Celebrating our God who “governs the affairs of men.”

We’ve been looking at the need to keep Jesus BIG, and us and everything else small.

That is a fitting message for Independence Day since what is true for us as individuals is true for our society as a whole.   

Christianity used to be the core of our society.  It is a simple truth (but apparently no longer self-evident) that we were founded as a Christian nation, and that was the true source of unity for these “United States.”  Yes, in principle we were founded on plurality and tolerance of all faiths, but in the words of George Bailey, 99% of the people who did the founding and living and working and defending and dying were Christian.  The underlying values were Christian values, and the underlying prayer was to the Triune God. 

And let’s dispense with the hogwash that the Founders were all deists and didn’t believe there was a God who actually got His divine hands dirty with the business of us messy humans. 

It was no less than Benjamin Franklin, supposed “deist in chief,” who admonished members of the Constitutional Convention with these words: 

In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. -- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered.

I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs in the affairs of men.

To the extent that the American experiment has been successful it has been due to America being a Christian nation.  Of course, we were never perfectly Christian, and thus we were never a perfect nation nor perfectly united.  But, our Christian unity and the nobility of our nation rise and fall together.  If Jesus Christ isn’t at the center as our unifying principle, then it must ultimately become a totalitarian fist at center as the unifying principle.  Think communist Russia, China, North Korea, or the CIA. 

This brings us to another unique aspect of the American experiment – it was always meant to be bottom up, not top down – it was meant to be government at the service of the people. 

Why must it be that way?   Because unity always grows outward, from the smallest level – from individual, to family, to society.  “Top down” unity is just another word for tyranny.

When we are unified in Christ we will value the same things, because we will value the things of God.  In theory, this even holds true if we simply follow the natural law with a pure heart, but the problem is that it is nearly impossible to do that, because left on our own, separated from God, the enemy drags us down.

On a closing note, this is why the Dobbs ruling, and overturning of Roe v Wade, was vital - there’s simply no place for abortion in our nation.  Even the natural law tells us abortion is evil.  The Hippocratic Oath prohibited performing abortions (which is why med schools now shun it).  And science confirms life begins at conception.  But without Christ as our center, our fallen nature blinds us to the truth of the natural law.

And of course, faith affirms what the natural law proclaims.  Scripture is clear – “He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before Him…”  (Eph 1:4); “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb” (Ps 139:18);  “before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” (Jer 1:5).

Human life isn’t arbitrary – each human life is God’s, planned and created by Him – we are just given the stunning and majestic privilege to participate in creating and shepherding those souls back to Him.     

A country unified in Christian values – a country that acknowledges in fear and trembling that “God governs the affairs of men” – would never think twice about abortion.

The way back to a country united in Christ – a genuinely United States - is personal holiness.  Unity starts with the individual, each of us united to God to the best of our ability, and bringing that out into the world.

The Gospel reading for today features the disciples being threatened by a storm at sea, and Jesus saving them by “rebuking the winds and the sea.”  Seeing this, they are amazed and say, “What sort of man is this, whom even the winds and the sea obey?"

God desires to save our nation, just as He saved His disciples in the boat.  But stormy seas are nothing compared to the rebelliousness of men’s hearts. 

Let us pray on this Independence Day that our once-great nation learns to once again obey the One who, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “governs the affairs of men.”

A blessed 4^th of July to you and your loved ones –

Steve and Karen Smith

Interior Life