes” (Romans 1:16).

The Gospel of the righteousness of God is revealed in the cross of Jesus Christ. Then Paul goes on to say that when people reject that and do not receive it, then:

“the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

God shows Himself in the light of nature, and they reject it. God shows His hand in creation to say, “There is a Creator out there. You are not an accident of chance.” But when we refuse to believe that, we keep pushing God further away from ourselves. We are also pushing ourselves further away from God. In the end, we find ourselves in spiritual darkness. We end up in spiritual ignorance. We end up the victims of our own wrong choices.

God did not create you to end up that way. That was not God’s intention and purpose for your life. God loves you enough that He said He would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). God loved you enough to send His Son to the cross to die for your sins. God can do much better for you. God can do much better for America.

Proverbs 14:34 says, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” America has been blessed of God, because America was built on a foundation of Biblical truth and Biblical principles. Godly people came to the shores of this country, and literally risked their lives and their futures for the cause of religious freedom. That spirituality is the very basis, ultimately, of American law, of our sense of justice, rightness and fairness.

I realize that we have turned away from God. We are far away from what those founding fathers had in mind. But we are still living on the fumes of the past. There is still enough vestige of Christian influence in our nation that God is still blessing America in spite of our sin. But the further we turn away from God, the more we invite the judgment of God. Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” Even in the Old Testament, God was willing to reach out to other nations and other people. If they would come to the truth of believing in Him, they could experience the forgiveness, love, and grace of God in their lives. Those who came to faith in the Lord God, like the Assyrians, the people of Nineveh who repented and turned unto Him, experienced the hand of His blessing. But those whose attitude was, “We don’t need or want your God,” ultimately came under the judgment of God. Even the people of God themselves would invite His judgment on their lives. The people of Israel would also say “No” to God and to the things of God.

It has been a long time since many Americans have acknowledged that the founding fathers of America were men who believed in God. They also believed that the Bible was the Word of God, and that America ought to be built on its truths. They set out to carve a nation out of the wilderness, that might be like a light on a hill, shining for the glory of God Himself.

But others came along and said, “Oh, no, we don’t need that. We don’t need God. We don’t need all that God talk, and all that Bible stuff, and making everybody try to live right. Come on. If you really love people, you’ll just sort of open up, and let everybody do their own thing. After all, God forgives.”

Even from our earliest days as a nation, some people began to try to minimize the impact of the Gospel. They tried to “dumb down” Christianity, by reducing it to something less than what it is really all about. The end result was, that even after the American Revolution, and the founding of this great nation, we soon got away from God. As the nation spread west into the wilderness, they got into self-indulgent living. In many cases, they forgot God altogether.

But God did not forget them. He raised up the great evangelists and revivalists, like Francis Asbury, who went west, preaching the message of the Gospel, calling people to faith in Christ. Some of the greatest revivals in American history took place in the early days of this nation, in the 19^th century. People like George Whitfield and John and Charles Wesley were preaching a flaming message of the Gospel across the Eastern Seaboard; God was moving in the hearts and minds of people. Later, men like Charles Finney came along and called people to faith in Christ, and said, “Stop beating around the bush. Make a decision, either yes or no. Either you’re in or you’re out. What is it going to be?”

By the end of the century, D.L. Moody was doing the same thing. The city of Chicago was spiritually moved by the impact of his message. Early in the 20th century, Billy Sunday and hundreds of other evangelists did the same. By the end of the last century, Dr. Billy Graham and others heralded the message of the Gospel, and called Americans by the thousands to faith in Jesus Christ.

Waves of Grace

We are so far away from God in some areas of American life today, we have forgotten what it is really all about. The good news is there are many who have not. Those same waves of grace that reached out and touched us as a nation in the past, when we were drifting away from God, adrift on a sea of unbelief and relativity, can touch us again.

When people come to the end of themselves, they realize, “I don’t have all the answers. I can’t solve the problems. I don’t even know how to raise my own kids or keep my own marriage together or help my own family.” When you are desperate enough, you realize that when there is nowhere else to turn, you have to turn to God. God made us that way, so that we are never satisfied with anything less than Him. It is not because He hates you, but because He loves you. He made you to be in such fellowship with Him, that He would become the meaning, center, purpose, and driving direction of your life. Your life is to be a reflection of the light of His truth, the power of His presence, and the magnitude of His person.

Let us also pray for spiritual revival within our land. While morals are at a low ebb, spiritual possibilities can be very great.

by Ed Hindson, The King Is Coming Telecast