What Happened?
Christians alive in America today have, for many years, enjoyed the leftovers of a predominantly Christian society. The older they are, the more of those years they’ve enjoyed. This is, of course, not to say that everyone at the American founding was a Christian, nor that all that we’ve done as a nation has been Christian, but it is to say that the true blessings this nation has enjoyed came from God (James 1:17), and many of those grew out of the rich soil of Christianity’s effects on our society.
There is an inherent danger in not being the first generation to enjoy those blessings. The generation that drove the Canaanites out of the promised land had the benefit of seeing the last of the generation die off in the wilderness because of their unbelief (Hebrews 3:12). They also had the added benefit of routing the wicked nations from the land before them, and seeing God’s judgment on those nations for their sin firsthand.
The generations after them didn’t have those sobering experiences, and it showed. They didn’t grow up in the wilderness, see the plague at Baal-Peor (Numbers 25), or watch God crush their enemies. The generation that did see all of those things was supposed to teach them to their children, but if you’ve read Judges, you know those dots didn’t get connected the way they should have. It’s like a story of each generation having to put their hand on the hot stove before realizing it will burn them because mom and dad didn’t take the time to do so.
American Christians today can find themselves in a similar place. We didn’t have to trailblaze a new nation to find religious liberty; we had it. And the same goes for many blessings we’ve taken for granted – the integrity of our medical establishment, media, government, educational institutions, etc. We didn’t have to build those things; most of us grew up with them. Now that we see them crumbling or already demolished and in heaps, we’re realizing that the world we assumed and enjoyed is gone. Aaron Renn has written about the subject well in his article here.
The Ingratitude of Unbelief
This then leads to a problem of ingratitude. Because we didn’t have to work in faith to have these blessings, and because successive generations weren’t careful to train up their children in the Lord, we assumed this was just the way things were. Our neighbors were friendly because people are nice. We can trust the medical establishment because, of course, we can! We know what a boy or a girl is because who doesn’t?
The problem is that this isn’t true, and thinking and operating like this is sinful unbelief, and it fails to give God the glory.
Flourishing societies don’t crop up out of thin air. America didn’t simply happen. It is not a coincidence that the Great Awakening occurred in the same century, in the decades directly leading to the American Founding. God is the reason for these blessings, but we have forgotten Him. We have neglected to give Him the glory He is due. We took His many gifts for granted, so we did not teach them to our children; therefore, each generation is less thankful and more perverse than the last (Romans 1:21).
What the Church in America needs to do now, after we recognize the state of things, is to repent and give thanks. We need to come back to the God from whom all blessings flow. Our culture is disintegrating because we did what God commanded Israel not to do when they finally made it into the promised land. God would bless their socks off, and their job was not to forget it.
10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.” (Deuteronomy 6:10–13)
What we need is repentance and thanksgiving. A turning away from the ingratitude of unbelief. We need to name our blessings one by one and then give God the glory for all of them.